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National Geographic : 1944 Apr
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The National Geographic Magazine Carolines. Small boats ply their way south ward with supplies at will. To the southwest the Nansei Islands and Taiwan (Formosa) provided ports and air bases for the conquest of the Philippines, which became steps to the Netherlands Indies. The map reveals at a glance how the Kurils cut off the Sea of Okhotsk, threatening to bar free passage of any ship to Soviet Russia's Asiatic ports. The map shows China's eastern provinces, where the United Nations need "bomb Tokyo" airfields and seaports, and the 250-mile shift of the mouth of the great Hwang Ho, made by Chinese in 1938 to check the Jap advance. See NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, Feb., 1942. "Close-ups" of Industrial Centers An important feature is the series of five in sets showing Japan's principal industrial cen ters on a scale of 16 miles to the inch, eight times larger than the scale of the main map. One inset portrays Yokohama, Tokyo, and the vast industrial region which stretches be tween and beyond those sprawling cities, along the shore of Tokyo Bay. At the channel en trance stands the naval base of Yokosuka. Other insets present close-ups of Nagoya: Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto; Shimonoseki and Moji at the western entrance to the Inland Sea; and Nagasaki, on the Japan Sea. A sixth inset shows the Marshall Islands. Japan proper, small as it is, is divided into 47 prefectures, each with an area too tiny to be mapped legibly on the scale used. These prefectures are listed on the map, and each may be located by its capital city. To round out the picture, the black-and white map on pages 392-3 of this issue of THE GEOGRAPHIC shows in detail 17 of the most important of Japan's island military outposts. All are drawn on a very large scale, some as big as 2/2 miles to the inch. Included are strategic bases in the Marshall, Caroline, Marianas, Bonin, and Kuril groups; also Wake, Marcus, and Hachijo, the latter only 179 miles from Tokyo. The new chart supplements The Society's other notable wartime maps of the Far East. The Map of the Pacific Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, published in the September, 1943, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, covers the full extent of the territory con trolled by Japan at its floodtide of conquest a stretch bigger in land area than that of con tinental United States. This map shows in detail Bougainville Is land (Color Plates I-VIII), where American and Australian troops have been fighting the Japs for many months, 3,080 miles from Tokyo. It also shows that the United States supply line to Australia passes through the military base of New Caledonia (Plates IX XVI), 4,370 miles from the Japanese capital.t Other islands in the war news today, such as the Kurils, Kiska, New Britain, and New Ireland, are shown in 56 large-scale insets in this important Pacific Map. The Map of the Indian Ocean, Australia, New Zealand, Burma, and Malaysia, issued in the March, 1941, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, includes India, and the Nether lands Indies. Large-scale insets portray Guam, Singapore, New Zealand, the Philip pines, Hong Kong, and the Suez Canal. The Map of Asia and Adjacent Areas, in the December, 1942, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, shows the true relationship be tween widely separated military offensives from Casablanca to Russia and Chungking. Always useful are THE GEOGRAPHIC'S maps of The World, December, 1943; the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, April, 1943, and Europe and the Near East, June, 1943. Japan's Land-grabbing Record Japan's land-grabbing started at the close of her war with China in 1894-95. Here is the record of areas controlled by Japan: Area Square Miles Japan proper ..... 147,702 Formosa (Taiwan) (From China) ... 13,831 Karafuto (Sakhalin) (From Russia) .. 13,935 Kwantung Peninsula (From China) ... 1,338 Korea (Chosen) (From China) ... 85,249 Mandated Islands (From Germany) 830 Manchuria (From China) .. 503,013 Occupied China.... 438,000 Guam and Wake Island (From U. S .) .. .. 208 Thailand (Siam) .. 200,148 Hong Kong (From Britain) .. 391 French Indochina... 286,000 British Borneo .... 81,726 British Malaya .... 50,966 Burma (From Britain) .. 261,610 Andaman Islands (From Britain) .. 3,143 Philippines (From U. S .) .. .. 114,400 Netherlands Indies.. 735,268 Timor (From Portugal). 7,330 Totals ...... 2,945,088 Population 69,254,000 5,212,000 332,000 1,657,000 22,899,000 103,000 43,234,000 155,000,000 23,000 15,718,000 1,072,000 23,853,000 791,000 5,561,000 14,667,000 31,000 16,971,000 60,727,000 464,000 437,569,000 Date 1895 1905 1905 1910 1919 1932 1937-42 1941 1941 1941 1941 1941 1942 1942 1942 1942 1942 1942 t See, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "A Woman's Experiences Among Stone Age Solomon Islanders," by Eleanor Schirmer Oliver, December, 1942, and "War Awakened New Caledonia," by Enzo de Chetelat, July, 1942. 416
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