Remember Pearl Harbor

[Bernard Lamb]

11 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I think the war in Asia has been remembered by countries in the Anglo-sphere and Europe in the context of their own involvement. That's not really unusual or unexpected and most countries remember wars through the context of their own involvement and suffering. The war is remembered rather differently in Singapore, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries. China suffered terribly in the war, which started long before December 1941, and people in Japanese occupied Asian countries were treated very badly. We remember the dreadful treatment of Allied PoWs yet rarely think about the suffering of impressed labourers from the local populations. There were some excellent exhibitions on the fall of Singapore here this year which were very thought provoking.

On Japan and Japanese people, I love Japan and its people and most Japanese I know are much more aware of events in WW2 than generally thought. That said, the tensions between Japan and China are not far below a surface of civility.

There is an interesting book by Col Masanobu Tsuji that depicts the Japanese side of things. Not easy reading, but it does highlight points that European authors tend to either ignore or view in a different light.

I think the most revealing is that the Japanese lost the war, but saw themselves as having won the peace, as their action, as they saw it, led to so many countries gaining independence from their European masters. 

 

It will never be known just how many people died, directly or indirectly, among the local population in the occupied countries. One group that seemed to be particularly badly treated was the mixed race Dutch and Indonesian people. After Independence they were not welcomed with open arms in either country.

Bernard

[OnTheBranchline]

Arguably one of the reasons for Japan’s early successes was pure underestimating by racism by the Allies. Malaya/Singapore should have been held but the British decided to pick the worst commander they could find as well as throwing away naval assets in the form of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Revenge (which were illegally salvaged by the Indonesians and Chinese later on). 

[Bernard Lamb]

10 minutes ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Arguably one of the reasons for Japan’s early successes was pure underestimating by racism by the Allies. Malaya/Singapore should have been held but the British decided to pick the worst commander they could find as well as throwing away naval assets in the form of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Revenge (which were illegally salvaged by the Indonesians and Chinese later on). 

Oh dear.

We going so nicely until somebody had to drag it into the gutter.

Bernard

[Bernard Lamb]

Getting back nearer to the topic.

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbour dad was one of 3250 British troops on the USS West Point. They were in a convoy of several other troopships and their escorts. They had embarked at Halifax on November 8th and were approaching Capetown on the way to North Africa via Basra. After Pearl Harbour things changed and they were diverted to India and then onwards to Singapore arriving a couple of weeks before the Japanese invasion. The rest is history as they say, Fortunately "the worst commander they could find" realised that he had been stitched up by the politicians. Facing an attack by tanks on three seperate fronts, with none of his own, and a lack of both food and water, he decided to disobey his orders and to try to save as many men as possible rather than let them be butchered. In doing so he saved around 90k troops plus an unknown number of civilians.

Photo is of the West Point, the man in charge was Captain FH Kelly.

Bernard

 

[jjb1970]

11 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

There is an interesting book by Col Masanobu Tsuji that depicts the Japanese side of things. Not easy reading, but it does highlight points that European authors tend to either ignore or view in a different light.

I think the most revealing is that the Japanese lost the war, but saw themselves as having won the peace, as their action, as they saw it, led to so many countries gaining independence from their European masters. 

 

It will never be known just how many people died, directly or indirectly, among the local population in the occupied countries. One group that seemed to be particularly badly treated was the mixed race Dutch and Indonesian people. After Independence they were not welcomed with open arms in either country.

Bernard

 

I think the war certainly accelerated the end of European empires in Asia. Those empires would eventually have ended one way or another, either amicably and with an ongoing relationship or with wars of independence (and everything in-between) but I think it would have been a slower process. The defeat of European troops by Japan dealt a massive blow to the perception of European military power and in some cases independence movements received a large boost in terms of clandestine support from the OSS to fight the Japanese. And the defeat of the nationalist side in China by the Communists had huge consequential impacts in the region, particularly for Korea and French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) as Communist groups had access to training facilities in China, military advisers, weapons and logistic support. China didn't create Ho Chi Minh or make the Communists the major anti-French force in Vietnam but Chinese support was essential in re-orientating the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into a well-equipped regular military force. Would France have lost Indochina if the Chinese nationalists had won the civil war? Almost certainly yes, but the divorce might have looked much more like Malaya where Britain withdrew and granted independence (which rapidly became messy between Malaya and Singapore).

