by Toland, John
“Yes, I agree,” said Percival faintly. He paused. “I have a request to make. Will the Imperial Army protect the women and children and British civilians?”
“We shall see to it. Please sign this truce agreement.”
At seven-fifty Percival signed. Forty minutes later, as agreed, the roar of battle ceased abruptly. Singapore, the City of the Lion, the most famous fortress in the world, was Japanese. In seventy days Yamashita, at the cost of 9,824 battle casualties, had rolled 650 miles down the Malay Peninsula and across Singapore. The British had slightly fewer casualties, but surrendered more than 130,000 troops.
It was the greatest land victory in Japanese history. They had again proved dramatically to all their Asian brothers that the white man could be defeated. In Japan a jubilant government announced it was distributing two bottles of beer and a packet of red beans to every family, as well as three go of sake. Each child under thirteen got a box of caramel drops, cakes and assorted candies.
The Asahi Shimbun headlined its story of the battle: GENERAL SITUATION OF PACIFIC WAR DECIDED. “To seize Singapore Island in as little time as three days could only have been done by our Imperial Army,” declared Colonel Hideo Ohira, chief of the Press Division. “Japan is the sun that shines for world peace. Those who bathe in the sun will grow and those who resist it shall have no alternative but ruin. Both the United States and Britain should contemplate the 3,000 years of scorching Japanese history. I solemnly declare that with the fall of Singapore the general situation of war has been determined. The ultimate victory will be ours.”
Prime Minister Tojo told the Diet that Burma and the Philippines would be granted independence but that it would be necessary to retain Hong Kong and Malaya as vital bases in defense of Greater East Asia. “The objective in the Greater East Asia war,” he said, “is founded on the exalted ideals of the founding of the empire and it will enable all the nations and peoples of Greater East Asia to enjoy life and to establish a new order of coexistence and co-prosperity on the basis of justice with Japan as the nucleus.”
3.
Java had been almost isolated for a month. To the west, Sumatra was under attack by paratroopers and men from a recently landed convoy. To the east, another invasion convoy had just anchored off the exotic island of Bali.
At his headquarters in Bandung, high in the mountains of central Java, ABDA Commander Archibald Wavell was certain Java itself would be the next target. He was right. Two powerful invasion forces, each protected by strong cruiser and destroyer units, were already bound for that strategic island. The commander of the Netherlands Naval Forces—a short, rotund, balding vice admiral named C. E. L. Helfrich—was still of the opinion that the Japanese could be defeated at sea. He rejected the assumption of U. S. Admiral Hart, commander of the ABDA Navy, that the defense of the Dutch East Indies was a lost cause. The Dutch fleet had already sunk more Japanese tonnage than the combined American air, surface and underwater forces.
In fact, it was Admiral Helfrich’s prodding that inspired the Americans to make their first surface attack since Pearl Harbor. On January 24 a quartet of four-stack destroyers dating from World War I slipped into Makassar Strait, between Borneo and Celebes, and sent three enemy transports to the bottom. It was a daring raid, brilliantly executed, and it forcefully proved Helfrich’s point. He now pressed his belief that the place to stop the Japanese was at sea, not on the beaches of Java.
American reluctance to engage in surface combat was as puzzling to the Japanese as it was to Helfrich. Below the Philippines they had met almost no resistance and now held all of Borneo and the Celebes islands, and had secured strong footholds on New Guinea. Once Java was conquered, Southeast Asia’s treasures of oil, tin and tungsten would be in their hands.
Wavell’s evaluation of the threat to Java, where he was, was markedly different from his assessment of the problems faced by the defenders of Singapore. On February 22 he signaled Churchill:
I AM AFRAID THAT THE DEFENCE OF A.B.D.A. AREA HAS BEEN BROKEN DOWN AND THAT DEFENCE OF JAVA CANNOT NOW LAST LONG.… ANYTHING PUT INTO JAVA NOW CAN DO LITTLE TO PROLONG STRUGGLE: IT IS MORE QUESTION OF WHAT YOU WILL CHOOSE TO SAVE.… I SEE LITTLE FURTHER USEFULNESS FOR THIS H.Q.… LAST ABOUT MYSELF. I AM, AS EVER, ENTIRELY WILLING TO DO MY BEST WHERE YOU THINK BEST TO SEND ME. I HAVE FAILED YOU AND PRESIDENT HERE, WHERE A BETTER MAN MIGHT PERHAPS HAVE SUCCEEDED … I HATE THE IDEA OF LEAVING THESE STOUT-HEARTED DUTCHMEN, AND WILL REMAIN HERE AND FIGHT IT OUT WITH THEM AS LONG AS POSSIBLE IF YOU CONSIDER THIS WOULD HELP AT ALL.
