Jap Claptrap

The first anniversary of Jimmy Doolittle's astonishing raid on Tokyo was four days away when Major General Kenryo Sato broadcast a speech over the Tokyo radio last week.

This broadcast was for Jap ears only. Speaking for the War Ministry, General Sato said that in order to destroy Americans, "who are stubborn and like to fight," Japan must prepare to bomb the U.S. mainland. Said cruel-eyed General Sato: "To destroy the fighting spirit of the American people is most important for the conclusion of the war." Furthermore, said he, the American fighting spirit is based on American productive power ("the greatest in the world"), and bombing is the way to destroy that power. General Sato then added a qualification which was scarcely noticed by the U.S. press: such raids must be on a big scale, they will require big preparations, and the preparations will take time. In brief, the Japanese should not expect their bombers to attack the U.S. right away.

For American Ears. The anniversary of the Doolittle raid was one day away when Tokyo broadcast a translated digest of the speech to the U.S. This version had been drastically altered. The English broadcast quoted General Sato as having said that Japanese planes "are in a position to attack the American continent. ..." The Japs had already solved the problem presented by "the wide span of area between Japan and America." In fact, said the revised version, if the Americans knew what was good for them they would stop sending their battle planes to the Pacific and Asia, and prepare to "defend their own country against a possible menace of Axis and Japanese airmen. . . ."

Alarms in the Aleutians. A few U.S. newspapers and politicians fell for this claptrap, contributing to the pressure turned upon the Washington high command (see p. 25). So, perhaps unwittingly, did reports passed by local commanders and censors in the Aleutians and Alaska.

These reports told of the Japs successfully digging in on fogbound, rocky Kiska and Attu islands, withstanding 31 U.S. bombings in three days, and even using rock crumbled by the bombs to forward the construction of bomber and fighter runways on Kiska.

The stories testified to Jap tenacity, they reflected sadly on the effectiveness of bombings unsupported by naval and land attack, and they sharply reminded the U.S. that the Japs must be cleared out of the Aleutians. But the Japs will have many problems of weather and distance to solve before they can effectively bomb either Alaska or the U.S. proper from Kiska. A more immediate possibility is that they may try to use Kiska as a base for operations against the U.S. air base Dutch Harbor, which is 600 miles nearer the mainland.

Responsible Army and Navy officers staked their reputations (and the safety of cities) on the conviction that the Japanese operations in the Aleutians are mainly defensive: 1) to hamper the U.S. in setting up bases from which to bomb Japan; 2) to scare the U.S. into concentrating its planes nearer home.

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