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Show APPARENTLY A LINK IN JAPAN'S EXPANSION Nowhere in the Pacific is the groundwork of expansion beinjf laid more carefully and thoroughly by Japan than in the Philippines, many observers believe. And all signs indicate in-dicate that when these islands receive independence from the United States, it will be short-lived unless America is willing to back that nation to the limit in maintaining its freedom. Japanese colonization in the islands has apparently been with a long range view. They have picked the Island of Mindanao, particularly the province of Davao, which is the second largest in the Philippines. But even more significant is its economic imjportance and strategic location. It has the greatest potential and least developed natural resources of all the islands, with an estimated iron reserve of a billion tons. And it is on the opposite end of the archipelago from Japan an .important link in any program of expansion that nation may try to carry out. This position makes it the spearhead of a drive to dominate domi-nate the East Indies, and could be easily fortified and converted con-verted in the southern bulwark of a vast chain of defense points. Japan already has a strong naval base at Formosa; has recently seized Hainan island from China to gain a naval base 1,000 miles nearer Singapore, the British stronghold; controls Spratly island and a string of small islands and reefs off the northwest coast of Borneo, and nearer home, the En.pire includes the Caroline islands, the Marshalls, the Marianas, the Bonins and several more smaller islands. J. -.pan's violations of treaties in its expansion policy in the cast has reached a point where it is now costing the United States hundreds of millions of dollars to get back into the naval race as the only means of protecting American Ameri-can interests in the Pacific, and possibly, in the future, the only means of protecting itself from invasion. Japan's naval policy is best described as one of constant deception. The recent re-cent announcement that Japan had secretly built its navy so that it probably has a larger battle line than the United States possibly by more than 150,000 tons may. finally bring the fact home to the American people that the Japanese Japan-ese threat in the Pacific is not merely idle chatter. Japan's repudiation of treaty obligations started before Hitler and Stalin began making mere scraps of paper out of signed pledges. Many believe that the success of the Japanese Japan-ese in these early violations paved the way for the tactics used by Germany in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and Norway, and by Russia in Finland. The record of these dictatorships dic-tatorships proves that national honors means nothing to them that they live by the rule of expediency and opportunity, oppor-tunity, and will stop at nothing to gain an advantage. : M |