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That afternoon British envoys came out of their lines under a flag of truce. Later a humiliated Perceval signed a document of “unconditional surrender,” and at dark the shooting stopped and an uneasy quiet fell over Singapore. The Japanese troops moved into the city the next morning, and the British moved out to three and a half years of captivity. In total casualties, the Japanese had suffered 9,800; the British losses were 138,000. It was the single greatest disaster ever suffered by British arms, and it left the Indian Ocean and the East Indies wide open to conquest.

While the western Japanese forces roared down the Malayan Peninsula toward Singapore and the eastern forces fastened a stranglehold on the Philippines, the Japanese split off a third force that went for the heart of their objective, the East Indies. Navy, army, and air force units crashed into the so-called Malay Barrier and ran riot. The Allies had little with which to resist; they improvised an organization called ABDACOM, for American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, and gave its direction into the hands of General Sir Archibald Wavell, sent out from the desert where he had recently fallen from grace with Churchill.

ABDA was longer on initials than it was on fighting strength. The British and the few available Australian troops were trapped in Malaya, and the Japanese by their drive through Thailand had cut off the hope of reinforcement through India. The Americans were very thin in the Philippines, and Pearl Harbor had forestalled any hope of American relief. The Dutch troops in the East Indies were primarily native levies, armed only for internal security, and not overly friendly to their colonial masters at that. ABDA was left with a few obsolete aircraft, British and the Netherlands East Indies Air Force, and a series of scratch naval units under the command of the ranking Dutch sailor, Admiral K. W. F. M. Doorman; the ships lacked even common codebooks; in fact, they lacked a common language. The Malay Barrier was a myth.

The Japanese hit this myth in four separate but coordinated groups, a carrier striking force to the eastward, then an eastern, central, and western force. All operated the same way. Air bases were isolated by naval air strikes, then landings were put in; local control was quickly consolidated, and the navy and air units moved on to the next target. The separation of forces was unorthodox, but against a weak and ill-organized Allied effort, it was highly successful. The ABDA units were reduced to running back and forth like firemen with a blaze out of control, and the Japanese swept them off the board a few at a time.

Disasters came fast and furious. In mid-December the Japanese landed on British North Borneo, the state of Sarawak, ruled by the descendants of “Rajah” Brooke; the territory was occupied by Christmas. By the second week in January the enemy was in northern Borneo and landing in northern Celebes too. From there they jumped to Kendari in southern Celebes, and Balikpapan, halfway down Makassar Strait on the eastern side of Borneo. Here an American striking force ambushed them. Admiral Glassford started out with two cruisers and four destroyers; one cruiser grounded and had to turn back, the second developed engine trouble; the destroyers, all World War I relics, got in among the Japanese transports on the night of the 23rd-24th, shot them up, and sank five, before fleeing back down the strait.

ABDA could operate only at night. With the dawn came the ubiquitous Japanese search planes, and anything that floated was in trouble during daylight. On February 4, Doorman took four cruisers out of Surabaya, his main base, to make another strike against Balikpapan. Planes caught them and hit two Americans, Houston once and Marblehead twice; the raid finished the latter. After temporary repairs she limped painfully back to the States. Next, Doorman swung west to try to stop the Japanese from reaching Palembang, the great oil refinery on Sumatra. He got as far as Banka Island