As Malaya and Borneo were the battlegrounds of Southeast Asia, Sumatra and Java had existed for a time both literally and figuratively as islands in a swirling sea of conflict. The gradual isolation of the “home islands” of the archipelago was in part a function of the expansive vision of the mileposts on the Southern Road as imagined by Hideki Tojo and his generals during their conference in Tokyo in November 1941.
The overnight collapse of all but Java of the main islands of the Dutch East Indies – after more than a century as an immense integrated colony – can be blamed in part on the Dutch vision of their distant empire. Using just a handful of battalions to defend the outer islands, especially Borneo, which made the colony the world’s fourth largest oil producer, seems counterintuitive.
Of course, with their mother country in chains, the Dutch in the Indies had to make do with what they had, and Java, as the jewel in their colonial crown, deserved the greatest weight of their available resources. And as we have seen in following the Japanese advance through Borneo, Celebes, and Sumatra, the resources which the Dutch had available in the Indies were modest at best. The KNIL, functioning as a mere garrison force, was simply not ready to fight an army of the caliber of the IJA. It was poorly equipped when it came to basics such as mechanization or artillery, and had little or no training in modern battlefield warfare against a disciplined and determined foe. The prewar defense scheme for the Indies with such a force rested on the shaky foundation of focusing the preponderance of KNIL resources within the narrow perimeter of Java, and holding on until reinforcements arrived.
In the spring of 1942, the flaw in this non-strategy was apparent. Reinforcements were not coming. The British had lost an army in Singapore, and they were not coming. The Americans still had brave men fighting in Bataan that could not be rescued by either the US Army or the US Navy. The Australians were exhausted by Malaya and had committed their AIF troops to help the British in North Africa. Now, with the Japanese capture of the airfields on Celebes and Ambon, the Australians were worried about their own survival. If the increasing vulnerability of Java was illustrated by the Japanese capture of Borneo, Celebes, and now Sumatra, the vulnerability of Australia was painfully underscored by the massive air raid on Darwin that came on February 19 – which included land-based bombers flying from Celebes and Ambon.
Also on February 19, the Japanese tightened the noose of advanced airfields even further with simultaneous invasions of the island of Timor, halfway between Ambon and Darwin, and the island of Bali, which was closer to eastern Java than Sumatra was to western Java.
The 11,883-square-mile island of Timor had been the colonial possession of two European countries since the mid-nineteenth century, with the Netherlands in the west and Portugal ruling a slightly larger slice of the island in the east. The seat of the Dutch government, Koepang (now Kupang), was and is the largest city. Near Koepang, Penfui (now Poeloeti) was the largest airfield. The 600-man KNIL garrison, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Nico van Straten, was mainly an infantry contingent, and possessed only four 75mm guns.
In mid-December 1941, a week after the start of the war in the Pacific, Australia had forward-deployed troops to help protect the airfields on Ambon and Timor, the latter being only 500 miles from Darwin. As Gull Force was sent to Ambon, the 1,400-man Sparrow Force, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Bill (later Sir William) Leggatt, arrived on Timor on December 12. Centered on the AIF 2/40th Battalion of the 23rd Brigade, Sparrow Force also included antitank and artillery batteries, as well as 2/2nd Independent Company under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Spence, which later had the distinction of being one of the few Allied ground units to survive the action in the Indies to fight again later in the war.
Though the ML-KNIL had no combat aircraft based at Penfui, the RAAF sent a dozen Hudson bombers. The airfield was proving to be an important link in the American air bridge between Australia and the beleaguered Philippines, and ABDA considered it to be a vital part of Allied strategy in Southeast Asia. While Leggatt’s 2/40th Battalion set up to defend Koepang and Penfui, Spence’s 2/2nd Company and a contingent of Dutch troops prepared to invade Portuguese East Timor in order to secure the entire island against the Japanese.
In Lisbon, the government of Antonio Salazar complained loudly, declaring that Portugal, neutral in the war in Europe, was also neutral in the Pacific, a strategy that would save Macau from the fate of Hong Kong.
While it had been three decades since the Dutch and the Portuguese had formally agreed on a border across Timor in 1912, there was still an institutional memory of the open warfare that had transpired between the two colonial parties back in the nineteenth century. In Europe, diplomats representing all the parties had met to decide what to do, and it was agreed that the Portuguese governor in Timor could formally request aid if he felt threatened by the Japanese.
Embarking on the yacht Canopus, Spence traveled to Dili, the Portuguese administrative center, on December 17. Here he met with Governor Manuel de Abreu Ferreira de Carvalho even as the Dutch and Australian troops made an unopposed landing nearby.
Japanese aircraft were overhead, and had already strafed the Allied positions and had destroyed Portuguese property, but Carvalho insisted on the pretense of neutrality, and he refused to ask for Allied intervention in the absence of an actual, boots-on-the-ground Japanese invasion. Furthermore, he announced that he considered himself a prisoner of the Allies. By the end of 1941, an agreement was reached whereby the Dutch would withdraw from Portuguese Timor, leaving the Australian Diggers of Alexander Spence’s 2/2nd Company as the official occupation force.
