Battle Story Page 2

  The Japanese conquest of Manchuria was met with condemnation from all sides, but given the position of the Western powers, there was more than a whiff of hypocrisy involved and since nobody was willing to go to the aid of Manchuria there was little to discourage Japan from actively pursuing an expansionist policy if the opportunity arose.

  Political opinion in Japan was divided by two possible approaches to expansion. Some favoured a northern strategy to exploit the natural and human resources of Korea (which had been conquered by Japan) and Manchuria to help further the war in China, while others favoured a southern strategy aimed at seizing the tin, rubber and agricultural produce of Thailand and Malaya, and the rubber and timber of the Dutch East Indies and Burma. Each prospect had its merits. A protracted war would require vast quantities of oil, rubber and tin, which, realistically, could only come from South Asia, thus giving economic aid to Britain, France and the Netherlands just when they were at their weakest. Since the successful German occupation of northern Europe in 1940 there was little prospect of the French or Dutch colonial forces being reinforced. On the other hand, it was possible that Japan could continue to extend its occupation in China without provoking a war with Britain or the United States. The shortage of raw materials for Japanese industry was exacerbated by trade sanctions, particularly on oil and a ban on the export of scrap metal from the United States. Individually, none of these factors need necessarily have led to war, but a strong body of ultra-nationalist opinion certainly encouraged the possibility. The question of adopting a southern or northern strategy was not, initially, settled by the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939. The Phoney War period from September that year to May 1940 did not reveal the weakness of the Western powers, but the campaign through Belgium, the Netherlands and France most certainly did. Within a matter of weeks, the Netherlands and France had been utterly defeated and the British Army driven out of mainland Europe with a tremendous loss of materiel was clearly unable to divert significant quantities of men or materiel to Asia. The fall of France put the colonial government of French Indo-China (modern-day Vietnam) in a difficult position. They were in no position to resist demands from the Japanese government given that their own country was now under the control of Japan’s ally, Germany. This would prove to be a significant factor once the war erupted in Asia since Japanese aircraft based in Indo-China would be able to mount operations as far south as Singapore.

  Although economic factors were critical in the development of Japan’s route to war with the Western powers, there was also a political dimension. In December 1938 Fumimaro Konoe, the Japanese prime minister, declared a policy titled the ‘New Order in East Asia’ which would encourage the growth of an economic area dominated by the Yen rather than the currencies of Europe. Initially intended as a development in the northern portions of East Asia, the ‘New Order’ was the foundation of the ‘greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’; essentially a catch-all phrase to cover all of the territory that fell under Japanese domination. Although the Co-Prosperity Sphere concept was largely a fig leaf to disguise Japanese imperial expansion, there was a degree of wider political idealism involved. One of the slogans of the supporters of scheme was ‘Asia for the Asiatics’ and there was, to a modest extent, a genuine ambition to destroy European and American colonialist power throughout South Asia, though in reality this was largely a matter of seeking to replace European hegemony with Japanese political and economic domination. To some extent the development of the Co-Prosperity Sphere policy was a reaction to racialist policies among the Western powers. In 1919 the Japanese delegation to the Versailles treaty negotiations had proposed a declaration of universal racial equality. This was vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson – though he had no right to do so – because it would undermine the position of the colonial powers which had emerged victorious from the First World War and which had extensive interests in Asia, South America and Africa. It might have also caused him considerable political difficulty at home, given the strong tradition of racialist policies and practices in many American states; this was, after all, a time when the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan could still be received formally at the White House.

  Naturally, some people in the nations conquered by Japan in 1941–42 saw the removal of British and Dutch colonial governments as a step toward national independence, and the Co-Prosperity Sphere concept as a possible route to economic development that would benefit their own communities rather than corporations in Britain and the Netherlands. Any such hopes were quickly undermined by the nature of the Japanese occupations and it rapidly became all too clear that the removal of one set of colonial masters meant nothing more than the installation of a different foreign power. However, in some locations in Malaya and a little more widely in the Dutch East Indies the Japanese were not, initially, regarded with total suspicion and some Japanese soldiers genuinely thought they were engaged in a war to liberate their fellow Asians from European and American imperialism.

