Into the Stolen Empire

At a secret U.S. air base in China, Brigadier General Claire Chennault squinted over photographs of bomb-scarred Linhsi after the first U.S. foray into North China. Said he: "It's going to be a cold winter in Japan." Riding huge four-motored Consolidated Liberators, Chennault's bombers had struck hard at Linhsi's Kailan coalfields. Those mines, 75 miles northeast of Tientsin, yield one-third of China's normal coal production, furnish much fuel for Japan's heavy industries and domestic heating.

Four days later the Commander of U.S. Air Forces in China sent his raiders over Hong Kong, plastering the docks, warehouses and power station of Britain's lost Crown Colony on the South China coast. In the succeeding week Hong Kong was raided twice again. Japan's White Cloud airdrome, near Canton was raided once.

Chungking greeted this display of U.S. airpower as the start of a long-awaited air offensive. Such rejoicing was premature. But by simple arithmetic the Japs could figure that if U.S. bombers were within range of Linhsi and Hong Kong, they were within range of most of the Stolen Empire--Korea, Formosa, Manila, Manchuria--and even of the island homeland.

Chennault himself revealed that his bombers had been in the air for twelve hours on the Linhsi raid. Thus they had not used the most advanced bases open to them. If those bases were utilized, U.S. bombers could, and no doubt would, hit at deeper, more vital sources of Jap power. The Japanese could see that, despite knotty U.S. supply problems, Chennault's forces were in a position to divert Japanese strength from the periphery of conquest to protect the Empire's heart. Looking toward such a time, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's U.S. political adviser, Owen Lattimore,* last week gave this blunt promise to Japan: "There will be a second front, not only in Europe but also in Asia."

* Rather than lose his astute adviser, Chiang last week gave Lattimore a leave of absence to head the OWI's Pacific branch.

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