February 15 - 21, 1942

by David H. Lippman

February 15th, 1942...Martin Clemens, appointed as His Majesty's Commissioner for Guadalcanal (and Coastwatcher for the Royal Australian Navy's Islands Coastwatching Service), takes up his duties at Aola station. Armed with a simple and easily-broken Playfair code, and a 100-lb. teleradio, Clemens' job is to report all hostile ship movements in the sound north of Guadalcanal. His teleradio, which requires 12 to 16 men to carry when it has to be moved, can transmit 400 miles by voice, 600 by key. It is a masterpiece of pre-transistor technology. While he awaits the Japanese advance, Clemens handles tribal disputes, judges cases, and raises the Union Jack over his home every morning.

In the early morning, Malaya's commanding general, Gen. Archibald Percival, takes communion at Fort Canning in a freshly- starched uniform. After church, he receives a message from Field Marshal Wavell, saying "So long as you are in a position to inflict losses and damage to enemy and your troops are physically capable of doing so, you must fight on. Time gained and damage to enemy by your troops are of vital importance at this juncture. When you are fully satisfied that this is no longer possible, I give you discretion to cease resistance. Inform me of your intentions. Whatever happens I thank you and all your troops for gallant efforts of last few days."

Percival summons his top officers, and tells them he has permission to surrender. There is almost no water, food reserves are only sufficient for a few days, and the only fuel left is in the tanks of vehicles. "Silently and sadly we decided to surrender," writes Australian Maj. Gen. Gordon Bennett.

Percival sends two emissaries to the Japanese lines at Bukit Timah Road with a Union Jack and white flag to ask for a cease fire at 4 p.m., under heavy Japanese bombing and shelling. Percival doesn't know it, but the bombardment is a bluff. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita is nearly out of supplies and ammunition. He hopes to intimidate the British into surrender.

Yamashita's note is characteristically blunt. No terms, no discussion of terms, no ceasefire, until Percival has "signed on the dotted line." Exhausted, drenched with sweat, Percival walks down Bukit Timah Road to the Ford Motor Factory to meet his conqueror.

There, Percival faces Yamashita, who demands an immediate British surrender. Percival pleads for time. "All I want from you is an answer," shouts Yamashita. "Yes or no?"

Percival has no choice. He signs at 6:10 p.m., then stands straight as a ramrod on his heel. At 8:30 p.m., the shelling stops. Percival orders his officers to stay with their men and go into captivity. Gordon Bennett orders the same to his Australians. Then Bennett flees to the docks, and escapes south to Sumatra. For this act, Bennett will draw condemnation from Australian authorities, and never again hold field command.

The fall of Singapore is regarded by historians as the greatest disgrace in the history of British arms. The "Gibraltar of the East" has fallen in less than 100 days to a smaller Asian army. The disaster leaves the Dutch East Indies and Australia's north coast open to assault, and batters British morale. Historians will later argue that it also topples the British Empire and Western domination of Asia. Winston Churchill tells radio listeners not to despair. "We must remember that we are no longer alone. We are in the midst of a great company. Three- quarters of the human race are now moving with us. The whole future of mankind may depend upon our action and upon our conduct. We have not failed. We shall not fail now. Let us move forward steadfastly together into the storm and through the storm."

British casualties are 8,708, Japanese 9,824. However, more than 130,000 British troops (32,000 Indian, 16,000 British and 14,000 Australian) including the 24th New Zealand Pioneer Company, are taken prisoner. More than half will die as PoWs.

The storm rolls on in the Dutch East Indies, as the Japanese continue to attack. The Dutch defenders hit back by sending their cruisers and destroyers to sea. The Dutch destroyer Van Ghent hits a reef and has to be scuttled by her own crew. At 9:20 a.m., Japanese aircraft spot the Dutch force, and it retreats.

Nazi airpower is so dominating in the Mediterranean, the Royal Navy closes it to Allied merchant shipping that day.

February 16th, 1942...HMNZS Achilles escorts the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, which is enroute to attack the Japanese-held island of Rabaul. The attack never comes off.

In occupied Singapore, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita says there will be no victory parade, but a solemn funeral for the Japanese dead. He also orders British officials to stay on the job until his troops can take over. His troops are busy committing atrocities. On Malaya's coast, Japanese troops round up 65 Australian Army nurses and 25 English soldiers. The soldiers are taken to the beach, and shot. Only two survive. The nurses are marched into the sea, and machine-gunned, only one, Vivien Bullwinkel, survives.

Japanese troops seize Palembang in the Dutch East Indies, and capture the oil refineries.

Just to make life irritating to Carribbean tourists, German U-boats shell the Dutch island of Aruba, frightening the locals, but doing no serious damage. Meanwhile, five more U-Boats are sent to attack Allied merchant ships on the route from Trinidad to New York.

February 17th, 1942...In Russia, the Soviet Army struggles to push German lines back near Rhzev, on the Moscow front. The Russians add something new to the war in the east, a massive airborne assault behind German lines. 7,373 Soviet paratroopers make the jump amid fog, and more than a quarter fall directly onto German lines and are taken prisoner. Despite heavy losses and Minus 52C temperatures, the Germans hold the line. One SS regiment staggers out of battle with only 35 of its original 2,000 men.