  The German conquest of France and the Netherlands in 1940 and the continuing troubles of the British through early 1941 presented Japan with an opportunity to remove European influence from Asia and to become the undisputed major power in the East. This could only be achieved if the United States could be neutralised. In late 1941 America was not yet prepared for a major war, but was certainly moving in that direction. The British were starting to make a modest degree of recovery in their campaigns against Germany and Italy, but were still struggling to maintain imports across the Atlantic from America and, after the summer of 1941, had the added burden of making a contribution to the Russian front as well. If a victory was to be gained, Japan had to make a move before the American military could be put on a real war footing and before the British improved sufficiently on their current situation to give serious attention to matters in the Far East. If the blow was to be struck at all, it had to be struck quickly and at all of the opposing powers at the same time to prevent one coming to the aid of the other. The Japanese offensive of December 1941 delivered just such a blow; it was incredibly audacious and an absolute masterpiece of planning and military ingenuity; for a while it achieved the political objective of Japanese primacy throughout the Far East. The seaborne landings mounted in Malaya and south Thailand were only part of a much wider picture and although the strike against Pearl Harbor inflicted a grave injury on the American Pacific Fleet, the blow was far from fatal. When the Japanese attack hit Pearl Harbor there were no American aircraft carriers in port. This would turn out to be a matter of huge consequence, but that was not altogether clear at the time.

  There were other, less dramatic factors in leading Japan to adopt a war policy. The conflict in China had not been as swift or as straightforward as had been anticipated. One of the political justifications for attacking the British and the Americans was that both powers would be forced to reduce their support for the Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. This was less than realistic since Chiang was much more reliant on support from the Soviet Union, but it did have a certain appeal to popular opinion in Japan and the news media – totally under Japanese government control – encouraged the belief that the Chinese forces would be mortally weakened by the loss of American aid. Similarly, there was a view that the Chinese government was heavily reliant on the fundraising activities of the Chinese diaspora of merchants and professionals across South Asia generally, but in Singapore and Malaya in particular. This was not unfounded; the Chinese communities did raise substantial sums for the war effort at home, but certainly not enough to have a profound effect on China’s ability to resist the Japanese invasion. In reality, fundraising in the British colonies and American contributions to the Chinese government were insignificant issues compared to the wider questions of Japan’s economic need for raw materials and foodstuffs, as well as her political desire to be a great international power and the leading force in Asia; neither issue – singly or in combination – was enough of a challenge to provoke war.

  The attacks of December 1941 broug
ht the Western Allies together with a shared objective: the defeat of Japan. In the early months of the war active co-operation was almost non-existent. The United States was not in a position to intervene in support of Britain or the Netherlands; although America had been providing arms and other supplies to Britain for some considerable time, the tide of public opinion in the US had not turned in favour of active participation. Pearl Harbor changed everything in that regard. America had been attacked with no declaration of war, thousands of lives and millions of dollars’ worth of material had been destroyed and the American public was now ready for a fight even if their military was not. In that sense, the Pearl Harbor attack can be seen as a gigantic political and strategic error. It is not absolutely certain that the United States would have entered a war with Japan on the basis of her invasions of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, but there could be little doubt that a direct attack on an American port or on the Philippines would force the issue.

  Japan’s attack on America did more than bring war to the Pacific. Germany chose to declare war on the United States in support of her Asian ally. President Roosevelt had been pushing toward declaring war with Germany for some time, but had not had the political support which would enable him to do so; now Hitler had saved him the necessity by declaring war on the United States.

  In a sense, this clearly defined who was fighting for what. At its simplest, the Western Allies were committed to a war which would destroy the power of Germany, Japan and Italy, and in turn those nations were committed to a war which would destroy the power of Britain and America. In the case of Britain and the Netherlands, this included ensuring that they retained possession of the mineral and agricultural wealth of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. They could only do this by preserving a certain aura of invincibility and convincing local public opinion that the European powers could protect their communities from invasion.

  Malaya. Location of military formations, airfields and air force units, 8 December 1941.

  Singapore Island. Location of military formations, airfields and air force units, 8 December 1941.

  THE ARMIES

  The British Defence

  The British defence posture in Malaya was bound by several constraints, some of which were effectively contradictory. Both Malaya and the Dutch East Indies had long been seen as military backwaters. Despite the economic significance of South East Asia to both Britain and the Netherlands, neither country had really made any great effort to ensure that there was proper planning and organisational procedures in the pre-war years. From the 1920s onward, successive British governments had developed a policy of simply assuming that there would not be another major war for the next ten years; a policy that was renewed periodically by incoming governments as they tried to cope with the depression of the 1930s by limiting spending on defence. The huge investment in the Singapore naval base would be the great exception, but in practice the failure to provide the necessary structure to protect the base would in due course make it something of a white elephant. The base was not simply a military asset. In part it was built to show the power of the British Empire and to demonstrate an intention to retain control of the Far East colonies, and thus the mineral wealth of Malaya and the commercial value of Singapore. It was also a gesture of solidarity with Australia and New Zealand; an indication that Britain was committed to ensuring the viability of the trade routes through the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