During January and February 1942, minimal reinforcements were sent to Timor, including the British 79th Light Anti-Aircraft Battery, which arrived in at Koepang on February 16. A contingent of Portuguese troops from Angola was also being sent.
All of this was overtaken by events, as Japanese attacks against key locations throughout Timor increased in intensity, and the RAAF pulled out the small contingent of bombers that had been deployed in December. As had happened prior to the Japanese invasion of Ambon, the defenders were left without air cover to defend against Japanese bombers, based in Celebes and Ambon, that were able to attack Timor at will.
In the meantime, the aerial bombardment was augmented by naval gunfire from some of the same ships from Ibo Takahashi’s IJN Eastern Force that had helped hammer Ambon into submission. Arriving aboard his flagship, the cruiser Nachi, Rear Admiral Takeo Takagi brought a covering detachment that included the cruiser Haguro and four destroyers. Escorting the Timor invasion fleet, meanwhile, were other veterans of the Ambon battle. Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka, aboard his flagship, the cruiser Jintsu, was joined by ten destroyers and several minesweepers.
As this fleet headed south, the Allies were scraping together further reinforcements to send to the Timor garrison. It had been decided that Sparrow Force should be doubled to two battalions. Brigadier William Veale had arrived on Timor on February 12 with his headquarters, and was awaiting the arrival of the 2/4th Infantry Battalion, as well as the US Army’s 49th Field Artillery Battalion. However, en route from Australia, the transports carrying these troops were intercepted and attacked by Japanese bombers, and compelled to turn about and retreat.
As at Borneo and Ambon, the assault on Timor was planned as a joint IJA–IJN operation. The 228th Infantry Regiment of the 38th Division, which had landed at Ambon a little less than three weeks earlier, had shipped out aboard nine troop transports under the command of Colonel Sadashichi Doi. Meanwhile, the 3rd Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force, under Lieutenant Commander Koichi Fukumi and staging out of Kendari on Celebes, was tasked with making an airborne landing east of Koepang.
Though it should not have been that way, the Japanese amphibious landings on the night of February 19–20 took the defenders off guard. While most of the Allied defenses around Koepang were on the north side of the southwest tip of Timor, the main force of the IJA 228th Regiment, 4,000 strong, came ashore on the southern side, essentially outflanking the entrenched positions overlooking the harbor. Meanwhile, in Portuguese Timor, when 1,500 troops of the 228th came ashore near Dili, they were initially mistaken for the Portuguese contingent from Angola, who were scheduled to arrive on February 19!
Having failed to stop the Japanese on the beaches south of Koepang, the defenders mounted a determined early morning defense at the Penfui airfield on February 20 that cost Doi’s troops around 200 casualties. Leggatt then ordered his men to pull out, detonating previously planted demolition charges as they went.
Their withdrawal eastward toward more defensible positions put them in exactly the right place to intercept Koichi Fukumi’s 3rd Yokosuka paratroopers as they descended into fields near Usua, about 15 miles east of Koepang at mid-morning. More than half of the airborne troops in the first drop were killed by gunfire or thrust bayonets as they landed in the midst of this Aussie hornets’ nest, or in further actions on the ground as they attempted to capture the village of Babua later in the day.
A second airborne attack came on February 21, and gradually the Japanese ground and airborne troops surrounded the isolated remnants of the 2/40th Battalion. On the morning of February 23, after consulting his subordinate commanders, Bill Leggatt decided to surrender his command to prevent their being annihilated. Though Leggatt survived his ensuing captivity, a sizable number of the Sparrow Force troops who surrendered with him did not. Shortly after he was captured, a Japanese officer admitted to him that only 78 men in the first parachute drop had survived.
Brigadier Veale was among the Australian forces that had managed to successfully escape into the interior of the island, and when they learned of Leggatt’s surrender, they sought to link up with Allied forces in Portuguese Timor.
When the invasion came, the Allied contingent in eastern Timor included both Spence’s 2/2nd Company and a 150-man Dutch contingent led by van Straten. As the latter attempted to get back to Dutch Timor, Spence’s men fought a delaying action, then melted into the mountains and jungles of the interior. Having been trained for small-unit actions and living off the land, they essentially became a guerilla force. By March, both Veale and van Straten had linked up with Spence.
On both Borneo and Celebes, unsuccessful attempts had been made by escaped Allied troops to operate as guerrillas, but in these cases, the stragglers were captured after a relatively short time. In Timor, it was a different situation entirely. Despite Sadashichi Doi’s best efforts to catch them, Sparrow Force managed to elude capture while embarrassing the Japanese commander with deadly hit-and-run attacks.
