BRITISH INFORMATION SERVICES I an Agency of the British Government I • ~Llln:11: L9'r PLAZA NS:W Ynllpll
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T he fo llowi ng pamphlets may be obtained on reguest from BRIT ISH I NF ORM A T I O SER V I CES )0 Rockefell e r Plaza, ew York 20, . Y F L YI G B OJ\ll3S B RITA IN VE R U J AP AN 50 , .. ACTS ABOUT I DJA B RITAIN A D T H E COMJ\ION P OL TH E B R I Tl ~ H COJ\!MON\X' FA l.Tl-I Al'D EMPIRE BRLT Ai l , an ill ustr,1ted monthly m.1gazine ub cri ption , 1.00 ,1 ye.i r in the Un ited St.1 tes; J .20 in C.inada. ,.UBLISHED JANUARY, 1945, BY BRITISH INFORMATION SERVICES I An Agency of the British Government I • ~llln:11: L9'R PLAZA NS:W YnllPll .,,. .. v OMJETHING TO GO ON WITH HE aim of this booklet is to outlme bneB.y the very substan T tial part Britain has played so far in the fight against Japan. The people of Great Bntam, although aware that their contribu tion is cons1derable, st1ll count it as only "something to go on w1th" until the menace of Nazism near at home has been wiped out, and the nat10n s hands are free to devote all efforts to the task of victory over Japan. To the Bnt1sh nation as a whole, it ts no more than a 'token' -even though to the Bnt1sh sold1ers and aumen who have fought and d1ed 111 the steam mg Jungles and malarial swamps of Malaya and Burma, 1t 1s a great deal more they have given everything. Th1s booklet lurnts itself almost ent1rely to the contributions of the United Kingdom. The very great efforts of the people of the Eastern nations of the British Emp1re- the Austral1ans, the New Zealanders, the Indians, the Burmese, the Paofic I landers- can only be touched upon ·within the space of these few pages. The hints of their val1ant contribut10n offered here must not be taken as anything more than hints. Indeed this short outlme i bound to be incomplete in many The late Major General Orde Wingate, the man wh o created and le d "W in gate's Raiders" other respects as well , but from 1t the reader wi 11 see that, both and introduced the method of supply by parachute. in cost to Britam and in cost to the Japanese enemy, the British people are very modest indeed to call their efforts a 'token. ' T he photogr.1phs in thi s booklet are British Official ex cept the foll owing: l n<li an Officia l Photos-pgs. 10, 3 2 l, 22, 2-1 C. 0J,I\' )' Photus-pgs. 11, 26 ( h111.) THE YEAR OF RETREAT I 'NA 1941-1942 'Within a few hours of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong, Britain was at war with Japan. At that time Britain and the British Commonwealth had been at war against Germany for more than two years-a year of it fighting alone. With an actual war in Europe and North Africa absorbing her energies to the full, Britain naturally had had very little in the way of manpower and war materials to spare for a potential war in the Far East. The demands of global strategy compelled her to put everything ... she could into def ending Egypt. The loss of Egypt (unlike the loss of Singapore) might have meant losing the whole war. Britain, therefore, sent her only complete armored division to Egypt in 1940, just after Dunkirk. What little she had to spare from this essential task in late 1941 was being sent to Russia. So the year of Pearl Harbor, Corregidor, Guam and Wake was also a year of retreats for the British forces in the Pacific, which were hardly more than lightly armed garrisons when Japan struck. Like that of the American forces in the Philippines, the fight put up by these small British forces, against the crushing weight of an enemy of vastly 1 N'DT.A N' o e .er.AN greater numbers and equipment, was all the more gallant for being . li{r hopeless . f f f Ever since Pearl Harbor British forces HONG KONG. At this British colony the garrison of about 14,000 have been fighting the Japanese in this British, Indian and Canadian troops, and local volunteers held out for crucial strategic area. The total land eighteen days against some 90,000. Japanese. and sea front is some 2,500 miles long tI When, finally, the garrison had to capitulate, after killing numbers of Japanese, the enemy found the docks and harbor works had been blown up; all .military stores damaged beyond use; all vessels in the harbor destroyed. 