We Have Not Yet Begun

The job of beating Japan has only been started. It is not even certain that Japan has been stopped.

Concentrated Diversion? Since Nov. 15 the restless Jap has made no major offensive moves. He seems for the time being to have given up much thought of retaking Guadalcanal: each of his tries there had been disasters. Reconnaissance has made the Jap aware of the great increases in Admiral William Halsey's forces east of Australia. This week Navy Minister Shigetaro Shimada said that Jap planes had spotted a huge U.S. task force off Rennell Island, south of Guadalcanal. (He claimed that torpedo planes had sunk two battleships and three cruisers.)

If a major action was actually in the making, the Japs might well be anxious to create a diversion. In Canberra last week the Australian Government announced that it had "ample evidence" that the Japanese were preparing "a move of the utmost importance." All along the great arc of islands above Australia new concentrations had been sighted. Reconnaissance had spotted new airfields on Timor, 300 miles from Darwin. The increasing tempo of Allied raids directed at Timor and the naval base of Amboina was a measure of Australian nervousness.

Prime Minister John Curtin warned his country three times within the week that some dangerous new Japanese initiative was possible. He mentioned Timor and The Netherlands Indies as possible springboards. Said he: "The concentration of which the Japanese is capable . . . may be stronger than the resistance which we can concentrate."

To the Australians the danger seemed serious. They know that the Jap is still strong. In no single vital respect is Japan yet defeated.

Shipping is Japan's first vulnerability, but the weakness is so far only potential. The Japanese merchant marine on Dec. 7, 1941 amounted to about 6,000,000 gross tons. Since then the Allies have sunk 170 Japanese bottoms, probably sunk 18, damaged 80. Altogether about 1,250,000 tons have been destroyed. But these sinkings have been largely offset by Jap seizures, requisitions and purchases--such as the huge coastwise fleets of British firms in China, Jardine, Matheson & Co. and Butterfield & Swire. Old ships which have had to be broken up have probably been at least partly replaced. New production, now somewhat under 500,000 tons a year, is increasing gradually toward a goal of about 750,000 tons a year. This is less than one-tenth of the 1942 U.S. program.

Best evidence that shipping is not yet seriously handicapping the Japanese is the fact that they have plenty of tankers. This is a fuel war, yet the Japs have enough tankers to use them for other military cargoes. The Japs have also converted whalers to be seaplane and landing-craft tenders, and they are now busily building a fleet of wooden junks, for coastal bay-hopping. Overland routes on the continent are beginning to relieve coastal shipping of part of its load. So far, Japan's shipping shortage is less acute than that of the Allies.

Manpower. The Japanese Army has scarcely been touched. In all the South Pacific theater and in Burma, not more than three or four Jap divisions are in immediate contact with Allied troops. Probably not more than 40,000 Japanese soldiers have been knocked out. The Japs still have almost 3,500,000--about 750,000 in Manchukuo, 800,000 in China, perhaps 100,000 in Indo-China, Malaya and Thailand, more than 75,000 in Burma, perhaps 90,000 in the southern islands, and all the rest in "depot" divisions in Formosa and Japan.

Even if Allied troops can pick off Japanese at the rate of better than two for one* victory will call for greater Allied numbers than are now to be seen on any Asiatic horizon--except in China, where offensive equipment is lacking. Wrote Archibald T. Steele in the Chicago Daily News last week: "We are killing Japs at the rate of a couple of hundred daily, but Jap youths are coming of age at the rate of a thousand daily."

Air Power. The qualitative superiority of U.S. pilots is now unquestioned. Yet there is so far no conclusive evidence that Jap air power has been seriously hurt. U.S. pilots in the Solomons say they think they are up against the Jap second team, but that does not preclude the possibility that the first team is resting somewhere on the bench.