GOOD WISHES. I AM AFRAID YOU ARE HAVING VERY DIFFICULT PERIOD, BUT I KNOW YOUR COURAGE WILL SHINE THROUGH IT.
The Allied air defense could no longer offer effective resistance. There were few British planes left after the disaster in Malaya; the Dutch were reduced to a handful of dilapidated aircraft; and of the 111 planes which America had rushed to Java, 23 heavy bombers and a few fighters remained.
Three days later Wavell turned over the final defense of the East Indies to the Dutch governor general and left Java. Helfrich’s fleet was the only force that stood between Java and the two approaching Japanese invasion convoys. He no longer hoped to stop them but was determined to kill as many Japanese soldiers at sea as possible.
By dawn—it was February 26—the Western Assault Convoy of fifty-six transports was 250 miles from the western end of Java. It was escorted by one carrier, three light cruisers, two flotillas of destroyers and covered by four heavy cruisers. The Eastern Assault Convoy of forty transports was less than 200 miles from its goal, eastern Java. It was escorted by a light cruiser and seven destroyers. Near at hand were two heavy cruisers, a light cruiser and seven destroyers. Overall commander of these eighteen ships was Rear Admiral Takeo Takagi, able but cautious.
Just before noon the eastern convoy was sighted by two Allied planes. Helfrich, who had taken over command of the ABDA Navy from Hart, radioed Rear Admiral Karel W. F. M. Doorman, a countryman, to leave port at dark with the main force of fifteen ships and attack. A few hours later Helfrich learned about the convoy coming from the west. He ordered a smaller force—the light cruiser Hobart, two old cruisers and two equally aged destroyers—to meet this new threat as best it could.
At six-thirty Doorman sailed out of Surabaya. The shadowy column nosed north into the Java Sea through the violet light of early dusk. Though an inspiring sight, it was a patchwork fleet sharing no common doctrine or technique, with each of the four national groups a distinct and separate task force. It reminded a young lieutenant on the American heavy cruiser Houston of eleven all-stars playing Notre Dame without a single practice session.
All through the night Doorman’s force swept along the coast but found nothing and turned back at daylight. It had no sooner nosed into Surabaya harbor around two-thirty in the afternoon than Doorman received a new order to engage an enemy force some ninety miles to the north.
Since the fleet had no common code of tactical signals, Doorman’s first order was relayed by radio, signal flags and flashing light in plain English: FOLLOW ME, THE ENEMY IS 90 MILES AWAY.
There was rising excitement as the fleet turned and headed out to sea again. The three British destroyers, screening abreast, led the way followed by the light cruiser De Ruyter. Behind in column came the famed British heavy cruiser Exeter; Houston, host of President Roosevelt on four cruises; the Australian light cruiser Perth; and bringing up the rear, the Dutch light cruiser Java. To the left was a second column—two Dutch destroyers trailed by four antique American destroyers. But the fleet was blind. Doorman had no search planes to catapult from his cruisers; they had been left ashore the night before.
Admiral Takagi, however, knew Doorman’s position. Three float planes had already sighted the ABDA column. He ordered the thirty-eight vessels of the eastern ship convoy to turn away and placed his own ships in battle position. Doorman had an extra light cruiser but Takagi had almost twice as many destroyers and this gave him a numerical advantage—eighteen warships to fifteen.
It was a clear, bright day and the Japanese imagined they could smell the fragrance of nearby Java. Sailors, wearing white fatigues and steel helmets, crowded into shrines and tied hachimaki tightly around their foreheads. Officers in trim white dress uniforms and baseball caps strained to see the enemy. Japan had not engaged in a major naval battle since Tsushima.
At four o’clock the cruiser Jintsu sighted mastheads seventeen miles to the southeast. Then lookouts on the two big cruisers, Nachi and Haguro, made out the lofty masts of De Ruyter. As it came closer, its towering, odd-shaped superstructure took on the alarming shape of some prehistoric monster.
