The Allied Forces defending Java and the Dutch Indies have surrendered. The Japanese Army was also victorious in Rangoon, capital of Burma. With this double victory, Japan adds to her empire immense territories with inexhaustible resources, unless, as the Allies claim, the rubber plantations and oil wells had been burned.
The United States have retreated to Australia and India. The Pacific and the Indian Ocean, within the Co-Prosperity Sphere of East Asia, have been converted into Japanese waters. Some islets and barren islands still remain unoccupied, but they are mere landmarks compared with what has been conquered. The greater part of the Visayas and Mindanao is still under American jurisdiction, and the Fil-American forces are still fighting it out in Bataan and Corregidor.
According to information leaking from the Visayas, those islands receive reinforcements from the United States by way of Australia, and that all able-bodied males in those areas have been called to the front. This second part of the information was confirmed indirectly by Tokyo in affirming that the forces under the Command of General MacArthur were posing a rebellion because of the cruelties that the new recruits were receiving. This, according to Tokyo, was the information relayed by MacArthur to Washington.
With the weight of the Japanese forces concentrated on only two fronts, Australia and India, it seems that by merely opening her rapacious jaws, Japan would engulf all those pieces of land where the Stars and Stripes are still waving.