Descent into Hell Read online

  Wynter then went on to mention the need for a potent defence of naval bases by land forces ‘on which the fleet depends’ and that a maritime empire would depend upon ‘the proper development’ of both the navy and army and the mutual recognition of both.

  He then discussed, with great foresight and an equal measure of common sense, the relationship of the air force to the other services:

  . . . there does not yet appear to have been established any generally accepted doctrine on this subject; on the contrary, there appears to be much difference of opinion, not to say confusion of thought, upon the whole matter. There are those who maintain that not in any circumstances can an air force have a completely independent strategical role, and, on the other side, there are those who maintain that air-power is the only power which counts and that the other Services, if not actually redundant, are at any rate strategically subordinate.22

  The above portion of his speech alluded to the then passionate debate between the services of the time concerning the role(s) of air forces. There were those strategists who maintained that an enemy’s ability to conduct a war hinged upon his industrial capacity. By massed air force attacks upon industry and a destruction of an enemy’s civilian morale, some strategists—mainly air force—believed that nations could be brought to defeat. Wynter maintained that: ‘. . . attacks of this kind can only be of secondary and subsidiary importance, since the really decisive act in war is the battle itself, and no amount of destruction in an enemy’s rear territory will be of much use if the main battle is lost.’23

  In concluding this portion of his address, Wynter identified the need for the three services to develop a common understanding of the requirement for training of officers of all services in the ‘broader aspects of war upon common lines and the building up, if possible, of a common doctrine of war to which they will all subscribe’.24 Profound words indeed, and words subsequently ignored by many in Britain and Australia with regards to future events concerning the Singapore Base.

  Wynter then turned his attention to the empire’s naval defence. Predicting that the Singapore Base would eventually be built, he identified two critical points. The first was the obvious change in the balance of naval power. He correctly stated that the British Navy could no longer reign supreme across the globe, and that, from an Australian perspective, its Pacific strength was therefore ‘merely a potential force’ and would not become ‘an actual force’ until it had been moved to the Pacific. And then came, as Colonel Repington had foreseen in Britain nearly three years earlier, Wynter’s realistic statement:

  . . . the question arises whether under all circumstances reasonably likely to arise it can be confidently relied upon by Australia that the British Navy will be able to operate in the Pacific in sufficient strength to ensure the security of Australia. It is a reasonable assumption that, if war were to break out with a Pacific Power, it would be at some time when Great Britain was involved in war in Europe.

  Even though the British Navy is preponderantly superior to any one existing European Navy, is it likely that the British Government would sanction the despatch of sufficient naval strength to the Far East to ensure superiority there until the local problem had been dealt with? The security of Great Britain—the heart of the Empire—is the primary consideration of Imperial defence. Even if other interests suffer, that supreme interest must be kept inviolate . . .

  Moreover, even assuming that a British Government were willing to accept whatever risks were entailed in the dividing of its naval forces, what would be the attitude of British public opinion at a time when there existed a real or a fancied threat to its food supply? The public pays the piper . . .25

  Given these circumstances, Wynter still maintained that the Australian Navy should remain as a part of general empire defence—that is, working in conjunction with the Royal Navy—since it could not hope to operate in a Pacific confrontation as an independent operational force. As a consequence, Wynter argued that the local defence of Australia would come down to its army and air force, and that both should be funded accordingly and operate under a unified command. He then stated or identified the additional issues of ‘the production of war material and internal communications’26 which he chose not to elaborate upon, but which would obviously be critical to his stated aims for army and air force development.

  Thus, as had been the case in Britain, Australia too had its dissenting voices concerning the Singapore Base, the Royal Navy’s ability to react to a genuine world war, the paucity of funding for the army and air force, and critically, the need for a united or interrelated doctrine for all service arms. These assessments were level-headed and responsible but, in the end, were lost in a sea of idealism, pacifism, interservice rivalry and, above all else, a desperate longing for an avoidance of a repetition of the slaughter and financial cost of another World War.