Japan benefitted enormously from a series of external circumstances. The first one was that Douglas MacArthur showed genuine magnanimity to Japan, like many great figures of history MacArthur's faults were almost as prodigious as his gifts but there are very good reasons he is still held in great respect in the Republic of Korea and Japan. The fall of China to Communism meant Japan became an essential cold war bulwark, then huge sums of money flowed into the country as a result of the Korean war. However, Japan made the most of the cards they were dealt after war, plenty of other countries have had lucky breaks and failed to exploit them, Japan took the breaks and exploited them to create a modern technological powerhouse.

The book 'Letters from Iwo Jima' is very enjoyable, it was the basis of the Clint Eastwood directed movie of the same name and is a study of General Kuribyashi.

[Ozexpatriate]

9 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

... the British decided to pick the worst commander they could find 

9 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

We going so nicely until somebody had to drag it into the gutter.

It all depends on to *whom* that comment might refer.

 

There is this clanger:

Quote

Two days before the attack on Malaya, No 1 Squadron [RAAF] Hudsons spotted the Japanese invasion fleet but, given uncertainty about the ships' destination and instructions to avoid offensive operations until attacks were made against friendly territory, Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief of British Far East Command* did not allow the convoy to be bombed.

* RAF

 

British command decisions throughout the Malaya campaign were not good. The desperately needed Hurricanes (air cover intended for Force Z) being transported to theatre on HMS Indomitable (92) did not make it in time - because on her maiden voyage, Indomitable grounded on a reef off Jamaica in November 1941. 

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[jjb1970]

The British took a huge gamble. Many accounts of the fall of Malya, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Dutch East Indies (not our responsibility, but the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia wasn't just an attack on the British Empire) ignore the crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa and the essential need to assist the USSR. The Japanese were certainly under-estimated, not so much because their military capability was under-estimated but more that it wasn't considered by either the British, Dutch or American's that they could knock out the US Pacific fleet and attack the Philippines and Malaya together whilst heavily committed in China. Clearly the gamble to denude Malaya and Singapore of modern aircraft and the forces needed to defend the Malay Peninsula effectively was not successful, but it needs to be seen in context. There is still a myth that Britain considered Singapore some sort of invincible fortress and some idiot put the guns in the wrong place when the vulnerability of Singapore in the even of a loss of the Malay Peninsula was recognized and the big guns at Buona Vista and Changi were positioned to protect the entrances into the Strait of Johor and the big naval base at Sembawang (Sem-bar-wang, you draw out the 'ba') on the basis of the peninsula being under British control. There just weren't the necessary resources to defend the peninsula. Which isn't to say there weren't bad decisions and command failures, but it's not the simple case of incompetence still presented in many accounts. One of the more interesting parts of the Fall of Singapore exhibition at the national museum in Singapore was to present the possible attack routes over the Strait of Johor and the resources available and then ask visitors how they would deploy their forces and what they would defend. The idea was of course to chow that the defenders faced a dire task, and that comes from a post-colonial perspective in which locals whilst not anti-British have no great nostalgia for the colonial era.

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Photo is of the West Point, the man in charge was Captain FH Kelly.

I recognized her immediately as SS America.  Those funnels are so distinctive. I didn't realize she had been renamed as USS West Point for wartime service as a troopship.

 

Edited December 9, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[Bernard Lamb]

12 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I recognized her immediately as SS America.  Those funnels are so distinctive. I didn't realize she had been renamed as USS West Point for wartime service as a troopship.

 

Well spotted.

