Beginning of the Pacific War 1942
The Second World War began in Europe on 1 September 1939. On the other side of the world, the Pacific War didn’t begin for another 2 years.
Japanese forces attacked Britain’s colonies in the East, namely Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong; and the United States military and naval bases, especially Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, and the Philippines.
The invasion of Malaya began at around 00:30 local time on 8 December 1941 when Japanese forces landed in the northern Malayan state of Kelantan, in Kota Bharu.
The attack on Pearl Harbour started at 01:18 local time. But it’s usually referred to as the 7 December attack because, according to US time, it occurred on the morning of the 7th.
The Japanese also invaded Thailand from Indo-China on 8 December. The fighting only lasted five hours before ending in a ceasefire. This enabled Japanese forces to easily move south across the Thailand-Malayan border, attacking the western side of Malaya.
Later, Thailand formed an alliance with Japan, making it part of the Axis’ alliance until the end of the war.
At 04:00, Japanese bombers attacked Singapore, Britain’s major military base in South East Asia.
The focus of the Japanese air assault was on the Allied air bases, and 60 Allied aircraft were lost on the first day, many of them still on the ground. Those that did engage the Japanese did so effectively until they were overwhelmed by the growing number of Japanese fighters.
Earlier, fighters from the Royal Australian Air Force No.1 Squadron successfully sank the Japanese transport ship, Awazisan Maru, and damaged two others off the coast of Kota Bharu in Kelantan.
By 9 December, Japanese fighters were operating out of Thailand and Kota Bharu airfield. In the space of one week, Japanese forces had established their air superiority.
As December rolled on, Allied forces lost more aircraft and were forced to merge remaining squadrons as they pulled back south.
On 10 December, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were both sunk by the Genzan Air Group, an aircraft and airbase garrison of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service. Japanese naval supremacy was established.
By the end of the first week in January 1942, the entire north of Malaya was in Japanese hands. On 11 January, they entered the capital city, Kuala Lumpur, unopposed. Singapore was less than 200 miles away.
By mid-January, the Japanese had reached the southern state of Johor, linked to the island of Singapore by a causeway. On 31 January, the last Allied forces retreated from Malaya and engineers blew a hole in the causeway; the Japanese attack was delayed for a week.
The Battle of Singapore lasted from 8 to 15 February 1942 when the Allied forces under Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival surrendered to General Tomoyuki Yamashita.
It was a decisive victory for Japan and the largest British surrender in history. About 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops in Singapore were taken prisoner, along with 50,000 taken in Malaya. Winston Churchill called it the “worst disaster” in British military history. (‘The Second World War’ [abridged ed.], Winston Churchill)
When the Japanese invasion began, my 22-year-old dad was working in the railways and had joined the Railway Operating & Maintenance Company (ROMC) as a volunteer, together with his good friend, my mum’s older brother (my parents hadn’t met yet). They were trained by British Army sergeants who, according to my dad, were “tough!”
My dad in his ROMC uniform
As the Allied forces pulled back south, the ROMC volunteers were also pulled back, still manning stations, until my dad’s section arrived in Singapore. He’d so far survived bombings and being strafed by a Japanese plane… Years later, when he told me about his experiences, he could still ‘see’ the bullets hitting the ground and he could still smell that distinct smell.
The ROMC was disbanded soon after the Japanese started bombing Singapore, and the volunteers were told to get rid of their uniforms so they wouldn’t be linked to the Allied forces. After the fall of Singapore, the volunteers pretended they were displaced railway workers just wanting to get home. My dad got together with others from his hometown of Malacca and the surrounding area, and they began their nerve-wracking journey home, never knowing what to expect from the Japanese soldiers they encountered.
The atrocities committed by the Japanese troops as they took control of Malaya and during the Battle of Singapore are documented elsewhere; I won’t go into them here.
According to my dad, when he returned home to Malacca, life was very different. To instil fear and ‘respect’ for the Japanese government, the soldiers had randomly picked an innocent teenager, beheaded him, then mounted the grisly exhibit on a traffic post for all to see.
All clocks had to be advanced by 1.5 hours to conform with Tokyo time; all sentries had to be acknowledged by bowing properly – face him squarely, stand at attention then drop head and shoulders forward. Anything less was considered disrespectful and the person would either have their face slapped or suffer a hard kick to the body.
My dad continued working in the railways; the 3 Japanese who were in charge treated their employees fairly well... so long as none of them stepped out of line. And it made a difference what race one was – for the most part, the Indians and Malays were treated better than the Chinese, because of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).
There was brightness in my family that first year of Japanese occupation. My mum’s brother introduced her to my dad, and they married on 10 December 1942.