World Battlefronts, STRATEGY: Hand Across the Seas

The Jap spread his little hands. His planunfolded. The world saw that the Philippines, Singapore, the threatened Indies and frightened Australia were enormous incidents in a strategy even bigger than any of his foes had conceived or feared. The Jap was not only fighting for the riches, the places, the physical possessions of the Far Pacific, but for even more.

He was after sea lanes. It was for them, and for the world power that they could give him, that he reached when his forces closed on Singapore; when he drove at the East Indies’ heart and center through Macassar Strait; when, last week, on the easternmost flank of the Indian Archipelago, he squatted in the Bismarcks, the Solomon Islands, New Britain, New Guinea.

Each lane he snipped lengthened the distance that U.S. aid must go to reach the Indies, Singapore, Burma, China. More important than the rubber, oil, tin, platinum, coffee, quinine which the Jap’s conquests brought him was his occupation of key points. A little farther and he could cut off the U.S. from all routes to the eastern battlefront except around Australia. But now the westernmost prong of the Japanese attack, in and around New Guinea, threatened even the U.S. route to Australia and raised yet another rampart across the Americas’ Pacific routes.

Yellow Lava. When the Allies divided Germany’s Pacific empire after World War I, Australia shared New Guinea half-&-half with the Dutch, also got the neighboring Bismarck Archipelago and renamed its chief islands New Britain and New Ireland. Similarly mandated to Australia were the nearby, seemingly insignificant Solomons. Japan got the Marshalls and the Carolines. All the mandating powers promised not to fortify their new protectorates.

Last week the Jap came to Rabaul on New Britain. He arrived in 100 bombers, probably from the Carolines, which he has fortified regardless of his pledge. Death from the skies was no new thing for Rabaul; in 1937 two volcanoes reared an arc of steam and lava 4,000 feet above the town. Two hundred and sixty people were killed. Jap bombers killed eleven.

Then the enemy came by sea. Rabaul sighted three carriers, five transports near its harbor, saw planes overhead. Aussie militiamen radioed that they would blow up the town’s wharf and power station and retreat fighting. Then no more was heard from Rabaul by radio. The Jap landed in the Solomons, in New Ireland, at a few tentative points in ill-defended New Guinea.

The little hands were gathering up the sea lanes.