Facts, information and articles about the Battle Of Singapore, a battle of World War II Battle Of Singapore Facts Dates 8–15 February 1942 Location Singapore, Straits Settlements Generals/Commanders Allies: Arthur Percival (POW) Gordon Bennett Lewis Heath. 1942 JANUARY 1942 ATLANTIC - JANUARY 1942 Arcadia Conference - In late December and early January, Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt with their. All this confirms Joseph Harsch’s recollection of Kimmel’s attitude. The Admiral had said himself that if Japan went to war with the United States, it might well do so by making a surprise attack on the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Even though General Short had the. Pearl Harbor: Did FDR and the Navy know what was coming? The rulers of Japan and Germany, rather than Franklin Roosevelt, chose the moment at which the United States would enter the world war. Japan had decided back in early July to undertake the southward advance at the risk of war with the United States, the Japanese Navy had insisted on including an attack on the United States in its military plans, and Hitler had decided to declare war if Japan attacked. But Roosevelt obviously did not shrink from entry into the world war in early December 1. His administration had adopted the objective of defeating all the Axis powers and had begun the military and the economic planning to achieve it. He had shared that objective publicly with the American people, a large majority of whom now accepted war as inevitable. In October, fully three- quarters of respondents to a Gallup poll said either that the United States would inevitably get into the war in Europe or that the United States was in the war already. Stark’s and Marshall’s last- minute memorandum suggested that the early months of the war might be perilous indeed, but the administration’s Victory Program could not possibly be implemented in peacetime. With the Germans now halted before Moscow, ultimate victory over the Axis seemed at least possible, and the time to enter the war had come. From Monday, December 1, through Thursday, December 4, new Magic intercepts conveyed Tokyo’s instructions to its diplomatic representatives in London, Singapore, Manila, Hong Kong, Washington, and various Chinese cities to destroy their codes and other publications. On December 6 in Tokyo—December 5 in the United States—the Foreign Ministry told the Embassy in Washington to await the delivery of a long message giving the Japanese reply to Hull’s November 2. War was obviously imminent. We must now look at both the manner in which the Japanese had decided to begin it, and the reasons why the key commanders in the Far East disregarded their warnings and so much available evidence and remained almost completely unprepared on the morning of December 7. Roosevelt’s November 2. Japanese “were notorious for making an attack without warning” was a simple historical fact. Against China in 1. Russia in 1. 90. 4, Manchuria in 1. China in 1. 93. 7, the Japanese had struck without any preliminary announcement or declaration of war. In the first two cases, they had begun the war with at least partially successful attempts to destroy enemy fleets. Guadalcanal On 7 December 1941, Imperial Japanese forces launched almost simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, Hong Kong, and the Malay Peninsula followed by a rapid southward advance of Japanese ground and naval. PRELUDE By March 1942, Britain was drained. After two and a half years of intense warfare, her flagging forces had been pushed beyond the limit. Initial excitement that the US had finally been drawn into the war by Pearl Harbor quickly evaporated. Philippine Islands 7 December 1941- Capture of the Philippine Islands was crucial to Japan's effort to control the Southwest Pacific, seize the resource-rich Dutch East Indies, and protect its Southeast Asia flank. Its strategy called for roughly. On this day in History, Singapore falls to Japan on Feb 15, 1942. Learn more about what happened today on History. Article Details: Singapore falls to Japan Author History.com Staff Website Name History.com Year Published 2009 Title Singapore falls to Japan. Both the Japanese and U. S. On October 2. 0, Admiral Osami Nagano, the naval commander- in- chief, had agreed to the carrier- based attack. The attacking task force of six aircraft carriers, escorted by battleships, cruises, destroyers, and submarines, had gotten underway at dawn on November 2. Japan time—that is, nearly twenty- four hours before Hull handed Nomura and Kurusu his maximum demands in Washington. Although the task force might conceivably have been recalled, it observed radio silence, and U. S. In mid- June 1. Japanese action in the Pacific had moved General Marshall to order General Charles Herron, then the Army commander in Honolulu, to put his forces on alert against an air attack. Admiral Stark, meanwhile, had ordered Admiral Richardson, the fleet commander, to put the fleet to sea for a few days in the direction of the Panama Canal. The Navy maintained an “outer air patrol” around the islands to a distance of 1. On November 2. 