Battle for Malaya

The Indian Army in Defeat, 1941–1942

Kaushik Roy

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780253044242
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Seconda guerra mondiale

The historian and author of The Army in British India analyzes the British Indian Army's devastating loss to the Imperial Japanese during WWII. The defeat of 90, 000 Commonwealth soldiers by 50, 000 Japanese soldiers made the World War II Battle for Malaya an important encounter for both political and military reasons. British military prestige was shattered, fanning the fires of nationalism in Asia, especially in India. Japan's successful tactics in Malaya—rapid marches, wide outflanking movement along difficult terrain, nocturnal attacks, and roadblocks—would be repeated in Burma in 1942–43. Until the Allied command evolved adequate countermeasures, Japanese soldiers remained supreme in the field. Looking beyond the failures of command, Kaushik Roy focuses on tactics of the ground battle that unfolded in Malaya between December 1941 and February 1942. His analysis includes the organization of the Indian Army—the largest portion of Commonwealth troops—and compares it to the British and Australian armies that fought side by side with Indian soldiers. Utilizing both official war office records and personal memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories, Roy presents a comprehensive narrative of operations interwoven with tactical analysis of the Battle for Malaya.

1 | The Rise of the Singapore Naval Base

Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, Alexandria, Gibraltar, and Dover, in the opinion of Lord Fisher (Admiral John Fisher, First Sea Lord, 1904–10), constituted the five “keys” of the world that gave the United Kingdom command over the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Control over the Cape of Good Hope, Aden, and Singapore made the Indian Ocean almost a “British Lake.”¹ This chapter portrays the gradual development of the Singapore Naval Base and the shifting threat to it during the interwar period. The failure of the British high command to come up with a coherent defensive strategy is highlighted. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the evolution of defense policy regarding Singapore during the 1920s and the mid-1930s. The second half charts the complications that resulted in the defense of Singapore Naval Base, due to an increase in the range of aircraft and the rise of the Japanese threat in the Far East from the late 1930s until the beginning of the Pacific War.

Evolution of Singapore’s Defense in the Interwar Era

Singapore was acquired from the Sultan of Johore in 1819 by Thomas Stamford Raffles on behalf of the East India Company and had been transformed by the end of the First World War from an uninhabited island to one of the greatest transit ports in the world.² For the first 140 years of British occupation, Singapore was a drain on the East India Company’s budget. In 1818, Raffles was appointed as the governor of Bencoolen (in Indonesia) on the southwest coast of Sumatra. The British plan at that time was to expand the China trade. The route from British India to China had to pass through Southeast Asia. Since the late seventeenth century, Britain’s commercial rival Holland had dominated Southeast Asia’s sea lanes. Holland had succeeded in closing all the British trading posts in this region except Bencoolen. Raffles thought that the British could attract Malay trade to Singapore. Singapore (traditional name Singapura) was in fact an old Malay trading port that had declined, and Raffles wanted to rejuvenate it. The British merchant community in India also enthusiastically supported the acquisition of Singapore. Initially, Raffles was afraid of a Dutch attack against Singapore. In 1824, in accordance with the Treaty of London, the British agreed to evacuate Bencoolen, and in return the Dutch accepted British primacy in the Malayan Peninsula and in Singapore. After that, no European power posed any threat to Singapore, at least until the end of the First World War.³

Meanwhile, British power in the Malayan Peninsula was also increasing. British acquisitions in Malaya could be divided into three categories. First, there was the colony of the Straits Settlements of Penang with Province Wellesley, Malacca, and Singapore. This was a British territory governed as a Crown colony by a governor, acting through a legislative council and an executive council. The second group consisted of the Federated Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, and Pahang, a British-protected and British-administered Malay territory. The governor of the Straits Settlements also acted as the high commissioner of the Malay States. In the Federated Malay States, the British exercised direct administration and complete control except in matters of Malay customs and Islamic religion. The third category comprised the five Unfederated Malay States of Johore, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, and Trengganu. These states were governed by their own sultans, who were assisted by British advisors. The four northern states of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, and Trengganu were under Siamese suzerainty until 1909, when an agreement was made between the British and Siamese governments, as a result of which all these four polities came under the protection of the British Crown. After 1914, Johore concluded a similar treaty with the British. Among these five Unfederated Malay States, Johore enjoyed the greatest autonomy. All these states were incorporated within the British Empire through separate treaties. In these treaties, Britain accepted the obligation to defend these states against external aggression. Overall, regarding civil affairs the Malay states were under the high commissioner, who reported to the Colonial Office and in matters of defense came under the British GOC in Malaya, who reported to the War Office in London.⁴

