JAPAN TAKES ALL

THE ALLIES DRIVEN FROM S.E. ASIA

In the early stages of the Pacific and Far East war, between December 7th 1941 and June 1942, the great Japanese strategy was outstandingly and, for the Allies, ruinously successful in a purely military sense, although, as we have seen, the political effect of Pearl Harbour was in no way to the advantage of Japan or of her Axis partners. The Japanese inflicted an appalling series of defeats upon the USA and Britain, and seemed unstoppable. It was not until the reverse for Japan of the Battle of Midway, in June 1942, that it seemed possible for Nipponese might to be beaten, and not until the Battle of Guadalcanal in August that the USA showed signs of achieving the miracle. But the fight back across the Pacific was to prove long, arduous and bloody.

Japan brought to her war approximately 1,400,000 men as 51 divisions, one million of whom (40 divisions) were in China, Korea and Manchuria. She had 2,400 aircraft of which 1,540 were earmarked for the Pacific, 11 aircraft carriers, 41 cruisers, 129 destroyers and 67 submarines. At the same time, the USA was able to field 1,643,477 men as 34 divisions, of whom 31,000 were in the Philippines; about 2,846 aircraft; 17 battleships (of which 9 were in the Pacific, and six were put out by Pearl Harbour); 6 aircraft carriers (3 in the Pacific); 37 cruisers (24 in the Pacific); 171 destroyers (80 in the Pacific) and 114 submarines (56 of which were in the Pacific).

Hostilities were not long delayed following Pearl Harbour. Later the same day, the Japanese struck at British territory for the first time by bombing Singapore and landing at Kota Bharu in Malaya. Further landings took place at two points in Thailand, Sangora and Patani, and the next day, December 8th, the Battle for Hong Kong began, as the Japanese 38th Infantry Division attacked the 12,000 strong British, Canadian and Indian garrison. That same day, the Japanese landed on Bataan Island, South of Formosa, now Taiwan, and destroyed more than 100 American aircraft in raids on the Philippines.

Hearing the news of the Japanese landing at Singora, not far from the Malayan border, Britain's Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, recently appointed C.-in-C. of the Royal Navy's presence in Singapore, weighed anchor and sailed with Prince of Wales and Repulse , escorted by three destroyers, to try and surprise the enemy while the Japanese were landing men and supplies. Although he asked for fighters as air cover, he was told that none was available. On the 9th, the arrival of Japanese aircraft over his small force caused him (erroneously) to believe that the element of surprise was lost, and, learning that, in any event, no fighter cover could be provided for an attack at Singora, he turned to Kuantan to investigate reports of enemy landings. But, although the aircraft he had spotted had not blown his cover, a Japanese submarine had. Japan's Rear-Admiral Matsunaga despatched 11 reconnaissance planes, 52 torpedo planes and 34 bombers from Saigon to attack the squadron at sea.

The encounter came at 11am on December 10th, some 322 kilometres North-East of Singapore after Admiral Phillips had established that nothing was amiss at Kuantan and had turned back for Singapore. With no RAF aircraft to deter the aim of the Japanese pilots, the crossfire of torpedoes was unavoidable. First Repulse , then Prince of Wales was sunk, taking with them 840 officers and men, including Admiral Phillips and Captain Leach of the Prince of Wales . Ironically, even as the rescue operation was under way to pick up the 2,081 survivors, the RAF appeared to provide the cover that might have saved the ships.

The elimination of these two formidable battleships at a stroke was of tremendous benefit to the Japanese Navy, which had the task of protecting the Japanese armies that were about to conquer the Philippines, Malaya and Singapore. Their loss by the failure to provide air cover was a major blunder.

The Philippines Invaded

The Japanese landings in the Philippines on December 10th found the Americans considerably outnumbered and outgunned. General MacArthur's forces numbered some 31,000, of whom about 19,000 were American, whereas General Homma's 14th Army totalled two divisions. MacArthur's air power numbered 350 aircraft, rapidly reduced by the bombing of Clark Field, which eliminated almost half of the US B-17 Flying Fortress fleet of 36 aircraft based in the Philippines. The Japanese were able to put 750 aircraft in the air. In this, as in all the opening battles of the campaign, the many myths about the inferiority of Japanese aircraft and their pilots were swiftly shown to be false.