She sadly ended up as a wreck beached in the Canary Islands. A few years ago the hull was still visible but the last I heard she broke up and is now submerged. As a US ship she had bunks rather than hammocks. That was a popular feature with the Brits  but from what I was told they were not too keen on the American food.

 

Dad eventually returned home on the Empire Pride. He rated that as a much superior ship.😃

Bernard

[Downer]

When the Japanese launched an undeclared war against Russia in 1904 with a surprise  attack on Port Arthur most of the US press praised them for their daring. 

[faulcon1]

Japanese soldiers admitted they were dreadfully indoctrinated by the army at that time. Yes people in China still do have an intense hatred of the Japanese and Chinese students who had English speaking teachers said once they graduated they wanted to go to Japan so they could kill Japanese people. Being told they were 70+ years too late as the present generation of Japanese have not killed Chinese people, Chinese students say that makes not one iota of any difference.

[62613]

On 09/12/2022 at 11:43, Bernard Lamb said:

Oh dear.

We going so nicely until somebody had to drag it into the gutter.

Bernard

He's correct! There was a perception, among the European democracies at least, that the Japanese were all short - sighted, for instance; or that they couldn't fly aircraft as Europeans/Americans did. After Pearl Harbor (bringing the thread back onto the subject) the Americans saw their war in the Pacific as a moral crusade against inferior orientals who needed to be wiped from the face of the earth.

 

[Bernard Lamb]

17 minutes ago, 62613 said:

He's correct! There was a perception, among the European democracies at least, that the Japanese were all short - sighted, for instance; or that they couldn't fly aircraft as Europeans/Americans did. After Pearl Harbor (bringing the thread back onto the subject) the Americans saw their war in the Pacific as a moral crusade against inferior orientals who needed to be wiped from the face of the earth.

 

I think the most important part of the post that I made the comment about was the insulting attitude to the commander. Our friend did not elaborate as to exactly who he  was writing about. A very long time ago when people were looking for a scapegoat the easy target was Arthur Percival. I thought we had grown up since then but some people still want to spread muck. I think that more recent historians take a more balanced view.  Please do not take part of my post out of context. I take it that our friend is a troll as he has not had the decency to clarify  the matter by way of explainig who is is refering to, Probably too busy reading old copies of The daily Telegraph from the 1940s.

 

Bernard 

[jjb1970]

I think there was a racial element to the war in the East but it's much more complex than just saying the Europeans and Americans underestimated Japan. There was an element of that for sure, there was also an element of it being returned by local populations as resentment against white rule in much of Asia (the resentment against foreign rule was justified, but it also developed racial ideas), and both the Europeans and Japanese when they conquered much of SE Asia especially played on the racial tensions between local populations (Indian - Chinese - Malay/Indonesian for example) to assist their rule. The problem when racism is discussed is many see it as a one way street (white people are racist), when it is not even a two way street but a web of relationships which can be quite baffling. Singapore is a very successful multi-ethnic state and of all the places I've been nowhere else has felt quite as successful at integrating different ethnicities and faiths into a harmonious whole (which is not an accident, social cohesion is a policy priority for the government). However, even in Singapore you see the evidence that below the surface there are still tensions between some Indians and Malay people, and between each of them and the Chinese majority. If you go over the water to Malaysia or Indonesia the tensions between the Malay/Indonesian and Chinese people is very much more obvious and can spill over into violence without too much effort. Malaysia still has the bumiputera system of institutionalized discrimination. I well remember the 1997 riots in Indonesia when mobs were rampaging looking for ethnic Chinese to kill, and the Indonesian genocide of the mid-60's (following Soekarno's year of living dangerously) had heavy racial weight to settle scores against the Chinese. You can easily find some rather questionable views of eathother when you visit Japan, Korea and China.

