World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF CHINA: Japs Against the Sea

Against the patient, implacable sea a leaky boat must be constantly bailed. The Japs learned the lesson on dry land: in southeast China, where the sea of Chinese resistance still surged after more than five years. Where a Japanese soldier stood, and within the area where the comrades of his garrison could range, there was the kind of peace the Japs liked. But where no soldier stood in the country of the conquered, there was the timeless surge of reconquest.

The Jap had taken railroads. He found that he had to guard them, with men placed in sight of one another, or else a bomb or tools in the hands of fast-working coolies would wash the rails away. The Jap seized whole provinces, and found his kind of peace in the towns where he made his headquarters. But where he had to spread thin he found endless strife and the sniping of the guerrilla. There were not enough soldiers in the Japanese Army to hold the tides over which the enemy had raised his flag.

The Jap was busy, on the Siberian frontier (see p. 24), in the Pacific, in Burma. No offensive army in modern history had ever spread itself so thin. And so in China his bailing slowed down and the water began to rise. Last week it had all but washed the Jap out of the coastal province of Chekiang, most densely populated, most modern and one of the most productive (wheat, beans, rice, silk) provinces of China. It was forcing him out of Kiangsi, west of Chekiang. And farther south he was slowly falling back on Canton. The Jap had his explanations, while China rejoiced at getting its military feet back on the fertile fields of Chekiang, birthplace of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. The Jap said he was preparing for other work. Probably he was. But as he thinned out his garrisons, the foundations of his conquest were magically washed away, and Chiang’s soldiers found it suddenly easy to speed him on his retreat.

Not willingly was the Jap retiring. He had worked too hard consolidating his hold on the provinces last May and June to throw the advantages they gave him out the window. He retired too slowly, took too many casualties, to give his retreat the color of orderly withdrawal. He even launched fierce counterattacks, retook one town (Lanchi) after the Chinese had driven him from it.

Even if his story were true, his actions in southeast China had all the earmarks of a desperate gamble: that the United Nations would stick to their decision to concentrate their all on Germany, divert little strength to the China battlefield. For the Jap had given up (at Chuhsien and Lishui) airdromes from which airpower could strike at his industries and military establishments at home and on Formosa. He was about to lose another bombing base at Kinhwa. Whatever he was preparing for next, he knew that these bases were pistols pointed at the heart of his national life. All that was needed was ammunition—planes, bombs, gasoline.

The sea was rising. The enemy had bet his life that a hurricane would not blow.