  When in 1929 industrial disputes in Australian reached their highest point since the end of the First World War, Prime Minister Bruce called a double dissolution of parliament. The resulting election saw a Labor Government take office with James Scullin as the new prime minister. In terms of defence policy, the new Labor Government differed markedly from its predecessor. Within months of this election result, however, the Great Depression began to affect the world economy. And with that catastrophe, global forces were unleashed that would change the world’s political and social landscape—forces that would also drastically change the complexity and urgency of defence considerations.

  To the cash-strapped British, their commercial possessions across the other side of the world yielded much-needed financial gain, but were not to the forefront of their defence planning, and were therefore aptly referred to as the ‘Far East’. To a young, only recently federated and increasingly anxious white Australia, Britain’s ‘Far East’ was now increasingly seen as Australia’s ‘Near North’.

  3

  SINGING FROM DIFFERENT HYMN SHEETS

  The Malay Peninsula is approximately six-tenths of the area of Victoria, and is about 640 kilometres (400 miles) from its northernmost point to its southern extremity. It varies in width from roughly 95 to 320 kilometres (60 to 200 miles). Thailand, then known as Siam, lies across its northern border; the South China Sea is to the east; Singapore lies at its farthest southern point; and to its west and south-west, across the narrow Strait of Malacca lies the then Dutch East Indies island of Sumatra.

  A mountain range ‘generally 4000 feet high and rising to 7186 feet’1 (about 1220 to 2190 metres), forms the spine of the Malay Peninsula and prewar the coastal plains to the east and west of this feature contained most of the population and commercial interests—particularly on the western plain. As a consequence of Malaya having a close proximity to the equator, and also a very high tropical rainfall, the vegetation in the mountains was essentially untouched virgin jungle. On the plains virgin and secondary jungle, cleared for cultivation, abandoned, and then allowed to regenerate, gave way in part to regional towns, villages (kampongs) and their associated cultivated areas of rice fields, coconut, pineapple and rubber plantations. Tin mining, mainly on the western plain, was also an extremely profitable commercial pursuit in prewar Malaya. Most of the rivers on the peninsula ran from the mountainous spine east or westwards to the coast, where poor drainage often resulted in jungle swamps.

  Singapore Island is not unlike the ball of a ball-and-socket joint—it sits neatly across the Straits of Johore, varying from about 550 to 1830 metres (600 to 2000 yards) from the curved, concave southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula. Roughly a quarter of the size of the Australian Capital Territory, it is a mere 22 kilometres (14 miles) from south to north and approximately 40 kilometres (25 miles) from east to west.2 However, by the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, the roughly 520 square kilometre (200 square mile) island had grown out of all proportion to its modest geographical dimensions. Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, Imperial Japanese Army, provides us with a succinct assessment of the island’s prewar signif
icance:

  Singapore was Britain’s pivotal point in the domination of Asia. It was the eastern gate for the defence of India and the northern gate for the defence of Australia. It was the axis of the steamship route from Europe to the Orient, north to Hong Kong and through to the south and east. Through these two arteries alone, during a period of many years, Britain controlled the Pacific Ocean with Singapore as the very heart of the area.3

  To service and administer Malaya, the British had constructed a most impressive (for the times) commercial infrastructure which flowed from Singapore, along the Malay Peninsula and through to Thailand. A single one-metre gauge railway line ran from the extensive docks of Keppel Harbour in Singapore Town, past the village of Bukit Timah, through Bukit Panjang and then to Woodlands, before crossing the roughly 1000-metre (1100-yard) long causeway built in 1923 into Johore. Johore Bahru lay on the other side, the railway then passing through Rengam, Kluang, Labis and Segamat to the town of Gemas. Here the railway took two paths. The first, serving the western part of the peninsula, ran past, and had branch lines to, the ports of Malacca, Port Dickson, Port Swettenham, Kuala Selangor, Teluk Anson, Port Weld and Perai (near Butterworth, which serviced Penang Island). The line then passed through Sungei Patani and Alor Star before reaching the Siam (Thailand) border at Padang Besar. From that town, the railway continued on to link with the second branch line from Gemas, which had wound its way inland across the states of Pahang and Kelantan past the town of Kota Bharu (with a branch line to it), and then on to link with the other line near Singora. From there, the line made its way to Bangkok.