2, 1. British torpedo bombers had sunk several Italian warships at anchor in their base at Taranto, Stark wrote Richardson asking whether Pearl Harbor needed torpedo nets to protect the fleet from a Japanese surprise attack. Richardson replied on January 8 that such nets would cause too much trouble, that he lacked ships and planes for continuous air search, and that the probability of an attack would not justify it. At the turn of the year 1. Stark also exchanged letters with the commander of the Hawaiian Fourteenth Naval District regarding the adequacy of Pearl Harbor’s antiaircraft defenses, “in view of the probability of an early surprise attack by carrier aircraft if Japan decides to make war on the United States.” Knox wrote Stimson a detailed and accurate summary of the problem on January 2. Navy might deal with a combined bomber and torpedo bomber attack by locating and engaging the carriers before they arrived but making clear that he did not necessarily expect to be able to do so and asking the Army to provide better antiaircraft and fighter defense. Stimson on February 7 promised more modern fighter planes, more antiaircraft guns, and an “air warning system”— presumably radar— by June. On March 2. 4, Admiral Husband Kimmel, who had replaced the crusty Admiral Richardson in January, wrote a long memorandum on his campaign plan for Admiral Stark. Such attacks may be directed against shipping, outlying possessions, naval units, or against Pearl Harbor itself.” Kimmel had already raised the same possibility in another letter he and his predecessor Richardson had jointly drafted for Stark on January 2. In response, the War Department had sent up- to- date pursuit planes and some B- 1. Hawaii and the Philippines. But despite some discussions with the British officers from the Royal Air Force, most American authorities had no idea of how many pursuit planes and radars they would need to defend installations like the Philippines, Pearl Harbor, and the Panama Canal from a carrier- based attack. Admiral Turner in late October circulated detailed British advice on the need to disperse and camouflage aircraft in the Philippines from the moment they arrived, but Stark passed it on to the Philippines much too late to do any good. In November, as war with Japan seemed imminent, all eyes seemed to focus on the Japanese southward advance. Roosevelt on November 2. High Commissioner of the Philippines, Francis Sayre, of possible Japanese moves, including attacks on the Burma Road, Thailand, the Malay Peninsula, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines. All turned out to be correct. The United States was well aware of Japanese forces moving southward, but on November 7 a Naval Intelligence report placed the Japanese aircraft carriers in home waters. At least one high- ranking naval officer in Washington still thought the Japanese would probably avoid attacking U. S. Most critically, however, Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii did not believe that war was going to break out at all. Earlier in 1. 94. Kimmel had repeatedly made clear that he did not feel ready to fight the Japanese, especially after the transfer of some of his cruisers, battleships, and a carrier to the Atlantic. At least since the spring of 1. Navy had assumed that the Japanese would for some time be occupied with taking the Philippines and Guam if war broke out and that that might allow the U. S. Fleet to seize bases in the Marshall or Caroline islands. Kimmel was charged in ABC- 1 with advancing toward the Japanese mandated islands— the Gilberts, Marshalls, and Carolines— in order to draw Japanese naval forces away from the Malay barrier, but because of the losses he expected to incur from enemy submarines and land- based aircraft, he informed Stark in July that he could promise nothing more than raids on the Marshalls. Kimmel took no new action in response to the war warning of November 2. Army counterpart, General Short, merely put his forces on alert against sabotage. On the morning of Saturday, December 6, Kimmel and his staff met with a journalist, Joseph Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor, who had reported from Europe earlier in the year and had just arrived in Hawaii. After Kimmel and his staff questioned Harsch for some time about events in Europe, Harsch asked them whether there would be war in the Pacific. Harsch first published Kimmel’s reply forty years later.“Since you have been traveling,” Kimmel said, “you probably don’t know that as of six days ago the German high command announced that the German armies in Russia had gone into winter quarters. That means that Moscow is not going to fall to the Germans this year. That means that the Russians will still be in the war in the spring. That means that the Japanese cannot attack us in the Pacific without running the risk of a two- front war. The Japanese are too intelligent to run the risk of a two- front war unnecessarily. They will want to wait until they are sure that the Russians have been defeated.” Kimmel’s staff, Harsch wrote, seemed very relaxed, and no one seemed to disagree. Kimmel argued to the end of his life (and his descendants continue to do so) that no one had warned him of an imminent attack on Pearl Harbor. That is true, but what is more important is that he had decided, himself, that Japan was not going to attack the United States at all. Kimmel essentially confirmed this in his testimony before several investigations of the Pearl Harbor attack, after he had been relieved of duty and reduced in rank. Shortly after the attack, testifying before the Roberts Commission— the first investigative body convened to look into the Pearl Harbor disaster—he said that he did not expect the United