Japanese troops invade Timor, taking the Dutch western half, and then the Portuguese eastern half. The Portuguese are extremely angered, but do not declare war.

February 18th, 1942...The Nazis find that wounded soldiers from the East are flooding their hospitals. To "make way" for the battle casualties, Germany's remaining mental asylums are cleared of their patients. The usual way is euthanasia. In one asylum, 1,200 people are poisoned.

In Corregidor, US Navy Lt. Warwick Scott of the otherwise unemployed 16th Naval District boosts morale by producing a daily paper, the "Navy Evening Gopher," replete with poetry.

In occupied Singapore, British and Australian PoWs are forced to sweep the streets, while Japanese newsreel cameras roll, showing Western weakness. Singapore is re-named "Shonan," meaning "Bright South," and Japanese troops start removing British statues, signs, and memorials.

February 19th, 1942...For the first time in history, a foreign power attacks Australia. Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, victor of Pearl Harbor, takes four aircraft carriers in range of the northern Australian city of Darwin, a key military base, and hurls his airpower at the city. As at Pearl Harbor, the defenders ignore warnings until bombs fall. Only 11 P-40s (and about 30 other miscellaneous aircraft ranging from biplanes to flying boats) are on hand to defend the city against more than 80 Japanese aircraft.

Lt. R.G. Oestreicher of the US Army Air Force becomes the first man to shoot down a plane over Australia, but the Japanese blast Darwin, sinking the destroyer USS Peary and 16 other ships in the first raid. Nagumo's bombs wreck the 12,000-ton transport USS Meigs, shred a ship loaded with depth charges, and blast a railway engine into the sea. Also wrecked are the Administrator's office, police barracks and station, Government House, and a civil hospital. Firefighters have to stand behind cancer-inducing asbestos shields to quell huge blazes. That afternoon, the Japanese return and treat the Royal Australian Air Force base to a dose of high-level bombing.

The Americans lose half of their 10 P-40s, and 22 overall. 15 Japanese planes are shot down. 17 Allied ships are sunk, 240 people killed, and 150 wounded, massive damage for the small city. Australian morale takes a beating.

Japanese troops invade Bali, and meet no resistance. The Combined Force of American and Dutch warships under Vice Adm. Karel Doorman heads to sea that evening to attack the invaders. At 10:30 p.m., the Dutch cruiser Java opens fire on a Japanese destroyer, and get a warm reception...the Japanese sink the destroyer Piet Hein, inflict 11 hits on the cruiser Tromp, and damage USS Stewart. One Japanese destroyer is damaged by torpedoes. Stewart lumbers off to a Soerabaja drydock and sits out the rest of the campaign.

In Burma, the British 17th Division begins to cross the Sittang River, and dig in.

February 20th, 1942...Britain's toughest battleship, HMS Warspite, sails into Sydney, enroute to the Indian Ocean.

On Amboina Island, Lt. Nakagawa of the Imperial Japanese Army orders the execution of 120 Australian PoWs. All are made to kneeel down with eyes bandaged, and are then killed either with sword or bayonet. "Most of the corpses were buried in one hole but because the hole turned out not to be big enough to accommodate all the bodies, an adjacent dugout was also used as a grave."

In the Philippines, Filipino President Manuel Quezon, racked with tuberculosis, is evacuated in the interests of his own safety, along with his family, by a US submarine. Before leaving, Quezon presents the signet ring from his own finger to Gen. Douglas MacArthur. "When they find your body," Quezon says to MacArthur, "I want them to know you fought for my country." Quezon will die in a tuberculosis institution in Saranac Lake, N.Y., in 1943. The Philippines will not be liberated until October, 1944. Quezon never sees his homeland again.

The US grants a $1 billion loan to the USSR. The British order civilians evacuated from Rangoon in Burma.

In North Africa, NZ Squadron of the Long Range Desert Group is formed, an all-New Zealand force of desert raiders. This unit, armed with jeeps, machineguns, and colorful Arab kaffiyeh scarves, is to raid behind Axis lines, destroying airfields, fuel points, and ammo dumps, collecting intelligence as they go. The LRDG's exploits hurt German effectiveness and boost British morale.

February 21st, 1942..."A most unpleasant and disastrous day," writes the British general commanding the 17th Indian Division in Burma, on the Sittang River. The Japanese attack at 5 a.m., starting with a raid on division HQ, which fails. Then comes heavy bombing and machine-gunning by Japanese aircraft, which inflicts heavy casualties.

The War Department finally makes up its mind on what to do with Douglas MacArthur. He is ordered to move his headquarters to Mindanao and then go to Australia, to take command of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific. MacArthur threatens to resign his commission and join the Bataan defense forces as a volunteer, but his advisers talk him out of it.

On the opposite side of the Bataan trenches, the Japanese are almost as exhausted as the Americans. General Masaharu Homma later tells interrogators that had the Americans attacked him, his forces would have been in no condition to meet the attack. However, MacArthur's troops are malarial, starving, and exhausted.

The blockade runner Elcano brings 1,000 tons of food to Corregidor. Enough to feed Bataan for four days.