Tremendous Triangle

VICTORY IN THE PACIFIC--Alexander Kiralfy--John Day ($2.75).

This is the first book about the war in the Pacific that tries to answer the one question that Americans most want to hear answered: When and where do we attack the Japanese? Naval Expert Kiral-fy's answer: In 1942, by invading Japan from the north. This is also the first book that insists (sometimes with irritating dogmatism) that the key to victory over Japan cannot be found in comparative naval tonnage, air strength, gun power, speed or armor. It lies, says Kiralfy, in a closer study of the Japanese mind, especially in its military workings. Americans have never been very curious about the Japanese mind, and the spate of books on Japan (with the notable exception of Hugh Byas' The Japanese En-emy} has not been very helpful. They have reported Japanese militarism, atrocities, the absurdities of Emperor worship, the inflammability of Japan's paper cities, the inability of Japanese industry to implement a modern war. Few recent books have caught the Japanese character.

None has caught it so understandingly as the 20 pages of Robert Louis Stevenson's essay on Yoshida-Torajiro, Japan's mid-19th Century fanatic on westernization, who used to keep awake for his midnight studies by putting mosquitoes up his sleeve. No recent book has probed the Japanese mind so deeply as the 20 pages of The Japanese Smile by Lafcadio Hearn, who became a Japanese subject, spent the rest of his life repudiating western civilization. Jujitsu. Yet "that mind," says Expert Kiralfy, "is our real enemy. Without it Emperor Hirohito's armies are just so many mobs, his naval squadrons just so many tons of steel." It is the jujitsu mind, he says--not especially resourceful or daring, but adept at feeling out the weaknesses or imbalance of an enemy's position, and at acting swiftly and mercilessly for a fall or a kill. Kiralfy analyzes the reasoning by which the Japanese grasped the unrealism of U.S. military thinking and for years prepared for a kind of warfare in which, with a minimum of forces, they could take crushing advantage of U.S. weak points. Weakest of these weak points, Kiralfy believes, was the U.S. notion that Japan could be blockaded into submission or into a naval engagement in which its inferior fleet would be destroyed. "In the democratic plan to defeat Japan in the Pacific," says Kiralfy, "wishful thinking, if it can be called thinking, reached its zenith. . . . After a general survey it was recognized that Japan was almost totally dependent upon imports and exports. Accordingly the blockade so dear to democratic hearts was set down as the controlling weapon for a war in the Pacific. ... As time went on and the blockade grew tighter, the Nipponese navy would be forced to come out and fight to relieve the terrific pressure. Then, of course, it would be destroyed, and the war would be won. . . . The war plan had been drawn, but the enemy had been overlooked, at least as a reasoning creature." After dissecting the means whereby the Japanese mind converted U.S. strategy into a U.S. disaster, Expert Kiralfy makes two major points: 1) the Pacific war is hot a secondary front; 2) it is necessary to take the offensive against Japan at once. Primary Front. For the U.S.

"Japan is immeasurably more than an enemy in the Pacific; it is much more than the ally of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini." To make his point graphic, Kiralfy triangulates the eastern hemisphere. The apex he puts at Cape St. Vincent in Portugal; the base runs from Singapore to Bering Strait (see cut}. "The Japanese islands are," he says, "and for all time must remain geographically in strategic domination of the vital base line of the Eurasian Triangle." "It is imperative," he insists, "that this Eurasian Triangle be seen for what it really is--a bomb of sufficient power to destroy not merely itself but all other parts of the world. ... As a tremendous bomb the Eurasian Triangle may be divided into a European fuse or detonator, and an Asiatic powder charge." The history of Europe in the last hundred years is a history of the attempt to explode this bomb by bringing together the detonator and powder charge. "The detonator is composed of the militaristic peoples that have for centuries dominated or attempted to dominate Europe. ... To the militarist the resources of the Asiatic powder keg mean more than generalities. . . . The manpower of this continent has great military significance. . . . Every battalion of natives that a Hitler could raise in Asia would release a battalion of German riflemen for one of the mechanical arms. . . ." Until the days of mechanized armies, says Kiralfy, the problem of invading Asia was almost as difficult for modern armies as for Alexander the Great. But "the dive-bomber and the tank have removed many of the hardships and perils which formerly confronted an aggressor." And the aggressor that is now whipsawing his way through Burma is the most populous of the Axis nations. Expert Kir-alfy is alarmed by visions of Japanese forces striking at Alaska and Canada or crashing through Russia's Siberian rear. But the thought that throws him into a cold intellectual sweat is the vision of the Nazi and Japanese tank commanders shaking hands on the dusty plains of an India in which all pukka sahibs will have checked the white man's burden forever at a pukka concentration camp.