When, on December 10th, General Homma established his first beach-head at Aparri, in the North of Luzon, his plan was to keep the defenders busy while a second landing was made at the bay of Lingayen with the intention of encircling and destroying the American force. General MacArthur was not fooled, and ordered a swift and effective withdrawal in a manner that was quite unexpected by the Japanese. For, instead of falling back, as expected, to defend Manila, the capital, MacArthur moved swiftly West to prearranged defensive positions on the peninsula of Bataan. There his army dug itself in and defended its positions bravely and well for some five months.

At the same time as Homma was discovering MacArthur to be a tougher opponent than expected in the Philippines, General Sakai and the Japanese 23rd Army were attacking Hong Kong, defended by Britain's Major-General Maltby and 12,000 men. During the night of December 9th to 10th, the Japanese attacked the mainland peninsula of Kowloon, and, after three days of fierce resistance, the British were forced to withdraw to the island of Victoria. Five days later, again at night, the Japanese crossed to the island, and General Maltby found himself hopelessly outnumbered. Nonetheless, his force held on bravely until Christmas Day 1941, when they were forced to surrender.

Singapore

The balance of forces in the Japanese attack on Singapore favoured the Japanese far less than in their other operations. General Tomoyuki Yamashita was given the task of taking Singapore before the 100th day of the campaign to capture South-East Asia - which gave him until March 16th 1942. He began with three divisions, and was later reinforced with one more, but even so his army was only slightly larger than that of the British defenders. However, the Japanese regarded Singapore as a plum target, and had given Yamashita's 25th Army both the best troops and the most up to date air cover. In the end, the effectiveness of the air cover, plus the celebrated fact that Singapore's defensive guns could not be pointed inland, were to win the day for Japan. For the air attacks were so effective, and became so frequent, that the British forces were unable to regroup and counterattack.

Yamashita, although a vicious and cruel man hanged after the war for his crimes, was a capable general and a cunning tactician. Known as "the Rommel of the Jungle" he was every bit as wily as his namesake, as he showed when he advanced on Singapore by a series of rapid flanking attacks which kept Lieutenant-General A.E. Percival's troops constantly on the retreat. Yamashita had picked commando groups to infiltrate the British lines and harry the retreating units, thereby maintaining the impression that his army was invincible and that the British were surrounded. By the end of December Yamashita's army was, if anything, ahead of schedule. He had taken Kota Bharu, half way up the East coast of the Malay Peninsula, and was well placed for the final push to take Singapore.

The problem of defending the Malay Peninsula, which fell to Lieutenant-General Percival in his role as GOC Malaya, was demanding and difficult. He had two Indian divisions and one Australian division to hold a country almost entirely covered by dense jungle. Percival deployed his troops to cover forward airfields, and to hold the few main roads of the peninsula, bringing up reinforcements as they arrived to assist in his army's plight - four brigades arrived during January. But the Japanese troops were trained to jungle conditions, were tough and well disciplined, and moved South through the jungle, constantly outflanking the British positions.

On January 1st 1942, the Japanese had reached Kuantan, roughly halfway down the East coast from Kota Bharu to Singapore. On the West side of the peninsula, Kuala Lumpur fell on the 11th, and Percival decided by the end of the month that his best chance of holding off the Japanese was to conserve his army by falling back to the supposedly impregnable "fortress" of Singapore. On January 30th the causeway joining the island to the mainland was blown up. Now the almost total lack of defences against attack from the mainland became appallingly clear. In his Second World War , Winston Churchill said that "the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom."

It took only a week for Yamashita to prepare. The night of February 8th/9th saw his troops cross the Strait of Johore and establish a beach-head North-East of the city. On the 9th, the airfield at Tengah fell, and with it the reservoirs that provided Singapore with water. By the 15th General Percival had no alternative but to surrender.

The Malayan campaign cost the Japanese 3,507 dead and 6,150 wounded. The Allies lost almost 9,000 dead, and 130,000 as prisoners of war, most of whom were treated with appalling cruelty and inhumanity by their captors, who, applying Japanese traditional standards to their Western prisoners, regarded the Allied troops as unworthy of honourable treatment because they had chosen surrender rather than death.