In saying all this, I d emphasise tarring all Asians as racist is just as stupid and wrong as tarring all British people, all American's and all people of anywhere else as being racist because it's easy to identify examples of racism. Most Malaysian and Indonesian people get on with each other despite ethnic differences in the same way that most British people just get on with each other. However, racism does exist, those who hold such views can be very unpleasant (though it's also true many hold deeply unpleasant views about collective groups while having no issues at being friends with individuals of those groups), we shouldn't hide from it but equally neither should we make sweeping generalisations about it.

[62613]

15 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

I think the most important part of the post that I made the comment about was the insulting attitude to the commander. Our friend did not elaborate as to exactly who he  was writing about. A very long time ago when people were looking for a scapegoat the easy target was Arthur Percival. I thought we had grown up since then but some people still want to spread muck. I think that more recent historians take a more balanced view.  Please do not take part of my post out of context. I take it that our friend is a troll as he has not had the decency to clarify  the matter by way of explainig who is is refering to, Probably too busy reading old copies of The daily Telegraph from the 1940s.

 

Bernard 

Yes, the Japanese attack down the Malay peninsula was masterful; their "Hook and infiltrate" tactics unsettled the Empire troops involved. They employed similar tactics in Burma, with the same effect on the troops on the ground, and it took Slim's Battle of the Admin Box in 1943 (IMHO), to show to his troops how they could defeat the Japanese.

 

[jjb1970]

Something easy to forget is that the Japanese army of 1941 had been at war for quite a long time in China and had fought the USSR, so their army was combat hardened and with a lot of experience. The British had also been at war for just over two years at that point but the war in France and the low countries had been a short, sharp campaign following months of the phony war and experiential learning in North Africa was still at quite an early stage for the British. And the US led army in the Philippines was still less exposed to war. Japanese troops adapted to an environment which was just as alien to them as it was to European troops (the jungles of SE Asia) remarkably well.

[Bernard Lamb]

Mention of racism reminds me of a story from dad.

On the West Point they crossed the equator a few days before PH and set up a ceremony with all the men having to pay their respects to Neptune. They choose a chap who fitted the description of a certain person in a sea shanty to play the part of Neptune.  I can't say more than that these days. The Brits took great delighted in getting the Yanks to grovel before him. The best bit of entertainment that they had on the whole voyage.

Bernard

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

the Japanese army of 1941 had been at war for quite a long time in China and had fought the USSR

When/where do you refer. I presume the Soviet-Japanese border war in the 1930s. They did lose at Khalkhin Gol in 1939.

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

The British had also been at war for just over two years at that point but the war in France and the low countries had been a short, sharp campaign following months of the phony war and experiential learning in North Africa was still at quite an early stage for the British. And the US led army in the Philippines was still less exposed to war.

The troops in Malaya were, for the most part, not "British", but Indian and Australian and much of the fighting on the peninsular was carried out using Indian and Australian troops. It was probably the first combat experience for most of them.

 

One online source (accuracy unknown) states:

Quote

Allied forces in Malaya and Singapore on December 1, 1941 were as follows - 19,000 British, 15,000 Australian, 37,000 Indian Army - including the 11th Division which was largely made up of British soldiers trained in India, and 17,000 Malay Volunteers. 

Equipment and training levels for the Indian troops is questionable.

 

It's easy to find a lot of disagreement in online sources as to actual troop strengths (on both sides).

[jjb1970]

9 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

When/where do you refer. I presume the Soviet-Japanese border war in the 1930s. They did lose at Khalkhin Gol in 1939.

 

Yes, but even at Khalkhin Gol they learned lessons, the principal one being not to fight the USSR. Even when the USSR was at it's low points in the Winter of 1941 and then spring of 1942 Japan avoided entanglement in Germany's war, and Stalin was confident enough that Japan would remain neutral (thanks to excellent intelligence but also making a decision that could have backfired spectacularly) to strip the East of its best troops.

[jjb1970]

9 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

The troops in Malaya were, for the most part, not "British", but Indian and Australian and much of the fighting on the peninsular was carried out using Indian and Australian troops. It was probably the first combat experience for most of them.