  It was also a statement aimed at Japan: that Britain intended to be the primary naval power in the Western Pacific in partnership with the United States in the Central and Eastern Pacific. Naturally, such a policy rested on having a powerful and modern fleet that would be the equal of any Japanese force. Since Britain could not possibly hope to maintain such a fleet at Singapore without abandoning her commitments elsewhere, the statement was less than secure, but the British government felt confident – and with some reason – that in the event of a war with Japan, they would be able to count on American support. Planning for war in South East Asia essentially depended on the belief that Singapore could stand for 180 days, the maximum length of time that it would take to mount a relief expedition. In fact, the necessary stockpile of supplies was never amassed and the plan had not taken account of the possibility that there might be a major war in Europe that would prevent the dispatch of ships and materiel to Singapore. Defeat in the East was not inevitable even as late as 1939, and it was not unreasonable that the reality of war with Germany and Italy should take precedence over the possibility of war with Japan. There was little value in preserving distant colonies if the home country was at risk of being conquered. Equally, there was no value to maintaining a very large force of men on the other side of the world if they were not to be equipped properly, trained properly or led properly, and the failure to put sensible policies in place in any of these regards was an inexcusable dereliction of duty on the part of both the civil and military power in London.

  The planning process of the 1930s depended on a large air force and a consequent need to protect the many airfields scattered through the peninsula, but there were also political and diplomatic considerations. British rule in Malaya had not been achieved through simple conquest and there was no single unified system of political control. The Straits Settlements – Singapore, Dinding and Penang – constituted a single Crown colony, but the rest of Malaya fell into two groups, the Federated Malay States (FMS) of Pahang, Perak, Negri Sembilan and Selangor and the Unfederated Malay States of Terengganu, Perlis, Johore, Kedah and Kelantan. The latter group enjoyed a greater degree of self-government than the others, but the British administration was obliged to provide defence for all of them. The rapid advance of the Japanese effectively rendered the treaty obligations redundant, but they had only exerted a very minor influence on the general planning process. Although there was clearly little he could do, throughout the course of the campaign Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of Malaya Command, would receive a number of remonstrations from sultans who felt, not unreasonably, that the British were failing to live up to their obligations.

  1. Scottish company of the Federated Malay States Volunteers. (Malayan Volunteers Association)

  In practical military terms, Percival’s chief responsibilities were the defence of Malaya as a valuable economic asset and that was seen as depending on, and being crucial to, the preservation of the massive Singapore naval base. Construction of the base had been announced in 1923 but progress had been slow until the Japanese attack on Manchuria in 1931. By the time it was completed in 1939 it had cost something in the region of £60 million and was possibly the most costly naval installation ever built. It covered more than 20 square miles, held a massive fuel supply and had the largest dry dock in the world. It was built to support a massive fleet which could protect British interests throughout Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, but by the time hostilities began in 1941 Britain was already at war with Germany and Italy and most of the fleet was already committed to operations in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, thus little could be spared for operations in South Asia.

  2. Wartime medical pannier, possibly issued to the Federated Malay States Volunteers. (Author’s collection)

  3. A pre-war elevated bungalow in the Singapore naval base. (Author’s collection)

  Arthur Percival

  Born in 1887, Percival joined the army on the first day of the First World War as a private soldier. After a short spell in basic training he was selected for a temporary commission and had been promoted to captain before the end of the year. By mid-1916 he had transferred to the regular army and was commissioned as captain in the Essex Regiment. He proved to be an effective, conscientious and courageous officer, and he rose to command a battalion and, for a short time in 1918, a brigade. At the end of the war he volunteered for the Archangel Command of the British Military Mission and thereafter served in Ireland where he was the target of two IRA assassination attempts. After p
assing out from Camberley Staff College, where he made a good impression on the faculty, he was selected for a scheme of accelerated promotion that was designed to undermine the army tradition of ‘buggins turn’, which was – rightly – seen by many as an impediment to good practice. He spent four years as a staff officer in West Africa and, after a spell at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, returned to Camberley as an instructor.

  Between 1936 and 1938 he served as a senior staff officer with Malaya Command and identified several of the weaknesses of the situation. He wrote a paper illustrating the means by which Singapore could be attacked overland from Thailand and was acutely aware of the shortage of defensive installations on the northern shore of the island. Despite this knowledge, a mixture of financial stringencies and civil obstruction prevented him from doing very much to rectify those problems when he was appointed as GOC Malaya Command in April 1941; in fact, he actively opposed building fortifications on the northern shore of Singapore Island on the grounds that they would be bad for morale.