The Japanese Blitzkrieg

The Japanese Blitzkrieg 

• During the first six months of 1942, the Japanese military juggernaut moved from success to success in the western Pacific. After the shocking strike at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Japanese conquered a number of French, British, and Dutch colonies, as well as the American-held Philippines. For the United States and the country’s allies, this was a dizzying string of defeats.

One of the worst setbacks took place in the South China Sea on December 10, 1941, only days after the Pearl Harbor attack. There, a Japanese invasion convoy landed soldiers on the north coast of British Malaya. And a second convoy put more soldiers on the coast of Siam, now Thailand. To contest them, two Royal Navy capital ships - the battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse - sortied from Singapore. 

They had an escort of four destroyers. Their goal was to attack the Japanese invasion convoys. Instead, they were themselves sighted by a Japanese submarine that reported their location. Soon, 88 Japanese bombers were en route to that position from airfields in Indochina.

The Japanese attacked the Prince of Wales and the Repulse through a cloud of anti-aircraft fire, releasing bombs and torpedoes with deadly effect. Hit multiple times, the Prince of Wales took on a 13-degree list and slowed to 15 knots. After a second attack a half-hour later, both the Prince of Wales and the Repulse went to the bottom of the ocean. Japanese losses during the two attacks totaled just three airplanes.

Combined with the destruction of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, there was now not a single Allied capital ship between Ceylon and Hawaii. That was a distance of 8,000 miles, a third of the earth’s circumference. As British prime minister Winston Churchill later expressed it: “Over all this vast expanse of water, Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked.”

It was the next day that Hitler declared war on the United States.

. . .

A few rays of hope warmed the Allies amidst the gloom. One was the initial American defense of Wake Island in the mid-Pacific, about halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines. Some 450 American marines occupied the tiny island along with 1,200 construction workers. The marines turned back the initial Japanese landing on December 11. They did so by holding their fire until the Japanese ships came within pointblank range.

Encouraged by this, US admiral Husband Kimmel organized a relief force built around the aircraft carrier Saratoga. And he sent it toward Wake Island on December 16. Even as those ships were en route, however, the Japanese renewed their assault on Wake Island, this time committing two of their big carriers - the Pearl Harbor veterans Hiryū and Sōryū - as well as a cruiser division.

By then, Kimmel was no longer in command. Aware that he was about to be relieved, he resigned on December 17, and Vice Admiral William S. Pye temporarily took his place until a permanent replacement could be found. It was Pye who decided to call off the relief effort, and Wake surrendered the next day.

A permanent replacement for Pye arrived in Hawaii on Christmas Day. It was Admiral Chester Nimitz. He presided over the Pacific War until the Allies prevailed. That moment, however, was still in the distant future.

. . .

Meanwhile, the Japanese continued their rampage in the western Pacific. The real target of Japan’s elaborate war plan was not Hawaii; it was the British and Dutch colonies of South Asia: Malaya, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and the American-held Philippines.

On December 12, four days after their successful air raid on American air forces near Manila, the Japanese began an invasion of Luzon, the largest and northernmost of the Philippine islands. Six days later, they landed another force on Mindanao, the biggest of the southern islands.

According to the US war plan, General Douglas MacArthur was supposed to withdraw into the fortified peninsula of Bataan and await the arrival of a relief expedition. But MacArthur had never liked that plan, and he was convinced that his forces could still defeat the Japanese invaders on the beach. That proved to be a mistake. The Americans were repeatedly beaten or brushed aside by a smaller but more efficient Japanese army under the command of General Masaharu Homma. When it became evident that MacArthur’s men could not hold the beaches, he ordered them to withdraw into Bataan after all. The Japanese tried to cut them off. But in a series of fierce battles during the first week of January, the Filipino-American allies slipped past them. 

The Japanese Blitzkrieg

After that, the Filipino-American army found itself besieged. And MacArthur had failed to stockpile enough supplies for such an occasion because he had believed these plans to be defeatist. Now, the men found themselves in a terrible state.

MacArthur - along with the ailing Philippine president Manuel Quezon - took up residence in a bombproof tunnel carved into the rock of Corregidor Island, just off the southern tip of Bataan. As time dragged on and no help arrived, the Allied soldiers felt abandoned. 

