Due to MacArthur's insistence and to the hopes placed in the B-17 bombers this strategy of 'scuttle' was changed in August 1941. Instead of retreating to Bataan, the defending forces were to hold all the islands and to throw back any invasion troops. To do this, of course, the defences had to be considerably improved. MacArthur had approximately 140,000 men under him, but only 31,000 of these were regulars; the remainder were auxiliary Philippine troops, who were on the whole poorly-trained and poorly-equipped, although it was hoped to improve their standards by early 1942. As the spectre of war grew after mid-1941, guns and planes were hastily sent to the Philippines. The latter were particularly important, for it was hoped with the new B-17s not only to devastate any invasion convoys but also to raid enemy bases in Formosa and Japan; but only thirty-five of these planes were available when the Japanese struck. As for the grandiosely-titled Asiatic Fleet, this was composed of only a few cruisers and destroyers which were to be withdrawn southwards as soon as hostilities commenced. The main naval force was twenty-nine American submarines, equipped, it was later discovered, with ineffective torpedoes.
Given another six months, the defensive capability of the Philippines would have been much greater; but the Japanese were no respecters of anyone's timetable but their own. In any case, it is worth noting that MacArthur's troop dispositions contradicted his avowed strategy of holding everything. The best units and equipment were kept around Manila, and the coastlines were only covered by lower-grade Philippine regiments. It would not be too difficult therefore, for a strong Japanese force to gain a beachhead.
This, in fact, is just what the invaders planned to do. Lieutenant-General Homma, commander of Fourteenth Army, was given only 57,000 men to capture the islands and he was plainly relying upon air superiority, surprise and the superior quality of his troops in order to overcome the odds. The first precondition was achieved within a few days. At 0230 on 8th December Manila learnt of the raid on Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of war, but the American commanders were undecided whether to bomb Formosa immediately. The planes were therefore ordered to fly around Luzon Island in order to avoid being caught on the ground, as an enemy strike was expected. Unfortunately for these plans, however, fog had made the Japanese aircraft on Formosa flightbound and they did not arrive over the Philippines until late morning. By this time, the confusion on the American side had been sorted out and the B-17s were being loaded up for a strike against Formosa. Since the air raid warning system was inefficient, these planes were sitting ducks for the Japanese attackers. For more than an hour, Clark Field and other bases were riddled with bombs and bullets, and the Americans lost seventeen B-17s, fifty-six fighters and thirty other aircraft; Japan's air dominance was virtually complete. Although the surviving American planes struggled valiantly for the next few days, they were overwhelmed by vastly superior forces. On 17th December all surface warships were withdrawn and the remaining B-17s were flown to Australia.
By this time, Homma's troops had made several preliminary invasion moves. On 8th and 10th December respectively, detachments took Bataan Island and Camiguan Island, both lying to the north of Luzon, as advance bases. On the evening of the 10th, the coastal areas around Aparri and Gonzaga were occupied by 2,000 Japanese infantry, who soon brushed aside light opposition and marched southwards. At the same time, an equal number had landed at Vigan and began to push south to assist the main invasion force, while on 12th December a Japanese force from Palau landed at Legaspi in south-east Luzon and advanced northwards.
Having established footholds and seized several airfields, Fourteenth Army now landed in strength at three places in the Lingayen Gulf on 22nd December, covered by an air umbrella and a naval force which included two battleships. Neither the poor-quality Philippine troops, nor the few better-trained American units and Filipino Scouts, could offer much resistance to the 43,000 Japanese, especially since the latter included two tank and four artillery regiments. Linking up with the Vigan detachment, Homma's force moved south upon Manila. Two days later 7,000 more Japanese landed at Lam on Bay, joined the Legaspi detachment, and pressed northwards. The capital was thus in danger of being pincered by these two converging invasion groups, and MacArthur was beginning to fear that the Lamon Bay force would cut him off from Bataan. Realising that his scheme to hold the enemy on the beaches had failed miserably, he engineered a gradual withdrawal to the rocky peninsula. On 26th December Manila itself was evacuated and declared an open city, and for the following ten days a step-by-step retreat took place, covered by American tanks. By 6th January all his troops on Luzon were in the peninsula, like 'a cat entering a sack' as Homma put it. While the Japanese casualties totalled only 1,900 (plus 2,700 men sick with malaria and other diseases), McArthur's force had been whittled down to around 80,000 troops chiefly due to Filipino desertions.
