Why the need of "import" statements for Java base code?

Question

If for documentation purposes, a compiler option to produce an "import list" would have been sufficient.

Answer 1

import statements act as really simple namespaces.
Instead of the programer having to specify:
java.io.File f = new java.io.File("c:\\");
the code can have a 'namespace' added to do the following:
import java.io.file;
File f = new File("c:\\);
it's a way of getting around similiarly named classes, but still have the ability to drop the 'java.io.' part.