States to be imminently involved in war on December 6. He also said that had he known of the close tabs the Japanese consulate in Honolulu were keeping on the presence of ships in Pearl Harbor on December 6, “I would have ordered all units to sea, because the best dispositions against surprise attack can be effected with the fleet at sea.” Although the war warning of November 2. Philippines and Borneo among the possible Japanese targets, Kimmel believed they would move only into Thailand and force the United States to react. During the June 1. Admiral Richardson had sent out air patrols around Hawaii for several weeks, but Kimmel said he did not do so because he did not have enough planes for an effective search and because it was more important for him to preserve them for offensive action after war had broken out. Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy. Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy. Charles Lutton. At 7: 4. A second wave of 1. Japanese aircraft arrived at 9 a. Eighteen operational warships, including four battleships, were sunk or heavily damaged; 1. Americans were killed, among them 6. Although the Japanese achieved local surprise, their success was less than complete. The Pacific Fleet's three aircraft carriers were not in port. Nine heavy cruisers, all but three light cruisers, and virtually all of the destroyers remained afloat. None of the fleet's submarines was lost. And the commander of the Japanese task force, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, refused to authorize a third strike that could have led to the destruction of Pearl Harbor's naval dockyards and oil storage tanks, the loss of which would have neutralized Hawaii as a forward base for counter- offensives against Japanese moves toward the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. The attack solved President Franklin D. Roosevelt's most pressing problem: how to overcome the American public's opposition to involvement in the war that had been going on in Europe for the previous sixteen months (on the eve of Pearl Harbor, polls indicated that 8. United States to enter the war as an active participant). Roosevelt received overwhelming support when he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. The grass- roots America First movement quietly disbanded. On December 1. 1th, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States. Who was accountable for the disaster? Why had the Japanese attacked? Had there been any American provocation? And why had Pearl Harbor's able Navy and Army commanders, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter Short, been caught off guard? Why were they quickly retired under unusual circumstances? To head off congressional and public criticism, Roosevelt hastily appointed a special commission to investigate the attack. Chaired by Associate Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, a leading supporter of the pro- interventionist Committee to Aid America by Aiding the Allies, the President had no fear that the commission would do anything to compromise the spirit of unity that now prevailed. Justice Roberts completed his report on Friday, January 2. The Administration released it to the public in time for the Sunday newspapers. Key members of the Washington political and military establishment were absolved of any blame. The fault, they said, lay with Admiral Kimmel and General Short. First Revisionist Critiques. But not all were convinced. In September 1. 94. John T. Flynn launched Pearl Harbor revisionism when he published a forty- six page booklet entitled The Truth about Pearl Harbor. Flynn argued that Roosevelt and his cronies had been plotting war against Japan at least since January 1. The Administration continued needlessly to provoke the Japanese government throughout the rest of the year, and on November 2. Flynn also suggested that Kimmel and Short were given the wrong instructions from Washington headquarters, thus aborting the taking of effective measures at the base. In early 1. 94. 5, a thirty- year- old historian, William L. Neumann, published a brochure, The Genesis of Pearl Harbor. He reviewed the diplomatic background to the outbreak of the war and pointed out how the Roosevelt Administration had launched an economic war against Japan in the summer and fall of 1. Neumann concluded that both sides were responsible, but that Washington could not have been surprised by the attack at Pearl Harbor, given FDR's diplomatic activities in the months and days preceding December 7th. Army and Navy Reports Released. After VJ- Day, President Harry Truman permitted the release of the Army and Navy special investigations of the Pearl Harbor attack. The Navy Court of Inquiry, headed by Admiral Orin G. Murfin, met from July 2. September 2. 7, 1. They concluded that Admiral Harold R. Stark, the Chief of Naval Operations, had failed to provide Admiral Kimmel all of the information possessed in Washington, thereby denying the Hawaii command a more complete picture of the situation. Kimmel was exonerated. His plans were judged . General George Grunert chaired the Army Pearl Harbor Board, which met from July 2. October 2. 0, 1. 94. Evidence from 1. 51 witnesses was collected in Washington, D. C., San Francisco, and Hawaii. While the Board was critical of General Short, for the first time attention was directed toward General George Marshall and the War Department. Marshall was censured for failing to keep Short fully apprised of the deteriorating state of U. S.