The strategy for the defence of Bataan was a simple one—to hold on grimly in order to deny the use of Manila Bay to the Japanese. But by the beginning of 1942, it was clear that the American reinforcements despatched across the Pacific were being diverted to Australia instead of being sent to assist MacArthur. Japanese air and naval superiority was so great that no relief, apart from that brought by submarine, could get through. It was, therefore, to be a forlorn stand, devoid of any hope of rescue. In addition, the area was terribly malarial and soon only one-quarter of the American troops were fit to fight. Finally, provisions were short since there were 126,000 mouths to feed instead of the planned-for 43,000. Men were put on half, and then quarter, rations. Prospects for a lengthy defence were not very good.
Nevertheless, the expected quick collapse did not occur. For one thing the peninsula lent itself to defence but, most important of all, the Japanese were similarly affected by sickness and provisions problems. Early attempts at direct attack met with little success, and then the 48th Division was sent away to the Dutch East Indies on 22nd January. Seeking to break the deadlock, two Japanese battalions were landed on the southern tip of Bataan but after three weeks of hard fighting they were all wiped out. By 8th February Homma was compelled to suspend operations because his forces were so weak on account of troop withdrawals, and because over 10,000 of his men were sick. In fact, by the end of February he could muster only three effective battalions and had the Americans known this, they might have changed the course of the campaign.
The latter, however, were thinking only of the final Japanese assault and were very concerned about their own sicknesses, which left only about twenty per cent of their troops ready for action. In any case, morale was badly hit when MacArthur left for Australia to take up command of Allied forces in the South-West Pacific. The situation worsened at the end of March when Japanese reinforcements poured into Luzon; with more aircraft, artillery, and 22,000 fresh troops, Homma's task at once became easier. Following heavy bombing and artillery attacks on 3rd and 4th April, the Fourteenth Army pressed forward against the shattered American lines. Unwilling to risk a heavy slaughter of his sick and demoralised force, Major-General King surrendered unconditionally on 9th April.
General Wainwright, MacArthur's successor in the Philippines, had before then withdrawn to the island fortress of Corregidor, which, with other smaller islands, controlled the entrance to Manila Bay. Equipped with fifty-six coastal guns ranging up to 12-inch calibre, covered by slabs of reinforced concrete, and containing a well-fed garrison of 14,700 men, Corregidor would be a hard nut to crack. But, like Singapore, it had chiefly been built with a seaborne invasion in mind; it lay only two miles from the tip of Bataan, and possessed few anti-aircraft guns. From 24th March onwards, the island was pounded by bombers, and later by 9.4-inch howitzers; on 4th May over 16,000 shells were fired on to it from Bataan. The defending troops were crushed, their eardrums haemorrhaged, their buildings and fortifications torn up, their water supply hit. Nevertheless, they put up a fierce resistance when 2,000 Japanese landed just before midnight on 5th May; but a foothold was gained and tanks were introduced, which caused a swift collapse. Fearing a slaughter of the defenders, General Wainwright surrendered at 1000 hours on the 6th.
Homma, however, was after a total American surrender, and not just one confined to the islands in Manila Bay. In the southern islands, United States forces had been engaged in an irregular campaign with Japanese troops for some time; in Panay, Colonel Christie's men had been most successful in this. Only on 18th May did they surrender, following Homma's threat to kill his prisoners, and by 9th June all organised resistance had ceased. Japanese killed and wounded in the entire campaign were probably around 12,500 but they had defeated a United States-Filipino force of 140,000 men, admittedly of poor quality. The captured American soldiers in the Philippines went into a long and dreadful captivity, of which the famous 'Death March' of Bataan was only the beginning. As in Malaya, they had been defeated through their faulty dispositioning, poor training and lack of air and naval power; but they had gallantly held on for almost six months, which was all that was contemplated in the old American plan before relief would come. Unfortunately, Pearl Harbor had destroyed that plan and the Japanese tide of conquest had spread far wider than the Philippines.
