Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [104]
They did succeed, even beyond their projections. In the smaller operations, the Japanese moved into the Gilberts with no opposition. The unfortified island of Guam fell on December 10. Wake proved a tougher nut to crack, and its minuscule garrison beat off a landing attempt on the 11th before succumbing to a stronger one on the 23rd. The defense of Wake was looked on as a tiny epic by the American public in that dark December, but it had no effect on the overall course of the war, and the last message, “The issue is in doubt….”, seemed to sum up all too accurately the state of the world as Christmas neared.
In the western drive the main target was Malaya, but there were a couple of side operations also to be wrapped up. The Japanese wanted to take Hong Kong, the last British-held territory on the China coast. As a base it was completely untenable, but the British insisted for prestige reasons that it be held as long as possible. In November they had beefed up its garrison of four battalions by the addition of two Canadian militia battalions. This was regarded by the British as a show of force. They had few guns, fewer naval units, and six old planes to defend the island, but some among the garrison were convinced the island was impregnable, and the Japanese no more than third-rate troops.
The house of cards came tumbling down on December 8, the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor on the other side of the International Date Line. The first Japanese air strike wiped out the British aircraft, and in a day they broke through the mainland British defense position, which had been scheduled to hold out for three weeks. The British were pushed off the mainland and back onto the island of Hong Kong by the 11th. After a week of heavy bombardment the Japanese stormed across on the 18th, split the defenders into two parts, isolated them, and drove them to the ends of the island. By Christmas Eve, the British defense was collapsing, and on the 25th, the British commander, General C. M. Maltby, surrendered. The British suffered 12,000 casualties, the Japanese 2,800.
The imperial bastions crumbled like sand castles before the advancing tide. Simultaneously with their attack against the outpost of Hong Kong, the Japanese initiated their major western drive, against Malaya and Singapore. Troops moved direct from Indochina into Thailand and started down the Kra Isthmus toward Malaya. Meanwhile, troop convoys crossed the Gulf of Siam and landed forces just above the Thai-Malay border, and just below it at Khota Bharu.
Singapore is a low-lying island off the southern end of the Malay Peninsula. It had been a great trading city back in the Middle Ages, and had then been destroyed by its rivals. In 1819, an enterprising Englishman named Stamford Raffles had leased it from its nominal ruler, the Sultan of Johore, and had established a duty-free port city there. Through the nineteenth century it had flourished and grown, become a naval base as well as a trading port, and gradually became the center of seaborne empire east of Suez. The British undertook extensive fortifications of the island in the 1920’s, but they were never completed, falling prey both to heavy costs and to confusion about the problems of land bases versus air power. The British decided that Singapore would be held as a main base for the navy. If war broke out in the Far East, the army would hold Singapore until the Royal Navy sent out a fleet that would destroy any invaders of Malaya. They failed to fortify the shoreward side of the islands, however, and then in the thirties they decided that air power was the key to control. But when