Aboard Nachi, Takagi and his chief of staff, Captain Ko Nagasawa, were not sure they should become involved in a running sea battle. Their primary mission was to protect the transports, but Takagi gave orders to close in. At 28,000 yards Nagasawa asked for permission to fire. Takagi nodded, and at four-fifteen the eight-inch guns of Nachi and Haguro roared. A minute later the two Allied cruisers opened fire but it was an unequal duel with twelve big guns against Takagi’s twenty.
The Japanese were approaching so fast that it soon became obvious they would pass across the head of the Allied column, “crossing the T.” By this classic maneuver Takagi would bring his broadsides to bear on Doorman’s cruisers, which could only retaliate with their forward guns. But the Dutch admiral perceived the trap and swung his cruisers 20 degrees to the left, away from the Japanese.
Takagi also turned, putting the two fleets almost parallel, heading west, with Doorman hemmed in between the Japanese and Java. Ten minutes later Nagasawa informed Takagi it was time to move in for the attack. “Proceed,” said the admiral, who was a submarine expert. At 16,000 yards the Japanese destroyers loosed their torpedoes. Newly designed, they had the astounding range of 30,000 yards and their oxygen propulsion system left no telltale trail of bubbles.
Doorman had no idea they were coming until he saw columns of water spout high in the air. The new torpedoes had been set wrong and were exploding prematurely in mid-run. Their sudden appearance caused mounting panic; they must have come from a wolf pack of submarines.
The spouts also alarmed Nagasawa. He decided they must be enemy mines detonated from nearby Bawean Island. He warned Takagi it would be suicide to proceed farther, and orders to move to within 6,000 yards were canceled. Doorman had been given a respite. It was short-lived. At five o’clock, shells from Haguro crashed through an antiaircraft mount on Exeter and exploded in the boiler. The big cruiser, speed halved, lurched and turned hard left so Houston just behind wouldn’t pile into its stern.
De Ruyter saw the melee behind and also turned left just as another school of torpedoes sliced toward the Allies. At five-fifteen the Dutch destroyer Kortenaer exploded and broke in two like a jackknife. Doorman signaled ALL SHIPS FOLLOW ME and turned southeast. He lost one more destroyer, Electra, but the wounded Exeter escaped in the smoke and confusion.
Now Doorman had only Houston’s six 8-inch guns to match Takagi’s twenty. Behind dark clouds of smoke Doorman formed a new line, but within moments two big shells plowed into Houston. This time luck was with the Allies; both shells were duds. Doorman swung his line in an evasive counterclockwise circle, but Nachi and Haguro drew nearer. So did a destroyer flotilla.
Doorman called for smoke from the four American destroyers. Their commander, T. H. Binford, obliged and then on his own launched a torpedo attack on Nachi and Haguro from 10,000 yards. The cruisers managed to elude the torpedoes, but the daring of the attack forced Takagi to retire northward. He decided to wait until dark, the time the Japanese traditionally preferred to attack.
Though severely hurt, Doorman had no intention of withdrawing. Instead he began probing blindly for the Japanese transports. At nine o’clock his flagship reached shoal water and swung right to parallel the Java coast. The other cruisers followed, as did two British destroyers, Encounter and Jupiter. Twenty-five minutes later there was an explosion at the end of the line and Jupiter was enveloped in flames. She had most likely hit a drifting Dutch mine.
The other ships plunged uneasily into the dark. Nothing happened until nine-fifty. Then a parachute flare floated down, lighting up the column. The stalker was being stalked by one of Takagi’s search planes. In rapid succession half a dozen more ghostly flares straddled the Allied line.
Takagi moved in, and just before eleven o’clock a lookout on Nachi sighted the enemy column through the special night glasses fixed on the bridge. Someone on De Ruyter finally saw the two Japanese cruisers on the port beam and mistakenly reported they were heading in the opposite direction. The Dutch cruiser fired. So did Perth, Houston and Java. The sky was bright with bursting star shells.
All at once the firing stopped. In the sudden blackness the Allies were unaware that Haguro and Nachi were silently closing in from behind. Nagasawa waited until he was within 10,000 yards of the enemy before he turned to Takagi and said it was time to launch torpedoes. The admiral approved and around eleven-twenty Nachi unleashed eight torpedoes and Haguro four. For several minutes the torpedoes slithered toward the oblivious Allied column, which held its course. Then De Ruyter erupted with a terrifying abruptness inexplicable to those aboard. As flames spread across her decks, rockets shot up from the stricken ship. Fire had touched off her pyrotechnic locker.