 

One online source (accuracy unknown) states:

Equipment and training levels for the Indian troops is questionable.

 

It's easy to find a lot of disagreement in online sources as to actual troop strengths (on both sides).

 

Throughout the war in the East Britain relied on the Indian Army and Commonwealth/Imperial troops. The famous 14th Army commanded by Slim was largely an Indian army formation although there were British and other non-Indian divisions. That said, when talking about the Indian army it is not as simple as just talking about Indian soldiers as Indian Army divisions were mixed units with British battalions mixed with Indian battalions in brigades and with many of the specialist troops being British. 

The colonial empires tended to rely on local troops, it's one of the things that probably deserves more attention since for different reasons both former colonial powers and new countries often failed to properly recognize the role of local troops. There seems to have been quite a standard model of using European officers and a cadre of professional NCOs to lead local troops, many of which fought superbly. The British Indian Army was a great fighting force, the Ghurkhas remain one of the worlds great fighting forces long after the end of the colonial era, French North African units had great fighting records. There are still echoes of it today (quite apart from the Ghurkhas), Chechnya provides some of the best troops in the Russian army despite it's troubled past relationship with Russia.

[jjb1970]

Perhaps one of the most notable examples of a European colonial battle being fought by colonial troops despite being remembered as a European battle was Dien Bien Phu. Although the officers were French, most of the ground troops and infantry/paratroops they commanded were Vietnamese, North African, African and Foreign Legion. Even the nominally French units relied heavily on local Vietnamese troops. 

[The Johnster]

I worked for Royal Mail in Cardiff sorting office with a Somali gentleman who had fought at Dien Bien Phu, and was on the last plane out.  His story was fascinating; he'd had to leave Somalia in a hurry after an ill-advised association with the daughter of a local warlord, and joined the Foreign Legion, hence his attendance at Dien Bien Phu, and later became a PT instructor in that very tough outfit.  Nothing in his appearance or manner suggested such a past, which only goes to show... 

 

Small and wiry in build, he was an absolute gentleman, very intelligent and knowledgeable about all sorts of interesting stuff, and enjoyed a quiet pint; great company in fact. 

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

There seems to have been quite a standard model of using European officers and a cadre of professional NCOs to lead local troops, many of which fought superbly.

In India the 'system' had been in place for well over a century - evolving from the armies used by the trading companies and greatly influenced by the Sepoy rebellion.

 

11 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

... when talking about the Indian army it is not as simple as just talking about Indian soldiers as Indian Army divisions were mixed units with British battalions mixed with Indian battalions in brigades and with many of the specialist troops being British. 

Specialized - like engineers/sappers and (I suspect) artillery. In earlier times there certainly were local cavalry. The indigenous troops probably weren't trusted with artillery as a colonial standard operating procedure. There were "armoured" units but I don't think these weren't equipped with battle tanks and were understrength in terms of any armoured vehicles.

 

"Kitchener reforms" of the British Indian army:

Quote

The mountain batteries had already lost their numbers two years earlier. Under the 1903 reforms they were renumbered with twenty added to their original numbers. The army had very little artillery (only 12 batteries of mountain artillery), and Royal Indian Artillery batteries were attached to the divisions. The Indian Army Corps of Engineers was formed by the Group of Madras, Bengal and Bombay Sappers in their respective presidencies.

 

Edited December 16, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

... it's one of the things that probably deserves more attention since for different reasons both former colonial powers and new countries often failed to properly recognize the role of local troops.

My point was very much connected to the fact that the contributions of non-US, "Allied" troops is very much overlooked* in many conventional histories where terms like "British forces" are used whenever under the command of a British general. I wouldn't use the term "local" troops either. The British Indian army was the primary force deployed to land at Basra (in modern Iraq) in both world wars. They also fought in large numbers in North Africa along with South African, New Zealand and Australian troops. Hardly 'local' troops.

 

* Where the details of individual units are described, then is usually apparent where the troops actually came from.