A popular song among these soldiers, attributed to war corespondent Frank West Hewlett who was also trapped on Bataan, reflects their mood:

“We’re the battling bastards of Bataan,

No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam,

No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,

No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,

And nobody gives a damn.”

. . .

During the siege of Bataan, the Japanese onslaught continued elsewhere. On January 23, they occupied Rabaul, a port city on the island of New Britain north of Australia. Then on February 15, to the shock of the Allies, Singapore fell, too. They barely had time to catalog these disasters, let alone respond effectively.

The Dutch islands of Sumatra and Java were the ultimate objective of the Japanese campaign. In addition to their value as exporters of sugar, pepper, rice, and tea, the islands produced 35 percent of the world’s known supply of rubber and boasted some of the most productive oil fields outside the United States. 

They also made up what was called the Malay Barrier, a convex shield behind which the Japanese hoped to establish an unassailable maritime empire: the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Western Allies had few resources with which to resist the Japanese advance on the Dutch East Indies. After the destruction of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse in the South China Sea, they had no capital ships at all. Still, they did possess a dozen cruisers - four British, three American, three Dutch, and two Australian - plus a score or so of destroyers.

 To make maximum use of these, the Allies decided to combine them into a single command known as ABDA, an acronym for American, British, Dutch, and Australian forces. All four countries agreed to accept a British general, Sir Archibald Wavell, as the ABDA commander. Command of the ABDA naval strike force of cruisers and destroyers went to Rear Admiral Karel Doorman, a Dutchman.

The Japanese sent three separate naval task forces toward the Dutch islands of the Malay Barrier. The largest of them was the so-called Western Attack Force. This was made up of nearly 100 ships that included 56 troop transports and supply ships. Those ships were escorted by three light cruisers and no fewer than 25 destroyers, plus an aircraft carrier. The force’s target was Java, the linchpin of ABDA defenses. 

It was also home of the Dutch colonial capital of Batavia (now Jakarta) as well as Doorman’s naval base at Surabaya. As soon as Doorman learned that an enemy fleet was approaching, he put to sea to find it. But the next morning, the only enemy forces in sight were scores of Japanese bombers. With no air cover of his own, Doorman turned around to return to Surabaya.

He had barely arrived there at about 2:30 pm when he received another report that an enemy invasion force was a few hours away. With no time to confirm the information, Doorman turned around in the entrance channel and sent a terse signal to the other ships in the squadron: “That led to what is known as the Battle of the Java Sea on February 27, 1942. In this battle, the Japanese had an overwhelming advantage in big eight-inch guns. Doorman decided that his best chance was to get close enough to employ the smaller six-inch guns on his light cruisers.

Early in the fight, one eight-inch shell struck the British heavy cruiser Exeter. Doorman had to send the vessel limping back to Surabaya with an escorting destroyer.

 That reduced the number of eight-inch guns in his squadron to just six. It also deprived him of the only Allied ship in his command with radar.

Badly outgunned, he directed the American destroyers to execute a torpedo attack and make smoke to cover the retirement of his cruisers. That might have marked the end of the battle, but Doorman got his four vessels into line again and set off northward to find the Japanese invasion convoy.

Doorman did not find the Japanese convoy. Instead, he blundered into a greatly superior Japanese cruiser force. The Japanese so-called Long Lance torpedo was more accurate, had a greater range, and packed a bigger warhead than anything the Allies possessed. 

In the Battle of the Java Sea, it proved decisive, sinking two of the Allied cruisers, including Doorman’s flagship. Even as his ship went down, Doorman sent his last order: Rather than stopping for survivors, he commanded his forces to go to Batavia in western Java to re-fuel for another fight.

Meanwhile, the Japanese proceeded with landing operations that would turn Java into a subject province. Doorman’s bold sortie and heavy sacrifice had delayed them by barely 24 hours.

After Doorman perished, the captain of the Australian cruiser Perth - Hector Waller - became the senior Allied officer afloat. He had only two ships: his own and the American cruiser Houston. To save what was left of the command, Waller would have to refuel in Batavia and then somehow slip around the western end of Java through the Sunda Strait into the Indian Ocean.