The Islands, Borneo, Java, Sumatra

Meanwhile, the Japanese invasions and successes had proceeded apace all over South East Asia. As early as December 10th, the American island of Guam, isolated among other islands of the Marianas, which were legitimately Japanese following the Treaty of Versailles, surrendered when its commander found himself in a totally indefensible position. Wake Island was able to put up a better show, and the US forces there managed to inflict some psychologically important reverses upon the Japanese before the island fell. A squadron of Grumman Wildcat aircraft had arrived on Wake Island on December 4th, just before Pearl Harbour, and the Japanese received a considerable surprise when they attacked, losing two destroyers and a large number of men. The garrison fought on, but the all-conquering Japanese Zero fighter, with its 332 mph maximum speed, was too much for the Wildcats which, although only slightly slower, were less manoeuvrable and not so well armed. On December 21st, the last Wildcat was shot down, and on the 23rd, with the defensive batteries bombed and destroyed, the garrison was forced to surrender.

The Celebes and the Moluccas fell in January and February 1942, and as each new island territory was added to the Japanese Empire, the Japanese Navy and air force units gained new bases, new superiority. The first landing on Borneo came on December 16th, the invasion of Sumatra on February 14th, and that of Timor on the 20th. As General Wavell, commanding the American, British, Dutch and Australian forces in South East Asia was ordered to move his headquarters to Ceylon - now Sri Lanka - on February 25th, news came of the imminent invasion by the Japanese 16th Army of Java, defended by only 30,000 troops under the Dutch General ter Poorten. To try and head off the invasion convoy, Rear-Admiral Karel Doorman of the Royal Dutch Navy was despatched with a fleet consisting of two heavy cruisers (the British Exeter and the American Houston ; three light cruisers, the Dutch De Ruyter and Java and the Australian Perth ; and nine destroyers - three British, four American and two Dutch. Theirs was to be the disaster of the Battle of the Java Sea.

At 4.15pm on February 27th, the fleet began firing on the Japanese convoy, the stopping of which represented the Allies' only real hope of gaining control over the Japanese assault on Java. The Japanese stood off as far as possible, and conducted the battle at extreme range - 13 miles - which gave their ships the advantage because they had more 8-inch guns. The Allied fleet had no air cover, and had poorly co-ordinated communications, so was unable to make effective use of its fire power. Shortly after 5pm, HMS Exeter was hit in her engine room and had to retreat out of range. The Dutch destroyer Kortenaer was hit by a torpedo, exploded and sank. The British Electra was set ablaze by gunfire. Later, the Allied fleet inadvertently crossed a minefield, and the British destroyer Jupiter was blown up. As matters became worse for the Allied fleet, the Japanese ships Nachi and Haguro moved in and sank both De Ruyter and Java , the former taking Rear-Admiral Doorman with it to the bottom.

Perth and Houston broke off the battle and returned to Batavia, from where they were ordered to retire Southwards through the Sunda Strait. Here they ran into another Japanese convoy and, after a fierce battle which cost the Japanese four ships, both were sunk. The final disaster came when Exeter and the US destroyer Pope were sunk trying to run the Sunda Strait on March 1st.

The defeat of the Java Sea ensured that Java would fall to Japan. On March 5th, the Dutch were obliged to evacuate Batavia, which was declared an "open city", and on March 9th the Dutch and Allied forces in Java surrendered.

The Philippines

While all these events were causing the British, Australians and Dutch grave problems, General MacArthur and his Americans were making a determined stand against General Homma's 14th Army in the Bataan Peninsula. A demand from the Japanese for surrender on January 10th was ignored, and the fierce attack that followed made it necessary for the US forces to fall back to their secondary defensive line. From this, Homma could not budge them, and had to call for reinforcements, something no Japanese General ever did willingly.

On February 22nd, as the US troops, now getting desperately short of food and medical supplies, still held their line, MacArthur was ordered by Washington to leave for Australia. He politely declined and kept fighting. By March 10th Roosevelt was adamant, and it became clear that even General MacArthur had to do what he was told sometimes. He reluctantly handed over his command to General Wainwright, and left with his family and staff in four PT boats from the island of Corregidor. After a hazardous and eventful journey, they made it to Mindanao, from where they were flown to Australia by B-17. There General Douglas MacArthur made his most famous, and entirely accurate, pronouncement. "I shall return!"