In August 1919, Admiral of the Fleet Lord John Jellicoe, who had commanded the British Grand Fleet between 1914 and 1916 and was then First Sea Lord, considered Japan to be the “Germany of the Far East.” Japan’s commercial penetration into India was disadvantageous to Britain. He predicted that Japanese and British interests were bound to clash.⁵ In 1919, he toured the Pacific and recommended the construction of a naval base at Singapore.⁶ The RN put forward the War Memorandum (Eastern), which was a plan for a possible Anglo-Japanese War in 1920. The aim was to redeploy the RN from Europe to Asia in order to obtain a decisive victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). This plan in turn provided a rationale for making Singapore a naval base to support the fleet operation. Further, this plan also required the use of Hong Kong as an advance base for blockading Japan. However, Churchill at that time questioned the wisdom of this plan. He argued that a long and costly war against Japan was hardly viable or worthwhile. In December 1919, Britain maintained one aircraft carrier, one destroyer, one sub tender, one minesweeper, one submarine, one heavy cruiser, and three light cruisers at the China Station.⁷ Historian Christopher M. Bell asserts that until the 1920s and the early 1930s, the Singapore Naval Base was intended to provide the docking and repair facilities for a British fleet operating in the Far Eastern waters, but it was not expected to serve as the principal base from which to launch operations against Japan. This role was ideally to have been fulfilled by Hong Kong. At that time, defense of Hong Kong was considered difficult but not impossible.⁸

Actually, as early as 1919, the British cabinet’s Standing Defence Sub-Committee had proposed abandoning Hong Kong as a main fleet base and concentrating on Singapore.⁹ Hong Kong in the 1920s was the greatest imperial port outside the British Isles. It was the “door to the Far Eastern markets.” However, Hong Kong was sidelined for several reasons. Britain could not afford to maintain a garrison of forty thousand troops, considered necessary to secure this island against a Japanese invasion. Also, Hong Kong is 1,600 miles from Japan, while Singapore is 2,900 miles from Japan. Though the Japanese could easily mount an invasion of Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland, this was not possible in the case of Singapore. Singapore was chosen because it was considered the gateway to the Pacific, on the shortest possible route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and an ideal base for a fleet seeking to guard against probable Japanese attack on the trade of the Indian Ocean, particularly the trade route from India to Australia, and to hold open the line of advance toward Japan through the Malay Barrier.¹⁰

Japan was Britain’s chief commercial rival in the Far East, and during the First World War, it pushed its trade forward at Britain’s expense.¹¹ As early as December 1920, the Admiralty pointed out that an aggressive move by Japan in the Far East that coincided with a threat to British security in Europe posed an insoluble problem.¹² The Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902 lapsed in 1921.¹³ The Anglo-Japanese alliance was based on the fact that Czarist Russia was the principal enemy of Britain in the Far East. In accordance with this alliance, if Russia moved against British India from Central Asia, Japan would aid Britain. Also, if Russia moved against Japan in Manchuria, then Britain would aid Tokyo. Japan defeated Russia during the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War, and the reduction of Russian strength enabled Britain to shift some naval assets in 1911 from the China Squadron to the North Sea in order to meet the rising challenge of the German High Sea Fleet. However, after the end of the First World War, the decline of Russian strength in the Far East and the rise of Japan as the third naval power in the world changed the strategic calculus for Britain. Further, Britain was unwilling to continue its alliance with Japan because the United States considered Tokyo a threat and a competitor.¹⁴ On 2 May 1921, the Standing Defence Sub-Committee of the cabinet, chaired by Arthur James Balfour (prime minister of Britain from 1902 to 1905 and foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919), considered the Admiralty and War Office papers of October 1919 and March 1920. He concluded that Hong Kong was practically indefensible and agreed to develop Singapore as Britain’s principal Far Eastern naval base in view of its strategic importance and lesser vulnerability. Balfour suggested that the Overseas Defence Committee discuss the argument not only against Hong Kong but also against Sydney as the probable Eastern British naval base. Sydney did not satisfy the offensive criterion due to distance, as a fleet based there could not operate in Japanese waters, nor could it prevent the intrusion of Japanese naval units in the Indian Ocean through the Malay Barrier and the consequent severing of its own line of communication (LoC) through Singapore, Colombo to Aden.¹⁵

On 16 June 1921, the British government decided to construct a naval base at Seletar on the northern shore of Singapore Island to protect the British Far Eastern possessions against a rising Japan. The naval base was to be located on the estuary of Sembawang River. Singapore Naval Base was to be used as a fueling and repair base for the main British fleet in case of war with Japan. It was approached by the eastern arm of the Johore Straits and was within the hand-held arms (rifles and machine guns) range of the mainland of the Malayan peninsula.¹⁶

Singapore had no significant agricultural production. Food supplies were imported from the Malayan hinterland and Thailand.¹⁷ Malaya was vital not only for providing protection to the British naval base in Singapore but also because it produced 40 percent of the rubber and over half...