To U.S. homebodies, the field where U.S. soldiers were giving their lives (see p. 16) seemed the most urgent. But to the Allied strategists, there was no more important battlefield than Malaya. On that battlefield Singapore was at stake. At Singapore the future of the Allies in Asia was at stake.
As everywhere, the Japanese made a spectacular beginning in Malaya. Their plan was shrewdly devised and fanatically attempted. It was defined by nature as much as by man.
East Side, West Side. Malaya (see map p. 20) is divided by a great watershed. To the east is an inhospitable land. Its beaches are broad, but they lie behind treacherous offshore ledges, riparian sandbars and extended shallows, which soon will be pounded by the terrible surf of the northeasterly monsoon. Behind the beaches, beyond a fringe of graceful, feathery casuarina trees, lie the swamps—great stinking pestholes which house most of nature’s nightmares: crocodiles, pythons, cobras, and the nasty little Anopheles, the mosquito of malaria. Behind the swamps lie jungles which are almost airtight, home of adders, tigers and other Japanophobes.
Paradise lies to the west. Across the mountains there is a rolling country of bamboo, rubber plantations, tin mines: a country divided by a network of good roads, cut up by rice paddies, full of people and not beasts. It is washed by the quiet Malacca Strait, sheltered by the long Island of Sumatra.
There are two seasons in Malaya: the wet season and the wetter season. The latter, which is about to begin, makes the east side of Malaya an unbearable windswept sponge land. Landings off the coast in support of beachheads would be all but impossible. The only two motor roads on the east side are often broken by floods.
And so an attack on Malaya from the East, the natural approach for the Japanese, was bound to be extremely hazardous, especially because the British expected it. The only possible strategy would be somehow to get at and on the west coast.
This the Japanese did.
East Try, West Try. First they attacked Malaya’s east coast. This attack had just two foci and two aims. Beachheads were established at Kota Bahru, in the extreme northeast, and at Kuantan, about 200 miles north of Singapore. These two places are the keys to east coast transportation, Kota Bahru being the only rail-sea junction along the whole coast, Kuantan the only highway-sea junction, except in the extreme south.
But the two main aims in these landings were not transportation. They were: 1) to reduce the principal British airdrome on the east coast and get a foothold for air attack; 2) to draw as much British defensive strength as possible to the east. At least at Kota Bahru the first aim was achieved. By this week the Kuantan landing had not yet amounted to much. It was not clear how far the British let themselves be sucked in by the second aim.
After these first landings, far greater forces (estimated at 15,000 men) landed unopposed on the neck of Thailand, at Cape Patani and Singora. From there they hurried hellbent, by rail and road, with artillery, tanks and dive-bombers, due south toward Alor Star on the west coast. The British admitted falling back in the face of this heavier assault.
Singora to Singapore. Dopesters in London guessed that although the British would fight hard in the extreme north, they would probably not send heavy reinforcements up, but would fall back into central Malaya, to insure themselves against being cut off by a cross-country spur from Kuantan. As for the defenses of Singapore itself, they had. as yet, no qualms.
The British Empire forces in Malaya under Major General Arthur Ernest Percival are thought to number about 125,000 Australians, Indians, New Zealanders, Scots, and Englishmen, all well equipped and rigorously trained in jungle warfare. They are not too strong in heavy equipment, except in the Singapore area, where there is plenty of artillery. Air Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham’s R.A.F. strength was apparently shocked by the first blast, and consequently the Japanese at first achieved local air control in north Malaya. But from London it was announced that immediate reinforcements would be sent by way of a long-prepared chain of airports from the Middle East and India.
The Road to Mandalay. The capitulation of Thailand, probably long arranged, paved the way for an attack on Burma. A Japanese force cut up-country as fast as it could go. Perhaps as a pretext for invading Burma, the Japanese announced that the British, with some Chinese help, had pushed 30 miles into Thailand to Chieng Rai. This the British denied. The Japanese bombed Burmese airports to try to get air superiority.
In Dutch. The Japanese did not attack a single Netherlands outpost. But the Dutch knew there was no permanency to this, and they went straight to work. Part of the Dutch Air Force joined the British in Malaya. Dutch submarines sank four Japanese transports as they rushed 4,000 reinforcing troops to Cape Patani; next day the Dutch caught a tanker and a freighter. Just as they had been tough in negotiation, so now the Dutch of the Indies were proving determined in action.
All in all, Britain’s only uneasiness about the defense of the Singapore area last week was that the U.S. Fleet was not there. Even without it, Singapore (like Suez, which was also split away from its complementary force at Gibraltar) looked like anything but a doormat with Welcome on it.
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