  The road system in Malaya—for its time, and particularly in Asia—was widespread and of high quality, especially on Singapore Island and Johore, its nearest Malay state. The main roads were bituminised and about one-and-a-third lanes wide, necessitating trucks having to partly leave the roads when passing.4 These roads were marked with mile pegs (every 1.6 kilometres). Like the railway on the western plain, that region’s road system was well served by many feeder roads to ports and inland towns, and numerous dirt roads had been built for access to the lucrative rubber estates and tin mines. On the eastern plain the road network was less impressive, with basically three main roads: the first ran from Johore Bahru to Kota Tinggi, Jemaluang, Mersing and then to Endau; the second linked the west and east in Johore via a Trunk Road at Ayer Hitam through Kluang and Kahang, before linking with the first at Jemaluang; and the last linked the west to east from Kuala Kubu to Raub, through Fraser’s Gap in the mountains to Jerantut, and then to Maran, before reaching the eastern coastal town of Kuantan.

  In 1940, the Civil Government in Malaya consisted of three independent states. The first was the Crown Colony known as the Straits Settlements, which comprised Singapore, Malacca and Penang with Province Wellesley. Singapore was the administrative centre for the Straits Settlements. The second was the Federated Malay States of Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang and Perak. This state was administered in general terms by a federal government from Kuala Lumpur in Selangor, although each state also had its own rulers who were assisted by British residents. The third state was the Unfederated Malay States of Johore, Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu, which were governed by their own sultan, who was also assisted by a British Advisor. Presiding over this fragmented and awkward system was the Singapore-based Governor of the Straits Settlements, who also doubled as the High Commissioner of the Federated and Unfederated States.

  Major-General Kirby has observed that this civil administration was ‘complicated, cumbersome and markedly unsuited to war conditions’.5 However, the salient point is that the whole system was perpetuated by the British as a means of being seen to not interfere—unless absolutely necessary—in matters that were not vital to their commercial interests, while maintaining a divided and unwieldy system of administration in Malaya. This kept wages at a minimum level and therefore costs down, and critically, it inhibited a real sense of Malayan nationalism on any significant scale. In essential terms, it was very ‘colonial’ and good for business.

  The composition of the population of the Malay Peninsula and Singapore Island prior to the Pacific War was also fragmented and diverse. In 1940, the approximate population of Malaya was nearly 5.5 million, of which Singapore comprised about 550 000. The Chinese numbered around 2 379 000 or 43 per cent; the Malays about 2 278 000 or 41 per cent; the Indians approximately 744 000 or 13.5 per cent; the Eurasians about 48 000 or 0.87 per cent; various other nationalities numbered around 58 400 or 1.06 per cent; and the European population totalled some 18 000 or about 0.33 per cent.6

  Most of the Malays, indigenous to their peninsula, lived in small kampongs in homes which were built on stilts with thatched roofs, where they eked out a relatively comfortable and easy-paced existence by growing vegetables, rice, coconut palms, fruit trees and by fishing. The Chinese, in general terms, were the most adaptable and industrious race of the non-Europeans on the Malay Peninsula and in Singapore. They worked in the tin mines, ran successful businesses, plied their keen business sense to all manner of shops and worked as coolies on the docks. The Indians were predominately Tamil labourers who worked on the rubber estates as tappers, in the Public Works Department and on the railways. Of the various other nationalities, which numbered around 58 400, there were a small number of Japanese.

