Blockade Busters

As allies Japan and Germany can and have complemented one another in military action despite the 5,600 miles separating Berlin from Tokyo. Economic collaboration is tougher: Russia is a land barrier between the two Axis nations and sea communications are circuitous and hazardous. Last week there were indications that the Axis had made at least a start toward surmounting those obstacles.

Premier General Hideki Tojo, on the anniversary of the Italian-German declarations of war upon the U.S., boasted that rubber, tin and other resources captured in the South Pacific were being used effectively to prosecute the war. "I think it a pleasure," said he, "that we can contribute these resources to Germany and Italy."

Tojo's implication that such raw materials were reaching Nazi Europe in quantity had a kernel of truth despite the strain on Japanese shipping (see below). The first considerable Japanese shipment, mostly rubber, reached Germany last summer. Britain's Ministry of Economic Warfare believes the cargo was sailed from Indo-China to West Africa and transferred to small coastal craft; by night these vessels ran the blockade to French Mediterranean ports.

Since then there has been what the M.E.W. calls "a steady trickle" of blockade runners reaching Europe with Jap-looted supplies from the Far East to trade for German machines and manufactured goods. The M.E.W. is worried, the Admiralty mum, about how successful blockade busters have been; one estimate puts the number of ships at 15.

In the Indian Ocean one of them was intercepted recently by Allied naval forces. At first the 8,000-ton cargo ship hoisted a neutral flag, gave the name of a neutral vessel, but in misspelling the name tipped its game. When Allied warships opened fire the crew scuttled the ship. Seventy-eight Germans were captured. From them it was learned that the ship, en route from Japan to Germany with a valuable cargo, was a blockade runner.

The occupation of North Africa has complicated the German-Japanese task. But there still are Portuguese and Spanish ports through which Tojo's boast could become grimmer truth.