5 THE MALAYA CAMPAIGN A Japanese force of 80,000 to 100,000 m en poured down the Malay Peninsula from Siam and French Indo-China (which the Vichy Government had permitted the Japanese to use as a base ) They were opposed during the first weeks by an Indian and British force of about 20,000 and about 100 obsolete planes. The Japanese had to fight every inch of the way, at great cost to both sides. ([ Of the 800 men of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who fought in the rearguard action only 100 were left to cross the causeway onto the island of Singapore. The Gordon Highlanders suffered on the same sca le, while the Leicester and the East Surrey Regiments both lost fifty per cent of their strength. ([ Nine convoys of British ships arrived at Singapore with troop re inforcements and guns. The Allied force thus became about )0,000 men- British, Australians and Indians in about equal proportions. But the reinforcements reached the end of their long journey after the rearguard action had been fought, in time only for many of them to be cut to pieces as they landed. The Gurkhas were decimated, and the Australian and Indian Regiments suffered heavy casualties. Of the 846 men of the Malay Regiment less than 100 survived. ([ The British N avy, meanwhile, took a desperately courageous gamble to intercept more Japanese forces approaching the East coast of Malaya . The late Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, although full y aware of th e risk he was taking without air cover available, nevertheless sailed to meet the enemy The gamble was lost, at the sacrifice of a brand new battle ship, H.M.S. Prince of JV ales, and an old er battle cruiser, H.M.S. Rep11lse. ([ Then two little destroyers, H .M.S. T hanet, and H .M.A.S. Vampfre, intercepted a Japanese cruiser and three destroyers, sinking one de stroyer and damaging another, at the cost of the loss of H.M.S. T hanet. ([ W hen the Japanese reached Singapore th ey found th at here, too, British demolition squads had destroyed a munber of shi ps and small craft in th e harbor, many of the port fac ilities of the naval base, and sunk the world"s biggest floating dock. On the mainland very valuable tin-dredges and other mining equipment had been destroyed, and so had th e rubber stocks and factori es. Food stocks were dispersed for the use of th e Malayan population. 6 THE FIRST BURMA CAMPAIGN. When the Japanese struck into ti The handful of R.A.F. pilots gave air cover to the ground troops and, Burma with a powerful army they had to face no more than two British throughout the monsoon when ground operations were at a standstill, kept up a relentless offensive against Japanese positions, communica divisions and a few aircraft of the R.A.F and the American Volunteer tions and supply dumps. Group. The troops were men from the Southern and Midland Counties of England and from India, and Burman soldiers of the Burma Rifle C The British and Allied naval units gave support to the land campaign Regiment. without regard to the cost. In the Battle of the Java Sea, on February Field Marshal Wavell once wrote that to qualify for a place among 27, 1942, an Allied naval force of fourteen ships engaged a Japanese fleet of twenty, which included a number of cruisers and thirteen de the greatest of military geniuses a general "must have shown his qualities stroyers. Two of the Allied ships were Australian and five were Brit in adversity as well as in success." General Sir Harold Alexander, who ish-the cruiser H.M.S. Exeter (of Graf Spee fame) and four de took command in Burma in March, 1942, showed his great qualities in stroyers. Although outnumbered and outgunned, the Allied ships in this campaign (as did General MacArthur at Bataan), which military flicted damage on the Japanese fleet, but most of the British ships were circles count as a classic example of the systematic fighting withdrawal. lost and H .M.S. Exeter was crippled by a hit in the boiler room and reduced to half speed. His soldiers, like those who fought in Malaya, had as yet little train ing in jungle warfare. With the Japanese in possession of Rangoon he ti Two days later H.M.S. Exeter and H.M.S. Encounter, in company with could not be supplied or reinforced by sea. Lines of communication with the destroyer U.S.S. Pope, reported sighting three enemy cruisers. Since his base in India, over the mountain trails and jungle tracks in the North then nothing has been heard of those Allied ships. of Burma, did not then exist.