Japan Fights for a "Negotiated Peace"

"Negotiated Peace"

Explanation of Pacific Strategy

Reported from USA Toy Esmae

Taylor

rE Japanese are trying to bleed us into a “sickening of the war,” so we will give them a negotiated peace, and leave them enough empire to fatten on and thus attempt another conquest, next generation.”

So warned Ira Wolfert, correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance, recently returned from the Pacific area, at a dinner in New York for reporters from the battlefronts, on November 30, 1943.

“The Japanese,” Mr. Wolfert said, “are on the defensive. They have given up all hope of winning a peace of their own dictation in Washington. But if they retain enough of their empire, in sufficient time they would become a first class Power. Then it would be not only impossible to defeat Japan, but impos sible for the United States to survive on the other side of the Pacific from her.”

Mr. Wolfert said that it is to this policy and strategy that Japan has committed her troops. On islands which are mili tarily untenable, she has lodged garrisons of varying strengths—lo,ooo men here, 2,000 there, 1,000 elsewhere—and the aim of these Jap troops is to kill as many Americans as possible before they them selves die.

“This was true of garrisons in the Solomons, and in the Gilbert Islands.”

Mr. Wolfert said. “It was true, too, of Bougainville. In all cases, our strategy has been to avoid giving the Japanese the opportunity of killing American and Allied soldiers.”

In the Gilberts group, the correspon dent said, the Japanese, amply warned of the American attack, made no serious attempt to protect their garrisons. They gave them no ships or airplanes—“just put them there to prove that when you die you can take Americans with you.”

During his talk, Mr. Wolfert exploded the popular myth that paints the Jap anese soldier as a superman without fear, and willing, even anxious, to lay down his life for his Emperor. When Mr.

Wolfert was stationed in the Solomons, in New Georgia, he observed the Japan ese reaction to fear.

“They were willing to accept their assignment from their overlords to con quer or die,” he said, “but it was physi cally impossible for them to carry it out.

On occasions, in New Georgia, if you got to within 50 feet of a Jap, he would throw his gun away and scream. He wasn’t a soldier any more, just an hysterical man.

A sense of self-preservation is instinctive in everyone, and it is humanly impossible to overthrow the sense of survival.”

“Democracy,” Mr. Wolfert said, “has produced a kind of soldier and a kind of person who is able to meet the Fascist Jap on his own terms and beat him at his own game. Democracy gives a sol dier a sense of self-respect and respon sibility to his task. It prevents him from lying down on the job, no matter how repulsive it may be to him. This idea should be put into words and handed to the troops.”

Ira Wolfert. in May of this year, was awarded a Pulitzer prize for his de spatches from the Pacific front. He is the author of a highly successful book, “Torpedo 8,” which has its origin in the Battle of Midway.

Miss N. P. Talbot, of the Melanesian Mission, has returned to work again at the hospital at Fauabu, BSI.