According to the best available estimates--and the best are none too good--Japan started the war with between 5,000 and 6,000 battle planes. About 2,000 have been destroyed in all theaters. The Japanese have doubtless suffered much wear & tear behind the actual fronts. But the present Japanese rate of production is estimated at around 1,000 per month, and there have been 14 months of war. Jap first-line strength is probably still 5,000 or over--perhaps equal to Germany's quantitatively. Pilot losses have been heavy, but it is impossible to know, for instance, how many of the pilots from the four Jap carriers which sank at Midway pancaked near other Jap vessels and were saved.

Sea Power. The stirring autumn battles in the Solomons have given the impression that the Japanese Navy has been whittled unmercifully. Indeed, since war's beginning, 104 Jap warships have been claimed sunk, plus 22 probably sunk. Of these perhaps 25 were cruisers and more than 50 were destroyers, whittling the Japs in these vital categories to about 25 and 85 respectively. However, little is known of the Japanese replacement program. U.S. production ought by 1944 to give the U.S. definite naval superiority over Japan; but the fact is that at this moment Japan still enjoys at least equal naval weight in the areas of contact.

Bases. In the kind of Pacific warfare which Vice Admiral John W. Greenslade calls "omnibian," air and sea bases are as important as numbers of planes and ships. In this respect Japan is in a far stronger position than the Allies. At sea, while the Allies improvise with external lines at such harbors as Noumea and Suva, the Japs have great forward bases at Rabaul, Surabaya, Singapore, intermediate bastions at

Hong Kong, Manila, Formosa, Truk, rear bases in Japan proper. In the air, they have a string of airfields from Manchukuo, through China, down the Indo-China and Thailand promontory, along the Malaysian chain to Borneo, the Celebes, New Guinea and the Solomons.

Warstuffs. Naturally and by conquest, Japan now finds herself in possession of just about all the raw materials she needs for war. Copper is the only apparent shortage, and she has plenty of aluminum to substitute. She has crude oil to spare and soon will have refineries at work. She has enough rubber to sell some to Russia'. She has acquired iron in Kcjrea, Indo-China, Malaya and the Philippines--enough for an annual steel production of something less than 8,000,000 tons; coal in Korea and China; lead and zinc in Burma; bauxite in Malaya and The Netherlands East Indies; chrome in the Philippines; antimony in China. Her facilities for processing these metals are not altogether satisfactory. She can count on rice from Burma, Thailand, Formosa; sugar from the Philippines and Netherlands Indies; soybeans from China. Lumber, especially for shipping, worries her a little. For the time being, she is well set for aircraft machinery but needs certain precision tools and parts, such as exact ball bearings. She does not worry about bombings as long as Shangri-La is farther from Tokyo and much more uncertain than Britain in relation to the Ruhr. Industrially, Japan is by no means near collapse.

Ambiguous Empire. The most significant single thing about Japan's exploitation of East Asia is the differentiation between inner and outer zones of Empire. The inner zone roughly comprises the territory gained before Pearl Harbor, the outer zone the rest.

Japan pursues two distinct policies in the two zones. Capital investment, colonization, education and a centrifugal imperialism are evident in the inner zone. Emigration to the outer zone is discouraged, perhaps even forbidden; those who go there are sent on specific missions. No capital is invested in the outer zone. The cream is simply skimmed by persuasion or force. Throughout the outer zone an inextricable web of legal ownership is being developed, while on the surface autonomy is apparently maintained--as with the Vargas regime in the Philippines, the Luang Pitul Songgram government in Thailand, the surviving Decoux governorship in Indo-China.

There is an obvious point to this dichotomy. Japan may not retain full sovereignty in the outer zone after the war. But she clearly intends to remain dominant economically. Japan is apparently jockeying to be in a position, after Hitler's fall, to bargain for a negotiated peace in which the war-weary Allies would lose no face, Japan would lose no vital advantages. If she achieved such a stalemate, Japan would have won her war.

* On Guadalcanal, where most of the land battles have been defensive, the ratio has been higher. But on the offensive, better than two for one is an average expectancy. General MacArthur announced last week that Papuan losses had been "less than half" of Japanese losses.

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