Teeth Behind Smiles

Recently the popular Japanese magazine Hinode (Rising Sun) put a panel of Japanese naval officials on the grid with some very pointed questions. Last week it published their answers, which were also to the point. Excerpts:

Hinode: "How will 'Greater East Asia' be accomplished?"

Admiral Sankichi Takahashi, former Commander in Chief of Japan's Combined Fleet: "It will be constructed in several stages. In the first stage, the sphere that Japan demands includes Manchukuo, China, Indo-China, Burma, Straits Settlements, Netherlands Indies, New Caledonia, New Guinea, many islands in the West Pacific, Japan's mandated islands and the Philippines. Australia and the rest of the East Indies can be included later." Hinode: "When will Japan and America fight?"

Vice Admiral Yoshijiro Hamada: "America's participation in the European war will automatically involve Japan. . . . Statesmen will try to prevent such a calamity, but the circumstances are beyond their control. There can be no settlement until Japan and America have a showdown."

Hinode: "Does that mean that Japan has completed preparations for war with the United States?" A minor officer: "We won't answer that question. We simply smile."

First Move, First Phase. Last week the sense of the Hinode round-table conference began to take shape. Steps were taken which did not mean war with the U. S., but which carried Japan frankly and openly into the world conflict.

There was no more pretense that Japanese moves were directed at cutting the supply lines of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. The Foreign Office announced that it had established a South Seas Bureau "to cope with the international situation and to enable Japan's South Sea policy to be carried out fully." An oil deal which was reported last month (TIME, Oct. 28), granting Japan more than three times as much Netherlands East Indies oil as she had previously been allowed, was confirmed. The Emperor himself paused in pompous celebrations of the 2,600th anniversary of the Japanese Empire to discuss expansionist moves with Army and Navy leaders. The newspaper Yomiuri defined all this without making any mince: "The work left for Japan is to sweep away the remains of the white empire which so long has held sway in our part of the world."

The first move in the first phase of constructing Greater East Asia was to get Saigon, most important French port in the Orient. South of France's naval base at Cam-ranh Bay, south of Hong Kong, south of Manila, Saigon dominates the sea lanes from all those points to Singapore. If Japan took Sa&3239;gon, it might be in a position to cut in two the naval strategies of the white empire. The Japanese Army last week followed up its withdrawal from Kwangsi Province by getting out of southwestern Kwantung as well. Except for garrisons at Canton and Kwangchowan. Japan was now out of China's extreme south. Transports by the dozen gathered off Japanese concentration points at Hainan island, Haiphong, Kwangchowan. In Hanoi the Japanese military mission put pressure on Governor General Admiral Jean Decoux, and when he resisted, they announced he would resign. He had no intention of doing so. Foreigners in China speculated that a Japanese move on Saigon would coincide with announcement of a Russian-Japanese pact, but when United Press cabled this speculation, the official Tass Agency said in Moscow that U. P. cables on Russo-Japanese rapprochement "do not correspond to reality."

Popham East. A Japanese move on Saigon would certainly focus the eyes of U. S. naval authorities on the sharp little teeth behind the Japanese admirals' smiles. But it was a civilian group which moved first. Pan American Airways last week applied to the Civil Aeronautics Board for permission to extend its Pacific service to Singapore, with alternate China flights touching there instead of Hong Kong. Said Pan Am's President Juan T. Trippe, as deadpan as a Japanese: "The proposed route to Singapore would tap the rich trading areas" of the Indies. The Japanese themselves thought they saw something more than mercantile ambition. They immediately announced plans to extend their own airlines from Formosa 1,730 miles southward to Japan's mandated naval station at Palau--crossing Pan Am's route.

The British Government last week announced plans to put the whole Far East area--Singapore, British Malaya, Burma, Hong Kong--under one command. Choice for commander was significantly no seadog, but Air Chief Marshal Sir Henry Robert Moore Brooke-Popham, 62, who has spent the last three years popping all over the world patching up weak links in British defense--Kenya, Canada, South Africa, now Singapore.

The great flaw in the British Far Eastern military setup is weakness in the air. Japan's naval air arm has had plenty of practice in China and has proved itself far above the Japanese warring average. The Navy took over the major share of bombing Chungking, 1,000 miles up the Yangtze River. Sir Robert, whose falsetto voice belies his courage and organizational ability, is an expert in air planning. He organized Britain's first air battalion in 1911 out of a flock of old, string-joined scrapmetal crates. He laid out Britain's Middle East and African Air Force plans before the war. He will not underestimate the Japanese air threat. His friends say he is so conscious of danger from the air that in every drawing room he constantly looks at the ceiling, as if expecting bombs.

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