Four minutes later there was another deafening explosion, this time just behind Houston. It was Java. Burning furiously, her bow reared high into the air. Hundreds of crewmen dropped off like ants as the ship slid backwards into the dark sea. Then De Ruyter too vanished, hissing furiously as water enveloped her flames. With her went Doorman and 366 shipmates. One of his last orders was to leave any survivors “to the mercy of the enemy,” and the new senior officer of the fleet, the captain of Perth, ordered Houston to follow as he speeded away to the southeast.
The Battle of the Java Sea, the greatest surface engagement since the Battle of Jutland in 1916, was over. Even in the daylight Takagi had been able to severely damage the Allied fleet, and in the darkness Doorman had had no chance at all against the specialized training of the Japanese. They had hardly been hit, but Doorman lost three destroyers, two light cruisers and his life.
Ten Allied ships survived the battle, and by first light they had managed to make their way back to either Batavia (soon to be renamed Djakarta) or Surabaya. The four American destroyers received permission to escape to Australia, and at five o’clock slipped out of Surabaya harbor past the moored Exeter. In the gloom they dashed safely through the narrow Bali Strait.
That same night Perth and Houston left Batavia to try to escape through Sunda Strait, which was scarcely fourteen miles wide. They plunged full steam into a Japanese armada: the four heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, about ten destroyers and the aircraft carrier Ryujo protecting the fifty-six transports of the Western Assault Convoy, which were dropping anchor at the western tip of Java in Bantam Bay.
Perth fought back valiantly on all quarters, but just before midnight a shell smashed into the ordinary-seamen’s mess from the starboard side near the water line. Then a torpedo ripped into the same side near the forward boiler room. As the ship rapidly began to lose life, torpedoes and shells struck home in quick succession and she finally rolled over and sank.
Now it was Houston’s turn. She had already been damaged by a torpedo, and the big guns of the cruiser Mikuma were finding their target. Fifteen minutes after midnight a salvo ripped into the American cruiser’s after engine room, scalding everyone to death. Steam geysered through jagged holes in the deck and the ship slowed. As the bugle sounded Abandon Ship a 5-inch shell exploded on the bridge, killing the captain.
Houston lay dead in the water, her guns sticking out at eccentric angles. Slowly she rolled to one side and paused. The Stars and Stripes waved—defiantly, it seemed—from the mainmast. Finally, at twelve forty-five, the ship shuddered and dived out of sight.
Of Houston’s 1,000 men, and Perth’s crew of 680, fewer than half were st
ill alive, and many of those would perish in the oily waters. The Japanese had also been hurt, but not by Houston or Perth. Eight torpedoes aimed by Mikuma at Houston had missed and continued on toward the transports massed in Bantam Bay. Four were sent to the bottom, including Ryujo-maru, headquarters ship of General Hitoshi Imamura, commander of the 16th Army. Imamura and hundreds of soldiers leaped into the warm waters. The general and his aide grabbed pieces of wood, for neither wore a life jacket. Ashore the aide found his chief, face black from oil, seated on a pile of bamboo. “Congratulations,” he said, “on the successful landing.”ǁ
The landings at Bantam Bay and on the north coast brought the final disintegration of Allied command on Java. In Bandung a British admiral told Helfrich, “I have instructions from the Admiralty to withdraw His Majesty’s ships from Java when resistance will serve no further useful purpose. This time, in my judgment, has come.”
“Do you realize you’re still under my orders?” Helfrich retorted.
“I do, of course. But in this vital matter I cannot do other than my duty as I see it.”
The American senior officer, Rear Admiral W. A. Glassford, sympathized with his British colleague but assured Helfrich he still remained under his command. “Any order you give me will be obeyed at once.”
But there were no meaningful orders to give. Helfrich sighed heavily. “You will order your ships to Australia,” he said and thanked the American effusively for his help. As for the British admiral, he could give his ships any orders he wished.
The last British ships—Exeter and two destroyer escorts—were already heading northwest in hopes of escaping through Sunda Strait at dark. But Takagi sighted them at nine thirty-five in the morning, and with the help of dive bombers from the Ryujo, sank all three.