  In 1940, there were roughly 14 400 British in Malaya or 0.26 per cent of the population.7 The British in the public sector were essentially members of the Malayan Civil Service and also ‘forest officers, civil engineers, doctors, surveyors, educators, police officers, harbour masters and the like’.8 Such vocations were secure in tenure, well paid, essentially routine in nature, and, with a wage that had a most impressive purchasing power, the British in the public sector enjoyed an affluent lifestyle. Although the planters and miners in the private sector had, to some degree, felt the economic pain of the Depression years, they too now enjoyed a very prosperous existence. On the rubber estates or near the mines, they—not unlike the public sector—tended to live in well-furbished bungalows with ample servants, access to clubs and other recreational facilities. They often sent their children back home for their education, and if all went according to plan, many of them could look forward to the odd holiday in Britain and eventual retirement there.

  In 1819, when Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles had gained a treaty for the acquisition of Singapore for the East India Company, he had dreamed of a new, powerful free trade port that might rival Batavia (Jakarta) and become a secure base for British trade in the region. By the onset of the Second World War, his dream had been realised far beyond his expectations. Malaya had become a seemingly bottomless well of strategic raw materials—over half of the world’s tin and 38 per cent of its rubber—with Singapore as its administrative and logistical hub.

  After the Wall Street crash on ‘Black Tuesday’ in November 1929, the western world fell into a period of low profits, deflation, high unemployment and poverty. The Great Depression provided the economic, social, and as a consequence, the political and military environment in which fascism and communism flourished. In Japan that economic calamity provided impetus for already established expansionist ambitions.

  For the western powers, the ideal of world peace through arbitration, disarmament and the collective security provided by the League of Nations would soon become an illusion. And following that optimism and corresponding defence funding cuts of the 1920s came the anxiety and further spending cuts of the Depression, and as a consequence, an even more desperate measure to prolong the peace: appeasement. In 1933 Nazi Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the Geneva Disarmament Conference, while also having initiated a rapid rebirth of its military forces. At the same time Japan was engaged in its expansion in Manchuria and also gave notice of its intention to withdraw from the League of Nations. It then promptly occupied the province of Jehol and moved into northern China. The next year, Germany renounced the Treaty of Versailles and told the world she was to rearm, wh
ile the Japanese condemned the Washington Naval Treaty, which meant that by December 1936 when the London Naval Treaty was due to expire, there would be no restriction upon another explosive naval arms race. In June 1935, in anticipation of the naval arms conference of the following year, Germany and Britain signed a treaty allowing the German Navy to ‘build up to 35% of the surface tonnage’9 of the Royal Navy, while in 1936 Hitler occupied the Rhineland and the Japanese militarists gained political control over their government. Italy in turn then snubbed the League of Nations over its condemnation of her invasion of Abyssinia, and then proceeded to align itself with Nazi Germany, and finally in November 1936, Japan and Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which in essence was an attempt by both countries to isolate Russian communism. By the signing of this pact Japan was further portraying her aggression towards China. All of this constituted a three-year roller-coaster ride towards disaster.

  If the ten-year rule—Britain’s decision to base one fleet in European waters and none in the Far East—and the Washington Naval Treaty had severely diminished its ability to protect the Empire, then the Anglo–German Treaty of 1935 compounded an already difficult situation. When the British Government boasted that this treaty limited the Germany Navy to 35 per cent of the Royal Navy’s surface tonnage, which was a victory for the ongoing aim of armaments limitation and therefore the preservation of peace, it was a view expressed through purely European eyes. The undeniable truth was that in the event of war in both the western and eastern hemispheres, Britain would henceforth be forced to retain the majority, if not all, of her naval strength in European waters. A striking illustration of Singapore’s now precarious security was to be the subsequent lengthening of its ‘period before relief ’: from six weeks during the 1920s to ten weeks in 1937, to nearly thirteen weeks in June 1939, and finally, at the outbreak of war in September 1939, to almost 26 weeks or nearly a half a year.