Update (April 1st 1945)
0000 April 1st 1945.
Imperial Palace. Tokyo, Japan.
A slightly out of breath Foreign Minister Mamoru entered the meeting room only seconds ahead of the Emperor and received a stern look from Prime Minister Hideki.
"Good morning your Majesty, Gentlemen." Hideki began the meeting.
"You seem a little breathless Minister Mamoru." Hirohito said.
"My apologies your Majesty, an Ambassador wished to see me at short notice." Mamoru replied.
"Good news I hope?" asked Hirohito.
"No your Majesty. The Ambassador delared War upon Japan in accordance with the wishes of his Country." replied Mamoru.
"The Soviets?" asked Hideki with some concern.
"No Prime Minister." replied Mamoru.
"If not them then who?" asked Hirohito.
"Why don't I just make my report first this month." Mamoru responded.
"Fair enough Minister Mamoru." the Emperor said.
"The Country in question was forced into declaring War by its master, who had apparently not noticed its neutrality until now."
"Yemen is a puppet of the United Kingdom, who we are already at War with, as you are all no doubt aware. There is no direct threat posed to us by this new enemy as they are not directly adjacent to any of our combat fronts. Their position in the Middle East would provide another port facility for the Allies and some small military force."
"Not a major threat then, but another enemy nonetheless." stated Hideki.
"Correct Prime Minster. Other than this latest bit of bad news my offices have been fairly quiet during March but I have managed to re-negotiate a couple of our trades to our own benefit. The shortage of raw materials means that I can not increase expenditure on the materials we need for the time being. Nothing more from me." Mamoru concluded.
"Moving on to Industry then please." said Hideki.
"Good morning your Majesty, Gentlemen." Ginjiro began. "Nothing much has changed over the last month with none of our current production completing. We did receive two new Tactical bomber squadrons though."
"The numbers for raw materials are actually worse than shown as the last set of convoys was light on most things. Our deficit for energy is still around 150 tonnes on a normal day with other smaller declines elsewhere. The stockpile in Singora has grown again and is now approaching the maximum amount that the province can hold for metal and rare materials. We will gain a large part of this stockpile when the land link is re-established between Singora and Bangkok.
Our Transport Capacity is still being tested by partisan activity and supply needs with little chance of it reducing much for some time.
Repairs to front line forces are still high even with slightly more production being used to try and correct the problem. Most of this is for ship repairs which are longer term. We will complete the construction of three Destroyer Flotillas on April 4th and I will switch that production to repairs at that time. No other production is due to completely finish during April but we will gain a further fifteen infantry divisions during the month.
Our convoy escorts and transports have increased slightly which is taking some of the strain from this potential problem area and there have been less enemy attempts to destroy our convoys of late. That is all for today." concluded Ginjiro.
"Military next please."
"Good morning your Majesty. Operations continue in Burma and India as well as at sea around these Countries and the Pacific. Progress is still being made in all areas and the new threat from Yemen was correctly summed up by Minister Mamoru. We need to make no adjustments at all for their entry into the War. I will hand you over to the Chief of Staff for the Imperial Japanese Army to continue." stated Tanigawa.
"Your Majesty, Gentlemen." Satoru began. "The ground war is still mostly going our way with some advances in certain areas."
"The Pacific remains unchanged territorially but we have had some limited success in reducing our enemies bombing of the main islands of the Marianas. We will continue to try and stop them as well as we can, but it may require some offensive operations by us to totally halt these attacks. The only totally effective way to stop them bombing the Mariana islands is to place their aircraft out of range by capturing their airfields. The current condition of the Imperial Japanese Navy prevents us from mounting this kind of operation for now but we have drawn up plans for when repairs have been made."
"Not too much has changed in Asia either with some small gains on our part. I will break the areas down into smaller pieces to provide a more accurate picture."
"Fifteen of our infantry divisions have arrived in Manchukuo and are either already digging in or on their way to their forward positions. The nine divisions in Harbin are Japanese, the eight and one division on the way to Mukden are Manchurian or forces lent to us by them. The remaining six moving towards Chifeng are Japanese. The next fifteen divisions will be used to defend Changde and Jilin with the final fifteen used for Chongyin and a possible invasion.
The Soviet forces in Vladivostok are still increasing but there was a small decline on the northern islands in response to the withdrawal of our garrison division, which is redeploying to trouble spots in China."
"North west China is little different as well. No major build up of either British or Soviet forces in this area. There are still no Soviet troops on this border, which leads us to believe that War is not imminent for the time being."
"Control of northern India is swapping between us and the Allies with each gaining superiority at times. For now we have the upper hand and we have a division marching on Kathmandu in an attempt to remove Nepal from the War."
"We have made some small progress in Burma and Siam, most notably the capture of Mandalay. We have forces advancing on the Shan States, Chiang Rai and Prome, all of which we expect to capture without much of a counter attack. Our bombers have kept our enemy pinned down fairly well and have caused some casualties. Our plans are little changed with Rangoon the current primary target both for its airbase and the Allied stockpile. Further advances are likely to become bloody with our enemy fairly well entrenched in the territory it now holds.
As you can see, all of our bombers are operating in this region with half attacking Siam and the remainder the Kra Peninsula. If things go according to plan it is possible that this entire region could be under our control by the end of May. One month would be needed to redeploy our forces north to fill their defensive positions so we would need until the end of June to safely say that our forces would be in position, as long as Indochina progresses more or less on schedule. Slightly longer than we had hoped but it is the best possible time frame for the complete force to be available. We shall begin to move troops north as soon as they can be spared from the south. I will hand you over to the Chief of Staff for the Imperial Navy for his briefing." Satoru concluded.