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Show J L - ! - 1 A Strange 'Open Secret' Blocks U. S. and Britain I Large Forbidden and Mysterious Area in Pacific Is Believed to Shelter Most Of Japan's Naval Strength. A By BAUKIIAGE Rational Farm and Home Hour Commentator. WNU Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, Washington, D. C. There is a strange open secret about the war against Japan which concerns a mysterious area in the Pacific ocean and about which very little is known even to our high command. Its existence explains j why a little island nation is holding at bay the two greatest powers in the world Britain and the United States. This forbidden territory includes a group of scattered islands covering cover-ing a sea space about 2,000 miles from east to west and a thousand miles from north to south. It is the hiding ground of the Japanese fleet. Military people believe that most of Japan's naval strength, not in actual ac-tual use in protecting troop ships on the way to Malaysia is sheltered there. And this sea stronghold is a tower of strength against the American Amer-ican navy, against aid to the Philippines, Philip-pines, Singapore and the Netherlands Nether-lands Indies. This area lies about 2,000 miles from Hawaii and extends westward from the Japanese mandated islands of the Marshall group which lie south of Wake island to the eastern extremity of the Caroline group (also Japanese mandates) a few hundred miles west of the Philippines. Philip-pines. Guam, once ours, now Japan's, Ja-pan's, is within the area. Accurate, Reports Difficult to Obtain "For ten years," a British diplomat diplo-mat said to me recently, "only one of our people who got into that area ever came out to report what he saw." Americans have similar tales to-tell. to-tell. In 1939 a fishing boat from the island of Saipan, one of this group, was wrecked near Guam but, when an American ship started to return the survivors, a Japanese ship stopped them at sea and took off the survivors. It is known, however, that for a decade great quantities of cement and other building materials, endless end-less stores of food and war supplies have been pouring into that zone where it is believed that among the nearly 2,000 islands lie at least 50 bases. There are no known large harbors but there are plenty of submarine sub-marine and air bases and big ships can be fed and watered and supplied with munitions for an indefinite period. pe-riod. From these spawning grounds Japan can strike in all directions, threatening the sea routes from our western shores to the southwestern Pacific. Here is the hornet's nest from which the swarms of enemy air and sea craft are making their sorties against the reinforcements from America which are the only hope for Singapore and the Netherlands Indies. In-dies. Already the Philippines are virtually virtu-ally a part of this nest As soon as the Japanese had secured beachheads beach-heads in the archipelago, they made temporary air bases and the narrow waters which might give-entrance to American supply ships were made impassable. Even if American supply sup-ply ships could have reached the islands is-lands in time to save Manila and relieve General MacArthur, they could not have penetrated the narrow nar-row waters protected by land-based planes. American bombers our pitifully few bombers did some damage to the Japanese here, but bombers cannot fight long against protecting interceptors and fighters. The little fighting planes can fly only a few hundred miles. We have few airplane carriers and it would be risky business to send them past the hornet's nest. Carriers are about the most vulnerable things afloat. Japs Were There 'Fustest with Mostesf The, Japs applied the ancient principle prin-ciple of being there "fustest with the mostest" of everything, and the carefully built "hornet's nest" was created to the utter indifference of the American public in spite of the futile warnings of military men. In February of 1941 the navy asked for $5,000,000 to improve the harbor facilities of Guam. Congress Con-gress turned down the appropriation. appropria-tion. "It is not a wise thing for the American navy to go 6,000 miles from home when we do not have a single thing to defend in that territory terri-tory ..." was one of the arguments against this appropriation. In the same debate the statement was made that "for Japan to attack the United States, it would have to have twice as big a navy as it has now." There is no use to cry over spilt milk, but it is well to recall when people are asking "where is the United States navy?" to know where the Japanese navy is and what an impenetrable wall of defense Japan built for her navy right under our noses, the presence of which now, postpones united nations' victory in the Far East Washington A World Center These days Washington is a citadel cita-del within a citadel, a world center which, paradoxically, is nearer its circumference than all else within the circle. On the perimeter of America's existence is the war. It is very far away. It is a dim and distant domain where men and boys from American cities stand on ice-fringed ice-fringed decks in the North Atlantic; where others stand and fall in the swamps and jungles of the Far East; where still others hurtle through the bullet-and-shell-torn heavens. Between that frightful edge of things and the separate beings bound to it by fragile threads of anxiety, lies the vast expanse of peaceful America, still sleeping to the murmur of distant guns, shuddering shud-dering only fitfully now and then when bitter news stabs a waiting heart. Anxiously but impersonally calm, nearer to that vague, far-flung undulating un-dulating line which is the front, is Washington, the dynamic center of wartime America. Here is known all the hope, fear, triumph and defeat de-feat that the rest of the nation does not know; yet knowing that only a fraction of what it knows is truth. For certainty today is speculation tomorrow. Here, in the citadel within the citadel, the imponderability imponderabil-ity of war rests with all its weight upon the slender minds of men. A Revealing Book On Nation's Capital I wanted to review "Washington Dateline," a new book by Delbert Clark, but when I found he had so little to say about radio I decided that I had better turn it over to a more objective mind. There is so much interest in Washington ' as a news center now that the book is important. So I asked Douglas Silver, Sil-ver, a veteran newspaper man, now a writer of radio serials, to review it This is what he says: A good fat juicy account of how the 500 Washington newspaper men and women "mingle with the great the small, the nobles and the knaves who make up a government and its camp followers" is sandwiched between be-tween the covers of "Washington Dateline," by Delbert Clark (Stokes). Although having no illusions about the city which, as he says, "crouches miserably in a reclaimed marsh, and lifts up its eyes to the hills of Virginia and Maryland which cut off the breeze," Mr. Clark, a veteran vet-eran member of the New York Times Washington staff, manages to invest his book with a great deal of the glamour and excitement of capital newschasing. From first to last Clark is concerned con-cerned with the progress, ethics and usefulness of his craft in a democratic society; tracing the history his-tory of Washington newsgathering from the vitriolic and venial dispatches dis-patches of 100 years ago to the present pres-ent era of comparative respectability. respectabil-ity. But respectability definitely does not mean dullness. The accounts ac-counts of our latter day saints and sinners are replete with inside stories, sto-ries, quoting chapter and verse. This high assay value in anecdote runs all through the book. It includes in-cludes some choice bits about Mr. Coolidge's pathetic attempt at humoring hu-moring the press, a delightful yarn about the slightly insane congressman congress-man who sought to influence newspaper news-paper men with annual oyster roasts and it features timely and factual accounts of reporters and their run-ins run-ins with the present administration. This book can be read with profit by anybody who wants to know what is going on in Washington and how it gets in the papers and on the air. Buy Defense Bonds |