Review

One by one, steaming in columns of squadrons, 161 Japanese warships came up from a grey and choppy sea last week and dropped anchor in Tokyo Bay. Anchored in rows, the armada covered 36 square miles. Bugles blew men to quarters. Down one lane of warships and up another went the onetime battle cruiser Hiyei (now a passenger ship), stripped of her armament, but with the Imperial Standard (a gold chrysanthemum on a scarlet field) floating from her truck. Every man on every ship stood rigid at attention, for on the Hiyei's bridge was a tiny sacred figure, the owl-eyed Son of Heaven, Emperor Hirohito.

Thus ended Japan's first massed naval maneuvers in three years. The Emperors of Japan have reviewed their navies only 16 times. In 1890, first review to attract Western attention, the Emperor of Japan had 32,328 tons of warships, all built abroad. Last week the Emperor's fleet was 26 times as great, and nearly every ton of it built in Japanese yards. Since the last maneuvers three years ago, the sea fleet has increased 20%, naval aircraft 100%.

Problem of Japan's 1933 maneuvers was how to defend the Empire from an enemy fleet supposed to have seized the Caroline and Marshall Islands which Japan received as mandates from the League of Nations and has declined to give up since she resigned from the League (TIME, April 3). Solving this problem took nearly a month, cost the hard-pressed Japanese Treasury some $2,700,000 and employed almost every ship, almost every station in the Japanese navy. For several days the Emperor himself commanded the defense forces. What the results of the maneuvers were Japanese referees would not say. They admitted that five men were killed, six injured and one seaplane lost. Pressed for details they would say only that several men were washed overboard by big waves.

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