It’s An Ill Wind

The Military Situation

January 1, 1942

Even sixty years after the fact most U.S. citizens know that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. However, the balance of their well-panned swift and numerous conquests of Asia and the Pacific area is mainly the province of historians and a few “old timers”, who lived through the period and consequence of their brilliantly successful campaigns.

            One day after Pearl Harbor, a separate task force easily devastated MacArthur’s major airfield on Luzon in the Philippines together with thirty-five Flying Fortresses B-17s, the largest fleet of those planes outside the U.S.A. all parked neatly in a row plus almost sixty Fighters parked closely for security reasons nearby. This was after MacArthur knew of Pearl Harbor. Unbelievable!

            A week later a different task force attacked Hong Kong. It quickly fell. Four days after Pearl Harbor Hitler made one of many of his monumentally grievous mistakes: he declared war on the United States. On December 14^th Northern Malay was lost to the Japanese. Sixty days later “unconquerable” Singapore, on the advice from Winston Churchill removed its big guns from British warships and aimed them toward the sea. Singapore surrendered to a Japanese land force half its size; 130,000 were captured including 60,000 Indian troops (British) and six Australian division. Most of those ended up in Japanese P.O.W. camps. The Indian troops were given the choice of going to a Japanese P. O.W. camp or joining Tojo’s side.

            They chose Tojo and within six months were fighting against the Allies north of Calcutta. Singapore marked one of Great Britain’s major defeats in a string of military defeats, another forgotten folly of Winston Churchill. Within two weeks of Pearl Harbor the Japanese had landed over 50,00 troops in the Philippines. MacArthur withdrew to Corregidor and subsequently fled to Australia. The Philippines were no longer defensible.

            By then Japan held Guam, Wake Island, the Gilbert and Marshals Islands and when we were in Tasmania, I learned that four Japanese carriers had demonstrated how indefensible Australia was by attacking Darwin, a northern port, sinking all the major English and Australian ships in the harbor, only two and a half months after Pearl Harbor.

            By the end of March Burma h