The seizure of the Philippines and Singapore was, after all, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, only a precautionary step, based upon the need to prevent American and British forces from interfering with the Japanese occupation of the vital oilfields in the Dutch East Indies. Having succeeded in nullifying these threats within the first week of the war, Japan was free to move further south. British-controlled Borneo, itself a producer of oil, was the first to fall, since London had already decided that it was pointless to waste resources upon the defence of this jungle-covered territory. Since August 1941 oil production had been steadily reduced in order to deny supplies to the Japanese, and on 8th December the oilfields were destroyed. In fact, the, only point of defence was to be around Kuching, which would prevent the invaders from using nearby airfields for the attack upon Singapore. Consequently, when 5,000 Japanese troops from Indo-China arrived off Miri on 16th December they encountered no opposition and within three days Brunei and British North Borneo had been occupied. On the 24th, preceded by air strikes, two battalions of Japanese arrived off Kuching. Seeing his garrison of 2/15th Punjab outnumbered, Lieutenant-Colonel Lane ordered the destruction of the town's airfield and a withdrawal into Dutch territory. Only after heavy fighting, and delays caused by bad weather and the need to reorganise, were the Japanese able to take the more important Singawang II base on 26th–27th January. Thereafter, the defenders slowly withdrew southwards, only surrendering in early March after the fall of Java.
To seize the Dutch East Indies proper, the Japanese had planned a three-pronged attack. A Western Force, sailing from Indo-China, was to capture the Palembang region in southern Sumatra and then to move against western Java; a Central Force moving from Palau via Davao in the Philippines, was to take the oilfields of Dutch Borneo and then proceed to Java; and an Eastern Force, driving south from Davao, was to capture the Celebes, Amon and Timor, cutting off Allied reinforcements from Australia. Java, the central island of the Indies, would thus be invaded from the west, north and east. Lieutenant-General Imamura of Sixteenth Army was put in charge of this venture, which would be supported by special Naval Landing Forces, about 450 aircraft, and a naval force which included two battleships under Admiral Konda. Once again, air and sea power, plus the use of experienced, well-equipped troops, was relied upon to overcome the inferiority in numbers.
All this went astonishingly true to plan—in fact even better than planned—for the swift British collapse in Malaya and the American withdrawal to Bataan allowed the Japanese to accelerate their programme of conquest elsewhere. Sumatra, for example, was soon under constant air attack from planes based on northwest Malaya, and the mixed Allied force of three fighter and two bomber squadrons could do little to halt these raids. They did inflict some damage upon the Western Force convoy, but could not prevent it landing around 3,000 troops on 14th February, following the seizure of the main airfield and some oil plants by 700 Japanese paratroops. By the next day, Wavell had decided upon a retreat to Java. Admittedly, there were many Air Force ground staff amongst the 10,000 Allied servicemen in Sumatra but this was a surprisingly weak effort when it is realised that the invaders were outnumbered by almost three to one; perhaps the fall of Singapore on that same day had something to do with this decision.
Further east, the Japanese had been even quicker off the mark. On 20th December Davao on Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines was captured and turned into an advance base for the Central and Eastern Forces; five days later, Jolo Island was also seized. After waiting a couple of weeks to reorganise, they sprang into action again. On 11th January, Tarakan in north-east Borneo was taken after heavy fighting but the Dutch had already demolished the oil plants there. Thus 5,000 of the invading troops were taken by ship to Balikpapan on 21st January, where they anchored that evening despite the sinking of one vessel by a US bomber and a late-night attack by four American destroyers. In the first surface engagement by the US Navy since 1898 three transports were sunk but the Japanese invasion was in no way delayed. By the 24th, the troops had landed and the defending garrison was withdrawing. In a joint sea and land approach, the Japanese moved on to Bandjarmasin on 10th February. Virtually all of the great island of Borneo, with its oilfields and airbases, was now in their hands.
At the same day as the seizure of Tarakan by Central Force, 1,600 Japanese troops of Eastern Force, helped by paratroop landings, captured Menado and Kemma in the northern Celebes. By the 24th, when the airfields there were again ready for use, they anchored off Kendari and quickly took the best airbase in the East Indies. At the end of that month a force of 3,600 overran the town of Ambon. Assisted by the air support provided by the carriers Soryu and Hiryu, the Japanese were able to conquer the rest of the island within three days, thereby cutting off the Allied reinforcement route to the Philippines. Shortly afterwards, Makassar was captured by forces from Kendari, and on 20th February Timor was invaded by a landing expedition and paratroops, which overran the whole island—again within three days. With monotonous regularity, these relatively small but well-trained detachments of Japanese troops, relying upon air and naval support, had been able to take almost every position in the Indies. Now only Java was left, and its position looked increasingly precarious after the seizure of Sumatra and Timor, and the dissolution of the ABDA Command on 25th February. The policy of holding the Malay barrier until reinforcements arrived had been shattered by the swiftness of the Japanese moves, and Wavell preferred to direct fresh units to Burma while the Americans sent theirs to Australia. The Dutch, with many miscellaneous Allied units under them, were left to defend Java.