- Japanese relations; of failing to correct Short's . Had he been alerted to a possible air attack, the planes would have been scattered and sheltered in revetments to guard against bomb blast); of failing to send critical information to short on the evening of December 6th and the morning of December 7th; of failing to determine if the state of readiness at Pearl Harbor was commensurate with the potential threats to the base's security. General Leonard Gerow, the Chief of the Army's War Plans Division, was also reproved, He had failed, the Board concluded, to keep the Hawaiian command inform ed about Japanese moves that were known in Washington; of failing to make the November 2. Army- Navy plans were properly effected. Needless to say, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Navy Secretary James Forrestal were alarmed that blame for the success of the Japanese attack had been shifted from the local commanders to their superiors in Washington. To supplement the report of the Army Pearl Harbor Board, Major Henry Clausen was selected to head a one- man investigation. But no public report was issued. Forrestal had Admiral W. Kent Hewitt continues to investigate Pearl Harbor. No separate report was issued, but on August 2. Forrestal announced that, on the basis of Hewitt's inquiries, . Kimmel and Admiral Harold R. Stark, particularly during the period 2. November to 7 December, 1. Flynn, who, in September 1. The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor. Flynn's findings were not limited to review by a small circle of interested friends, but were given wide circulation thanks to the Chicago Tribune, which highlighted his work. Flynn concluded that Franklin Roosevelt was to blame for diplomatic mismanagement; for keeping the Pacific fleet stationed at the insecure Pearl Harbor base; and for stripping Pearl Harbor of needed defensive equipment. Reviewing the diplomatic prelude to the attack, Flynn explained that FDR undermined the position of Japanese moderates and so orchestrated events that General Tojo and the . Despite provocations, it became clear that Germany was not going to declare war against the United States. It was at this point, said Flynn, that Roosevelt turned the screws on the Japanese. Flynn went on to note the . Flynn was under the impression that the British had first broken the Japanese code and supplied Washington with copies of messages between Tokyo and foreign representatives. He underscored the significance of the fact that Washington was aware that Japan had given its diplomats a November 2. U. S. In a section, . Short was ordered to guard against sabotage and internal disorder from the large Japanese population in Hawaii, and warned that Japanese military operations could be expected soon, but against such targets as the Kra Peninsula, Guam, Singapore, and Malay. And Flynn re- emphasized a point that is still too often obscured in discussions of the attack, namely, . The harbor was there merely as a fuel and supply base for it. The fleet had a task assigned to it in case of war. The protection of the base would be the duty of the Army and the base naval installations. He further discussed how the fleet had come to be based at Pearl Harbor over the objections of Kimmel's predecessor, Admiral Richardson, who was convinced that any ships berthed there would be an easy target. When the attack came at Pearl Harbor, the . The Administration hoped that the Committee, which had a majority of Democrats, would satisfy public curiosity while safeguarding the standing of the political party in power. Senator Alben Barkley (D- Kentucky) served as chairman. The five other Democrats included Senator Walter F. George (Georgia), Senator Scott Lucas (Illinois), Rep. Bayard Clark (North Carolina), Rep. Murphy (Pennsylvania), and Rep. Jere Cooper (Tennessee), who was Vice Chairman. The Democrats selected the legal staff. Four Republicans were on the Committee: Senator Owen Brewster (Maine), Senator Homer Ferguson (Michigan), Rep. Bertrand Gearhart (California), and Rep. The Republican Minority were not provided with their own staff. Flynn raised funds from private sources to permit Percy Greaves, a former associate research director for the Republican National Committee, to assist the Republican members of the Joint Congressional Committee. Without Greaves's able work, much of the Pearl Harbor story would have remained hidden from the public. The Committee sat from November 1. May 3. 1, 1. 94. 6. The Democratic majority managed to steer the hearings in such a manner as to deflect as much criticism as they could from the late President Roosevelt. Thanks to the persistence of Senator Ferguson, aided by Greaves, . The evidence, exhibits, hearings, and concluding report came to some forty volumes. The . Indeed, the Democrats asserted that Roosevelt, Hull, and Stimson had done everything they could possibly do to avoid war with Japan. The disaster at Pearl Harbor was due to the failure of the local commanders to take adequate measures to detect a possible attack and maintain proper readiness to meet likely threats. The report did suggest that the War Department should have notified Gen. In addition, Army and Navy intelligence should have realized the significance of Japanese efforts to keep abreast of the location of U.
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