However, the main reason is that the Japanese government has full confidence in taking northwest Australia, after all, if it can't get it, no matter how tempting it is, it is meaningless. The reason why the Japanese government is so confident is that after the Japanese occupied Indonesia, the well-equipped Jakarta (the name Jakarta was changed back after the Japanese occupation) quickly became their most important overseas military base. Since it was not far from the northwest of Australia, the Japanese navy and air force, which used it as a forward base, quickly seized sea and air supremacy in the vast sea area between northwest Australia and Indonesia. The Allied Pacific Theater Command was not without thought of recapturing it, but due to supply difficulties, both MacArthur and Nimitz wisely abandoned the idea for the time being. Many people here may wonder how it is more difficult to supply than the Japanese army on the other side of the sea, even though they are on their own land.

Even in the 21st century, Australia's population and industry are still concentrated along the narrow southeast coast, and even more so today, where the rest of the country is largely underdeveloped, and because of Australia's vast and sparsely populated area, even if it is developed on the coast, it must have started first. This can be seen from the construction of railways in Australia, during World War II, there was only one railway connecting the east and west of Australia, and it was basically attached to the coastline of the south of Australia, and the Pilbara region was also more than 1,000 kilometers away from the nearest railway, and there was only one road connection between them, so the land transportation was not smooth.

Even after the discovery of the big iron ore, those foreign mining giants did not think of helping Australia build another railway. Since the Pilbara region is not too far from the sea, it is enough to build a short road to the nearest port, Hedland, and since the cost of sea freight is extremely low, the total cost of transportation is much lower than that of the railway, even with the freight on this section of the road, so there is no need to build another railway. What's more, Australia itself doesn't use much iron ore, it is basically exported, and it doesn't matter whether the traffic between it and Australia's elite is smooth, as long as it can be shipped to the port and sold to foreign companies

True, in peacetime it is irrelevant. But after the outbreak of the Pacific War. This is a big problem, because after the Japanese Navy and Air Force seized sea and air supremacy in the open sea, the port of Hedland, which had just been expanded by major construction projects, almost completely lost its role and was impassable by sea. Allied Pacific Command could only deliver supplies to troops stationed in northwestern Australia via a handful of roads. Extremely inefficient

First of all. The convoy consumes too many materials on its own, and naturally there are fewer that can be transported; And Australia does not produce oil, although there are gas stations along the way. However, the limited fuel reserves simply cannot meet the huge demand caused by the sudden increase in traffic density by more than ten times compared with usual; What is even more embarrassing is that when the Allied Australian Command decided to send enough tanker trucks to refill the gas stations along the road, it found that Australia, which had always relied heavily on sea transportation, simply did not have so many tanker trucks that it had to be transported from the United States

These unfavorable circumstances made it impossible for the Allies to maintain a sufficient garrison in northwestern Australia, and supplies were severely insufficient, so when the ground forces of the three divisions of the Japanese army came across the sea with a menacing escort from the main force of the Combined Fleet returning to Java Island, the defending Harbour Hedland, which was only one regiment, soon fell, and Nishitakeichi, as the vanguard of the whole army, once again showed his extraordinary courage. Before the landing force was far from fully ashore, he personally led a brigade of mechanized infantry that had been the first to land along the wide road that had been partially destroyed by the retreating Allied forces and made a direct attack on the Pilbara area.

This was undoubtedly a great surprise to the Allied command, because the iron mines in the Pilbara area were all located in the mountains, and the roads had been damaged, and the armored troops could not use their functions when they arrived there, and even MacArthur, who liked to gamble, for a time thought that the Japanese were out of brains. He ordered the 5,000 infantry carried by hundreds of armored vehicles in the brigade to immediately come down and advance with him on foot, and then divided his troops into several ways on the way, and each of them killed the target that Xizhuyi had assigned to them in advance overnight - the largest mines in Pilbara.

You must know that the bumps of armored vehicles are not ordinary, although it is less laborious than walking, but it will still make people quite tired, and Nishitakeichi wants his subordinates to march quickly overnight without rest in this situation, and the degree of hardship can be imagined. However, under the leadership of Nishitake, the hardships and hard work of the Japanese were fully demonstrated, and the Japanese army marched 43-65 kilometers in the rugged mountains in 8-12 hours, creating a miracle in military history. Some Western military commentators, thinking of the Chinese army's many rapid marches and continuous battles, cannot help but write articles lamenting the hardships and hard work of the soldiers in the East, and hope that their own soldiers can also follow suit and learn from them, but it is obvious that this is not easy

Because the Japanese army came too quickly and too suddenly, and the personnel of the mining company who had not destroyed the basic facilities and mining equipment in advance by luck all became prisoners in a hurry, and there was no time to effectively destroy the mines. Killed and captured more than 1,000 enemy soldiers and kept their booty.

As a result of this battle, Emperor Takahito finally agreed to Nishitakeichi's two previous proposals, one was to import and imitate amphibious tanks from China for the use of the Marine Corps to replace the original conventional combat vehicles; The second is to rebuild the armored corps in the army and use it in the Australian battlefield, which is extremely suitable for the use of armored forces, and Nishitake was naturally appointed as the lieutenant general of this armored corps, and since then he has entered the ranks of senior generals of the Japanese army

After Japan acquired the rich reserves of iron ore in the Pilbara region, it also changed the previous dilemma of relying entirely on high-priced imports from China and North Korea, and even soon after it was able to export high-quality iron-rich ore to China, which added a little confidence to the Japanese government's proposal to China to rebuild the peace treaty (to be continued......