 As the two Allied ships approached the entrance to the strait late that night, they steamed right into the middle of yet another Japanese fleet that included six heavy cruisers and a dozen destroyers. There was nothing to do now but to fight it out. A half hour before midnight, on February 28, captain Albert Rooks on the American cruiser Houston sent the last radio message ever received from that ship: “Enemy forces engaged.”

The Battle of Sunda Strait was a confused nighttime engagement. Several of the torpedoes launched by Japanese destroyers hit their own transports, sinking at least two of them. Even so, there was never any question of the final outcome. Both the Houston and the Perth went down.

The last of the Allied cruisers, the crippled Exeter, tried to escape from Surabaya and, unaware of the fate of the Houston and Perth, tried to follow their course through the Sunda Strait. The Exteter, too, was overwhelmed by shellfire and torpedoes and went to the bottom. That loss marked the end of ABDA.

. . .

The Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies was both faster and less costly than the invaders dared hope. Success came so quickly that the high command was at something of a loss about what to do next. They sent their big carriers into the Indian Ocean. The carriers were under the command of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the man who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor. He decided to conduct a hit-and-run raid on British bases in Ceylon.

On April 5, 1942 - which was Easter Sunday - more than 300 Japanese planes struck the British naval base at Colombo, on the west coast of Ceylon. 

They sunk three British warships and wrecked the harbor facilities. That same afternoon, a Japanese reconnaissance plane spotted two British heavy cruisers heading southward, and Nagumo dispatched 88 aircraft toward them. Hit by 10 bombs, the Dorsetshire sank in minutes. The Cornwall, hit by nine bombs, followed soon afterward.

Three days later, the Japanese struck another British base on the east coast of Ceylon at Trincomalee. The Japanese brushed aside British fighters and smashed up the naval facility. As a parting shot, they also found and sank the British aircraft carrier Hermes.

In the wake of these one-sided defeats, the British had little choice but to abandon the eastern Indian Ocean to the Japanese. Nagumo returned to the Pacific.

. . .

Meanwhile, the remnants of the starving Filipino-American army on the Bataan peninsula asked the Japanese for terms. They had held out for five months. But it was evident that no Allied fleet would be coming to their rescue. And their supplies were exhausted.

By then, MacArthur was gone. Despite declaring his determination to stay with his command and share its fate, Roosevelt ordered him to leave the Philippines and proceed to Australia, where, the president told him, he would assume command of Allied troops in the theater. Before he departed, MacArthur had left orders for those still in Bataan never to surrender, but this was unrealistic.

US Army general Jonathan Wainwright, now in command, knew he did not have the authority to surrender. 

He left the decision to his field commanders. It was Major General Edward King - commanding the I Corps in Bataan - who was forced to bite the bullet. On April 9, 1942, King sent two officers under a flag of truce to ask the Japanese for terms. But the Japanese had no terms to offer. It was unconditional surrender or death. King accepted.

The much smaller contingent of Allied troops on the island of Corregidor, now utterly cut off, surrendered as well. More than 60,000 American and Filipino soldiers became prisoners of war. The Japanese were logistically unprepared to handle so many prisoners, and, in any case, their martial culture held that those who chose to surrender, rather than fight to the death, were undeserving of honorable treatment. 

The Allied prisoners - starving and emaciated - were forced to march more than 60 miles to a POW camp, beaten and harassed all the way. Those who fell out of the column, unable to continue, were simply shot. Somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 men died during what has been known ever after as the Bataan Death March. When the war ended, it would be judged a war crime.

MacArthur remained convince for the rest of his life that the men in Bataan could have fought their way out. He was almost certainly wrong.

. . .

The fall of the Philippines added a grim punctuation mark to a desperate time. In just four months, the Japanese had conquered an island empire of more than 16 million square miles. Doing so secured the resource base that they hoped would make them economically self-reliant and military invulnerable.

By April 1942, the Japanese were masters of a third of the globe. At that moment, their decision to go to war simultaneously with Britain, Holland, and the United States must have seemed no less than brilliant.

. . .