Because of the Japanese domination of the air, Allied naval forces had been able to play little part in the defence of the Dutch East Indies, apart from the destroyer raid on Balikpapan. On 4th February, for example, the Combined Striking Force of cruisers and destroyers under Rear-Admiral Doorman attempted to interrupt the Japanese invasion of Makassar but was forced to retreat after three cruisers had been damaged by bombs. A later effort to intercept the invasion convoy heading for Palembang on 13th February was also compelled to return miraculously unscathed, after five separate air attacks. However, late on the 19th, Allied naval units clashed with a Japanese force in the Lombok Straits, during which two enemy destroyers and a transport were damaged. Nevertheless a Dutch destroyer was sunk and an American destroyer and a Dutch cruiser were damaged. The invasion of Bali, which cut off Java from Australia, continued unhindered by this action.
By the final week of February, it was clear that the invasion of Java would soon be attempted. Ostensibly, the numbers of troops there should have been ample to hold this important island, the last Allied refuge in the region. But the defence, as so often during this phase of the Pacific War, suffered from the lack of an organised command, a pitifully weak air force, an abundance of refugees from elsewhere (including 10,000 Air Force ground staff), and a sense of defeatism. No help could be expected from the Indonesians. Nevertheless, there could still be hope of beating off an invasion at sea, since Doorman commanded eight cruisers and twelve destroyers. On the other hand, the Japanese intended that nothing should go wrong during their seizure of Java. Vice-Admiral Kondo was to give close cover to the invasion convoys with his heavy cruisers and destroyers, while in the background lurked Nagumo's force of four aircraft carriers, two battleships and their escorts. The carrier task force patrolled south of Java to cut off any retreat, and, as a demonstration of power, had already devastated Darwin with 188 planes on 19th February.
On the 26th, Doorman's ships left Surabaya to attack the invasion convoys, and on the following day they encountered a Japanese group of two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and fourteen destroyers. In theory, the Allied force of two heavy cruisers USS Houston, HMS Exeter, three light cruisers HMNS Java, de Ruyter, HMAS Perth, and nine destroyers should have been able to hold its own; but the Anglo-American-Dutch-Australian squadron was simply not an organised force, and had many language and command difficulties. In contrast, the Japanese ships were very efficient, and possessed a wonderful weapon in their 'long lance' torpedoes. After an hour's distant shelling, a confused action took place in which the Exeter was badly damaged and had to be escorted away, two Allied destroyers were sunk and another hit a mine, while the four American destroyers had to leave to refuel. With only four cruisers left, Doorman valiantly re-engaged the enemy at 11pm but the two Dutch cruisers were sunk by torpedoes, taking the admiral down with them; the other two then withdrew. From beginning to end, the Battle of the Java Sea, as it was called, had been an unmitigated disaster. Nor was the sequel any less disheartening. The Perth and Houston were sunk after they had ravaged a Japanese landing force at Bantam Bay, while two Dutch destroyers were bombed out of action at Surabaya harbour. The damaged Exeter, hero of the River Plate battle, was sunk with her two escorting destroyers by a Japanese naval force as they tried to slip through the Sunda Strait. Only the four American destroyers managed to escape from the enemy's dragnet.
With Doorman's fleet destroyed, the fate of Java was a foregone conclusion. On 1st March Eastern Force landed at Kragen and quickly advanced towards Surabaya, while Western Force disembarked at three points in western Java and proceeded to encircle Batavia. The Allied response was slow and confused, and the Japanese soon had three divisions on the island. Batavia was taken on 5th March and Surabaya two days later. Recognising the inevitable, General ter Poorten surrendered his forces on the morning of the 9th, and the British contingent did the same that afternoon. The Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies, apart from pockets of resistance in northern Sumatra, was complete; and it had been accomplished in three months instead of the expected six. Japan had gained her desired oilfields; and European supremacy in the East had received another fatal blow.
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