Having cobbled together a radio, the fugitives were able to contact Australia and apprise Allied leaders of the situation, and by May, clandestine supply runs and evacuations of wounded were taking place, first with seaplanes, and later with ships. Veale and van Straten were pulled out in May, leaving Spence in command. During August 1942, the 48th Division under Lieutenant General Yuitsu Tsuchihashi, who had defeated the Americans in northern Luzon in December, undertook a major push to capture Sparrow Force, but they were pulled out for redeployment to New Guinea without having achieved this objective.
In the meantime, Allied ships managed to reach Timor with supplies and fresh troops. The Australian government even sent documentary filmmaker Damien Parer to Timor, where he shot the film Men of Timor about the exploits of Sparrow Force. Parer is best remembered as the cinematographer on the 1942 documentary about the New Guinea campaign, Kokoda Front Line! This film won a 1943 Academy Award. Parer was killed by a Japanese bullet in 1944 while filming the US Marines on Peleliu.
Spence was evacuated in November, followed by the last of Sparrow Force, who were pulled out by January 1943. They had killed 1,500 Japanese troops, while losing 40 of their own men.
The remarkable, albeit relative, success of Sparrow Force is in contrast to the fate of their fellow “Birds,” Gull on Ambon, and Lark on New Britain. While this book focuses on the Southeast Asia Theater, mention of the fate of Lark Force provides an opportunity to discuss the way in which activities in Southeast Asia intersected the operations which were taking place in the Southwest Pacific. On the chessboard of the Southwest Pacific, the strategic planners in Tokyo saw the Bismarck Archipelago, especially the island of New Britain, east of Southeast Asia and the Indies, as the linchpin of their future strategy. It was also a space on the board that would have to be occupied in order to check any Allied moves which might be made from Australia. Indeed, it would be the key to a ground offensive against Australia, should this long-discussed strategic option be given a green light.
Specifically, they had their eyes on the port city of Rabaul, 1,700 miles east of Timor and 3,000 miles east of Batavia. Located at New Britain’s eastern tip, it was 800 miles closer to Australia than the huge IJN base on the island of Truk. Rabaul was to become the forward operating base.
The timetable for the Rabaul operation, code-named Operation R, was set for a month before the Timor invasion and it paralleled Japanese operations in Dutch Borneo. The invasion fleet had departed from Truk on January 14, midway on the calendar between the Tarakan landings on January 10, and those at Balikpapan two weeks later.
As they were doing across Southeast Asia, the Japanese went after Rabaul with a determined efficiency and a force that substantially outnumbered the Allied defensive assets. The IJA force assigned to the Rabaul mission was the South Seas Detachment, a brigade-sized IJA force commanded by Major General Tomitaro Horii, who had led the invasion of Guam in December. Formed under the command structure of the IJN South Seas Force (based on the 4th Fleet) it was intended for offensive operations in the Pacific islands. For the Rabaul operation, the detachment was centered on the 144th Infantry Regiment, and other units detached from the 55th Division, including a battalion of the 55th Mountain Artillery Regiment, a squadron of the 55th Cavalry Regiment and engineer, antiaircraft, and other support units.
Sailing south from Truk, the IJA troops were escorted by an IJN task force under the command of Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue which included seven cruisers, 14 destroyers, and the aircraft carriers Akagi and Kaga, both veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Lark Force, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Scanlon, numbered around 1,400 men, was centered on 23rd Brigade’s 2/22nd Battalion, and contained two artillery batteries, one antiaircraft and one antitank. It was a minimal contingent with minimal obsolete air support – and one of its companies was detached to defend Kavieng on the island of New Ireland. As Bruce Gamble points out in his histories of the Rabaul campaign, the Australian numbers included local militia units and a battalion band that had been recruited in its entirety from the Salvation Army!
After a series of air attacks, Horii sent as many as 4,000 troops ashore on New Ireland on January 22, while a 5,000-man contingent landed on New Britain just after midnight the following day. Lark Force met the troops of Colonel Masao Kusunose’s 144th Infantry Regiment on the beaches near Rabaul, but the overwhelming Japanese superiority in numbers allowed Kusunose to land troops at additional locations that were undefended. By the end of the day, all of Scanlon’s defensive positions were overrun. Most of the men of Lark Force were captured, but 300 managed to escape westward to New Guinea.
The Japanese quickly turned Rabaul into their pivotal operational crossroads in the South and Southwest Pacific. It became the principal forward operating base for the IJA and the IJN and the air arms of both services. Around Rabaul, major airbases were built at Lakunai, Rapopo, Tobera, and Vunakanau. Rabaul became for the Japanese in World War II what Singapore had been to the British for the previous century, a formidable and heavily fortified keystone to their overall military strategy – and their empire. By 1943, the Japanese would have more than 100,000 personnel stationed at Rabaul.
In fact, it became what Singapore might have been for Britain’s RN – if the British had not lost that great base – and it was certainly more important to the Japanese than Singapore was now. Indeed, after the Japanese victories in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, Singapore was lying serenely in the middle of a vast Japanese sea.