EARLY JAPANESE TRIUMPHS

Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces, January 1942

EARLY JAPANESE TRIUMPHS

With Pearl Harbor still enveloped in smoke, the Japanese embarked on other operations across the Pacific and Far East with surprising alacrity. Much of their early success was a result of American and British officials underestimating the ability of the Japanese to carry out multiple campaigns simultaneously, even when separated by thousands of miles.

Just hours after the attack in Hawaii, Japanese bombers struck tiny Wake Island, an American outpost 2,000 miles from Oahu. Though it was defended by a Marine battalion and fighter squadron, most of the fighter planes were destroyed in the initial bombing raid. After more bombings, the Japanese attempted to land an invasion force on December 11, but Marine shore batteries hammered the ships, sinking two destroyers. A more vigorous effort followed on December 23, with Japanese assault troops storming onto the atoll. The garrison put up a tenacious fight, but it was vastly outnumbered, and with internal communications severed, no hope of reinforcement, and the lives of more than 1,000 civilian construction workers at stake, Wake Island was surrendered.

That same month, Imperial Japanese Army troops marched into British Malaya (present-day Malaysia), easily defeating the overmatched British Commonwealth forces in their path as they drove south toward Singapore. The British stronghold was defended by tens of thousands of troops, but with little training and few quality weapons, the commanding general surrendered after just a week of resistance, in what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill branded “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British military history.”

The Japanese claimed another valuable prize in early 1942, seizing control of the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) and vast oil reserves that would fuel the Imperial Navy. Their greatest test, though, would come in the Philippines, where 19,000 American soldiers and 12,000 US-trained Filipinos under the command of General Douglas MacArthur defended the former US territory. It was a dismal start for the Americans, with most of MacArthur’s supporting air force destroyed by a Japanese air strike on the very first day of the war. When a large invasion force landed on the main island of Luzon, MacArthur had to abandon the capital of Manila and shift his army to the Bataan Peninsula, where American and Filipino troops held out for weeks despite severe shortages of food, ammunition, and medicine.

It was a remarkable stand, but by March 1942, the American lines were on the brink of collapse, prompting President Roosevelt to order MacArthur to personally evacuate to Australia. With the beleaguered defenders starving and wilting from tropical disease, and three out of every four unfit for duty, further resistance was untenable. Tens of thousands were marched into captivity following the largest surrender in American history.

On Wake Island, the wrecked F4F Wildcats of VMF-211, December 1941

British officers, led by Lieutenant General Arthur Percival (far right) prepare to surrender the Allied garrison at Singapore, February 1942.

On December 10, 1941, the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse—the two mightiest Allied ships in the western Pacific—were sunk off the Malayan coast by Japanese bombers. They had sailed without air cover, and their shocking loss was an early sign of how offensive air power would revolutionize naval warfare in World War II.

Bataan Death March

In April 1942, tens of thousands of Americans and Filipinos taken prisoner on Bataan were marched at bayonet point in sweltering heat and humidity to a prison camp sixty-five miles away. Wedded to an ancient warrior code that considered the act of surrender a disgrace and dishonor, the Japanese denied the exhausted and malnourished men any food, water, or medical care. Contemptuous of their weakened prisoners, the Japanese cruelty was boundless. Beatings were common during the march, as were random beheadings, and those who collapsed on the jungle trail from illness or exhaustion were bayoneted without mercy. When it was over, an estimated 10,000 prisoners had perished on the Bataan Death March, the vast majority Filipinos.

By late 1941, the Chinese had been battling the Japanese in Asia for four years, but the loss of two key British possessions, Hong Kong and Burma, cut off Chiang Kai-Shek’s army from the outside world. Despite limited weapons, ammunition, and other supplies, the Chinese continued to withstand the might of the Imperial Army. Buoyed later by the arrival of American aid, airlifted in from India over the treacherous Himalayas, the Chinese managed to pin down hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops for years – a boon to Allied forces fighting the Japanese elsewhere.