Meanwhile, in Bataan, General King and the US troops were in serious trouble. Lack of food, dysentery, almost exhausted medical supplies, and sheer exhaustion were telling on morale and the ability to fight. A further demand for surrender from General Homma on April 1st was ignored by Wainwright as studiedly as previous similar demands. But this time the Japanese were able to break through, and on Thursday April 9th it became clear that the end of the brave stand had come. The numerically largest surrender in US history was signed on the 10th, and 12,000 American troops and 64,000 Filipinos, including a great many civilians, were taken prisoner. Although their long battle was at an end, their sufferings were far from over.

For, having taken their prisoners, the Japanese ruthlessly imposed upon thousands of men already ravaged by hunger, disease and exhaustion the terrible 55-mile "Death March" from Mariveles to the railhead at San Fernando. No less than 2,330 Americans and over 7,000 Filipinos died during that ordeal, and General Homma was tried and executed after the war for the suffering he thus inflicted.

With the fall of Bataan, only the island of Corregidor and some islets nearby remained in US hands, but these last possessions were of vital importance because they controlled the approaches to Manila harbour. A tremendous assault was mounted by the Japanese at the beginning of May 1942, and a large force was landed on the island on May 4th under cover of a barrage of 16,000 shells. Wainwright was in a hopeless position, commanding 15,000 men, most of whom were not in a fit state to fight. The Japanese called for a surrender, insisting that it must encompass not only Corregidor, but also all other US forces in the Philippines archipelago - which implied their taking Mindanao and a number of islands without a fight. Both MacArthur from afar, and Wainwright's subordinates on the spot, tried to prevent him surrendering, but on May 6th, Wainwright agreed to sign and all US resistance in the Philippines came to an end.

Siam and Burma

Of all the assaults by which Japan began its conquest of South East Asia in December 1941, Siam - now Thailand - caused her armies the least trouble. General Iida met virtually no resistance as his 15th Army marched through to Burma, his way smoothed at every major obstacle by a Quisling government. When his army reached the borders of Burma, important to the Japanese for its oil and natural resources, but strategically vital because it offered control of the "BurmaRoad" by which US arms and supplies were reaching Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army, he encountered stiff resistance. The recently appointed British commander in chief, Major-General T.J. Hutton, was poorly equipped for the fight, with roughly one division of mixed British, Burmese and Indian troops, reinforced in late January with most of the 17th Indian Division. His air power was virtually non-existent; four Blenheims and 24 obsolete Brewster Buffalo fighters.

On January 18th, as the Japanese took Tavoy in the South and moved on to Moulmein, which fell on the 31st, the British were attempting to round up infiltrators, collaborators and spies, and arrested the appropriately named Prime Minister U Saw among many others. Early in February, the Japanese pushed on towards the Sittang River, held by the 17th Indian Division under Major-General J. Smyth, VC. Sadly, the Allied forces blew prematurely the bridge they planned to use while they were still on the wrong side of the river, thereby creating their own disaster. Two thirds of the division, all its guns and most of its transport was surrendered on February 22nd, and the future for Burma looked grim.

The remnants of the 17th Division fell back to defend the capital, Rangoon, and the 1st Burma Division was in action to the North. But the lack of manpower in both caused a gap to open between them, through which the Japanese were able to push. On March 5th 1942, General Sir Harold Alexander had arrived in Burma to take over from Hutton, but had rapidly realised the appalling gravity of the situation. His first view was that Rangoon must be held at all costs, but he quickly came to agree with Hutton that the Japanese were too strong, and the Allied force numerically too weak for this to be feasible. He therefore ordered a retreat to the North, and abandoned Rangoon on March 7th. At this point, as the British retreated up the Irawaddy valley, reinforcements arrived in the shape of the British 7th Armoured Brigade, infantry battalions, and more air support. The whole was regrouped under the command of Lieutenant-General William Slim.

The strategic objective now was to prevent the Japanese gaining control of the Yenangyaung oilfields. To the battle came the Chinese 5th and 6th armies under the command of American Lieutenant-General Stilwell - known as "Vinegar Joe". But the Japanese army had also been reinforced, and had two additional divisions and many more aircraft. The Allied line South of Mandalay proved unable to contain the pressure of the Japanese advance, and the oilfields fell in mid-April, although not before the Allies had sabotaged the oil-wells and put them out of action. On the 29th April, the Chinese were driven back over the border into China, and General Alexander was obliged to evacuate Mandalay and retreat to India via the Irawaddy and Chindwin rivers.

Thus Burma fell too, and Japan, by mid 1942, had achieved virtually all her initial objectives. But retribution was not to be long in coming.