The Pittsburgh Press (January 14, 1945)
Col. Palmer: Violent Jap Army, Navy feud brewing
Showdown with U.S. fleet may result
By Col. Frederick Palmer, North American Newspaper Alliance
New York – (Jan. 13)
The sensational success which Adm. Chester W. Nimitz reports of the naval-air battle between Adm. William F. Halsey’s Third Fleet and Japanese warships off the French Indochina coast emphasizes the hope that all elements of the Jap fleet will come out to do battle, including battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and whatever else the enemy has. This would be extending Japan’s naval neck to meet the same inevitable fate that is overtaking her overextended army neck.
Contrary as it is to sound naval strategy, the hope that this may happen is not without basis. Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s landing on the shores of Lingayen Bay was bound to precipitate a Tokyo crisis which would inflame the old enmities between the Choshu (army) and the Satsuma (navy) clans.
In the war councils in Tokyo, the feud between the army and navy cliques will rise to a violent pitch of mutual upbraiding. Army chiefs will charge navy chiefs with cowardice and the shaming of Samurai honor in refusing to leave home harbors with their precious ships.
May compromise
Navy chiefs will reply that the army is getting what it asked for when it overextended itself against naval advice, and that to risk battle with superior American and British naval forces is to risk sacrificing naval home defense and to leave the homeland open to invasion by the island-skipping U.S. Army.
Much of the future of the Pacific war depends upon whether the influence of the army clique will prevail over the naval. The upshot may be a compromise in splitting the fleet to provide naval escorts to protect the movement of reinforcements and supplies to Luzon. In that case, we can whittle down Jap naval power by knocking out one escort after another. Already it appears that the Jap fleet is divided between Singapore and home bases.
Neck stuck out
It is our invasion of Luzon and the power behind it which must have brought starkly and unanswerably home to Tokyo how fatally the Jap Army had stuck out its neck. For our invasion we have control of sea and air approaches. Japan has to face the fact that not only can she never recover control, but our control will become stronger and continue to spread. We can supply and reinforce our troops ashore at will.
Where Gen. Homma had the initiative in the Jap invasion of Luzon, Gen. MacArthur now has it in his liberation of Luzon, Homma made more than one landing in his concentric strategy. Now Gen. Yamashita, if he is in command of Jap defense, has to consider when and where Gen. MacArthur will make further landings on the extensive coastline of that long island.
Must draw together
Yamashita has not only to resist the advance of the American columns by delaying actions, but he must try to make sure none of his own columns is cut off in drawing them together to meet converging Americans in what will be a “Bataan” for Japan. Looking south and southwest, Yamashita can see how the Jap Army has stuck out its neck – 1,000 to 2,500 miles from home bases.
While in Europe the Allies are on the German borders on the way to Berlin, on Luzon we are still very far from Tokyo. To occupy Tokyo, we shall be in for a D-Day in landing an army on the main home island. Japan is weak in sea power, but she has soldiers enough – five million trained, if not all under arms, with 500,000 coming of service age every year. The Jap fleet cannot rescue the Jap garrisons in the Philippines, but working out from its home bases it can be an arresting force in our approach to the Jap home islands.