Hunters of 1942 Are the Hunted of 1944

and Territorians do not forget what happened in Rabaul in January, 1942, when some 20,000 arrogant and triumphant Japs swarmed in upon one Australian militia battalion, one six-inch battery, an air force of five unwieldy old Wirraway machines, and some 72 members of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, many of them last war veterans. While this tiny force heroically opposed the landing of ten thousand Japs, most of Rabaul’s civilians fled into New Britain’s jungles. There they pre sently were joined by the remnants of Rabaul’s defenders; and, in succeed ing weeks, those unfortunate fugitives, foodless and malaria-ridden, were relentlessly hunted down by Jap patrols in the jungles and Jap destroyers along the coasts.

Now, the wheel has turned full circle. The gallant hunters of 1942 are the hunted of 1944; and the Jap invaders of New Britain, as they flee from the gathering hosts of America, are experiencing all the horrors of jungle starvation and jungle disease, which they forced upon the un offending citizens of Rabaul two years ago.

In the same way that they are withdrawing themselves from the New Britain jungles upon Rabaul, so the Japs in the New Ireland and Bougainville and north-east New Guinea jungles probably will try to concentrate upon one or two districts in each of those islands, formerly settled by Europeans, where there may be some food supplies.

A YEAR ago the Japanese, fearing what was happening in the south—in Guadalcanal and in Papua —turned feverishly to the building of what was then called “the volcano line of bases.” It followed the earth fault (or earthquake and volcano belt) along the north coasts of New Guinea and New Britain, through the northern Solomons, into the British Solomons.

To-day, there is nothing left of the “volcano line” except the smashed and useless bases at Rabaul, Kavieng, Madang and Wewak, the semi paralysed base at Hollandia, and the miserable remnants of ten or twelve Jap divisions, now dodging helplessly and hopelessly through the jungles.

Six weeks have passed since we began to suspect that Jap power in the South-west Pacific had been broken; and now, as time passes, and there is no sign of any Japanese naval counter-attack, the measure of the Japanese defeat becomes clearer.

THE Japanese defeat in the Central Pacific is equally impressive— and it is not coincidental. The re capture of the Gilbert Islands, the destruction of Japanese power in the Marshall Islands and, now, the singe ing of To jo’s beard from one end of the heavily-fortified Caroline Islands to the other by an unchallenged American fleet—these events have

been so timed that they have not doubled, but have quadrupled the Japanese embarrassments all over their Pacific Ocean fronts. All this occurs, also, just at a time when they wanted all their energies clear for their new Burma adventure, and wished to retain all possible “face” for the encouragement of the Indo nesian peoples who have been dragooned into the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,”

AMERICANS and Australians in the South-west Pacific, after two years of campaigning under the worst possible conditions, in which they have completely beaten the Japanese in every department of this strange amphibious and jungle war fare, now watch with confident anticipation the development of the Burma and Assam campaign. They know neither Burma nor Assam; but they do know the jungle and the Japanese, and the ineradicable weak nesses of Tokio planning.

Again and again, in the course of the campaigns in the South-west Pacific, we saw how Japanese expedi tions, with light equipment and light rations, struck at us across mountains and through trackless jungles, with either a child-like belief in their in vincibility, or with the assumption that our men would run as soon as they saw these mighty fighters emerge unexpectedly from the jungle.

Again and again—and notably at Milne Bay, at Guadalcanal, in the Owen Stanley Ranges, at Wau, in Bougainville and, finally, on the Rai coast of New Guinea—we caught those over-ambitious enemy expedi tions and completely smashed them, and drove the Japs into the jungles— where far more have died from star vation than from our armaments.

American and Australian observers in the South Pacific believe that what happened in the great islands of the Pacific will happen again in Burma and Assam.

It almost would seem that the Tokio war-lords, in their ten years of treacherous planning prior to Pearl Harbour, tried to evolve a new kind of warfare, which would make them invincible in the deep tropical forests and the endless, primitive islands which were to form a perimeter around the Indonesian and Pacific Empire they proposed to grab. Japan was to present something new to a world accustomed always to think in terms of vast armies marching across European plains, or great warships operating from nearby bases. Japan was protected by thousands of miles of salt water and by almost im penetrable tropical forests. There fore, Japan would fight differently.

And Japan did fight differently— and, for a considerable time, it seemed that Japan might get away with it. Then, as the months passed, it became clear that the one war time factor for which Japan made no provision—namely, the enormous in

dustrial potential of America and Britain, which gave them overwhelm ing supremacy in the air had exposed the fundamental weakness of Japanese strategy. That weakness is .. Japan’s inability to protect her neces sarily long-drawn lines of communi cation.

It is that weakness which primarily has led to Japan’s great defeat in the South-west Pacific. That weakness may cripple her plan to invade India.

That weakness, unless she can counter it with something new and unforeseen, will cost her the war and her place as a maritime power.