"This is no secondary front," cries Expert Kiralfy. "It is a second prime front. Wishfulness cannot change this unquestionable definition, but military science can convert it into a victorious front." Northward-Ho. How? Says Author Kiralfy: "There is a homely saying to the effect that if the harness breaks and no other is available, string should be used. . . . Many harnesses have been broken, so much string will have to be used." The particular string with which Kiralfy would bend his bow is an Allied invasion of Japan from the half-Russian island of Sakhalin. Sakhalin is almost within firing distance of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Says Expert Kiralfy: "As the key to victory in the Pacific lies in the north, so does the key to the north lie in Sakhalin.

Geographic obstacles and poor communications should not be permitted to dim the value of this front. Retrospective foresight would recommend that the estimated losses of a year be concentrated and accepted in an offensive that would not only eject the Japanese from Karafuto [southern half of Sakhalin] but follow them into Hokkaido, with Honshu [the main Japanese island] and Tokyo as the objective. This is direct war in its simplest form. Because the successive fronts are narrow, Japan's advantage in numbers would not prove decisive. Because of the wild nature of the northern Nipponese islands, the resourcefulness of the anti-Japanese forces would be able to exert full pressure. All the means whereby Japan marched south could be employed here for another march south, but against Tokyo." Expert Kiralfy sees the invasion of Hokkaido taking place not only from Sakhalin, but via the Kuril Islands, which continue the Aleutian chain. "American carrier planes and bombing squadrons based upon Kamchatka could participate in a move that would serve a double purpose. The seizure of the Kuriles would completely open the way for United Nations forces to flow into Manchuria and Karafuto. They would endanger the eastern horn of Hokkaido as the Karafuto offensive would endanger that to the west. So great would be the peril to Japan that Tokyo's first thought would be to withdraw its forces for the defense of the homeland. The United Nations could then accept 'absurd' risks. Once entrenched in Hokkaido, they need no longer fear any of the Nipponese far-flung pincers. The garrisons of Alaska, Hawaii and the American West Coast could be safely thrown into the Hokkaido drive against Honshu and Tokyo." Adds Kiralfy, "Chicago can be better protected in Hokkaido than in Colorado." To non-military readers, an invasion of Japan from the rock-bound coasts of Karafuto may seem a little fantastic. They should not forget that war is fantastic. The importance of Expert Kiralfy's contribution to strategy is that, like the strategists of the Axis, he possesses the revolutionary mind, which is akin to the offensive mind. "To dare!" said Saint-Just, "is all the politics of the Revolution."

Some other recent books about Japan: RAMPARTS OF THE PACIFIC--Ha I left Abend--Doubleday, Doran ($3.50). Among this book's merits is the exactness of its figures on Japanese planes and plane production. Correspondent Abend's figures: Japan has more than 6,800 Army & Navy planes of all kinds; can produce no more than 300 planes a month; has never reached its yearly quota of 4,000, owing to shortages of alloy steels and machine tools.

THE JAPANESE ENEMY--Hugh Byas-- Knopf ($1.25). A succinct and highly intelligent account of the Japanese people and the Japanese state, with an analysis of their master military plan.

JAPAN: A WORLD PROBLEM--H. J. Timperley--John Day ($1.75). Chiang Kai-shek's Australian adviser traces the evidences of "paranoia nipponica" from early times to the China Incident.

JAPAN'S DREAM OF WORLD EMPIRE-- edited by Carl Crow--Harper ($1.25). First publication in book form of the Tanaka Memorial, the secret plan for Japanese domination of China (and eventually Asia) which Premier Baron Tanaka presented to the Japanese Emperor in 1927. Though the Japanese have always insisted that this purloined letter is a forgery, Editor Crow, like others who have studied the document, believes that it is genuine.

GOODBYE JAPAN--Joseph Newman-- Fischer ($2.50). The last U.S. correspondent to leave Japan describes Japanese life, politics, politicians, and The Way of the Subjects, the Shinto Bible published by the Japanese ministry of education (1941).

AN ATLAS OF FAR EASTERN POLITICS-- G. F. Hudson, Marthe Rjachman, G. E. Taylor--John Day ($2.50). Forty very helpful political, economic, military maps of key areas in the Far Eastern conflict, with a simple explanatory text.

HOW JAPAN PLANS TO WIN--Kinoaki Matsuo--Little, Brown ($2.50). Translation of a jingo propaganda work revealing pre-Pearl Harbor designs against the U.S., by an alleged Japanese intelligence officer.

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