Japan takes Singapore, a huge prize, and one more in a series of humiliations for the British. The Japanese are also pretty public about the atrocities they commit against civilians, already from the beginnings of their offensives and occupation. To learn more about that dark aspect of an already dark war, check out our War Against Humanity subseries, which deals with that in depth. It comes out twice a month; the playlist is right here: ruclips.net/p/PLsIk0qF0R1j4cwI-ZuDoBLxVEV3egWKoM For more depth about individual dates and events, follow our day by day coverage on Instagram: instagram.com/WW2_Day_By_Day/ And please read our rules of conduct before you comment, saves everyone headaches (and loads of time): community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
I started shitposting before week 1, signed up right before TGA reached the $5000 milestone while Poland still existed, and have been waiting for this episode ever since. It's been a long 130+ weeks.
@@thenewmayorofcrazytown7392 English emerged as the global language after the cold war. Prior to the end of the cold war there was still no global lingua franca. France still tried to be Europe's lingua franca even after the world wars but wasn't too succesful after the second time around, and its status as a lingua franca was really limited to diplomacy.
@@DawidKov honestly, no. sure, english might have been the most important language even during the cold war but it definitely wasn't a language you could take anywhere on earth and be able to get by just expecting as a matter of course to find at least one person who speaks a little english.
My grandad was taken POW at Singapore. Ended up in Changi and on the infamous Thai-Burma railway. He survived, at least physically. Had a lot of issues due to his time there. After the war he only worked for a short time before being pensioned off No one but his wife knew he had actually been there. We didn't find out until the early 90s when my sister did a school project on the Thai-Burma railway, which helped us understand why he was the way he was.
Thank you for your story, coming from a Singaporean here. The imprisonment of the Allied POWs at Selarang Barracks and Changi Prison were terrible experiences for them and many died of illnesses due to overcrowding and ill treatment from the Japanese.
Thank you for your story Andrew. My grandpa's brother was taken POW at the fall of Singapore as well. Grandpa lied about his age and enlisted when he got the news. His brother ended up with the INA, something grandpa did not know at the time. They will eventually reunite when his brother became a POW during the Burma campaign.
Note the drawings in this episode, they were made at the time by the late Ronald Searle. He thus documented his journey to Singapore and the atrocities endured by British and Australian POWs on the railway.
I wonder how long Singapore would've held out if the Allies knew how the Japanese treated their POWs. I'm also looking forward to the final episode in 2053 (1974), after the last Japanese soldier surrendered.
Ah yes the Japanese soldiers that fought in the Philippines “gathering intelligence” for 20 years. Simple History made a good video about those soldiers
Probably not for very long even if they had known this due to their dire situation. Perhaps they might have been able to push out the Japanese with one last counterattack, or force the Japanese into costly urban house to house combat in the Town area of Fortress Singapore. Either way, it would just delay the inevitable due to low morale anyway.
They knew how they did. Indy even said wounded in Malaya wanted to be shot rather than left behind to be captured. Sometimes you just don't want to fight to the end.
The allies knew. The defense of Singapore was botched at pretty much every step of the campaign. Even after the initial Japanese landings, had the allied forces counter attacked, they likely would have been able to crush the 12,000 Japanese who had landed. But they didn't counterattack.
In the west: “I got wounded, at least I get to go on leave.” In the east: “I got wounded, now I have to lie here and find out whether it’s a Japanese bayonet or a disease that gets me.”
infrastructure determines opportunities, basically as I`ve read japanese army often didn`t even provide food for their soldiers, expecting them to live from land
@@sodinc that's because japan itself isnt a large country, it did not have the industrial capacity of the us nor the empire of the british and having already been at war with china for years its resources are drawing ever thinner. it's only powerful when compared to the other asian nations such as china which was agrarian, fragmented and in civil war and the fact that europe is at war with itself and the us was isolationist.
I'm always reminded by the tales of veterans I had met about this campaign. Australian, British, Japanese, Indonesians, Singaporeans, Dutch soldiers as well as civilians who endured the war were either in prison or went about their ways to survive. My parents were teens on Java who told these tales and introduce me to others. Kudos to the Time Ghost team for these episodes. 👍✌
Jan Ruff O'Herne was a white woman from the Dutch East Indies who was forced into sexual slavery. The Dutch government tried and convicted Japanese soldiers for this crime. But Japan still denies that Korean comfort women were forced. Though they apologized to Korea on moral grounds, they refuse to do so legally and teach it in public schools. They compensated some women through private donations instead of government so they can deny legal responsibility all while public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it ever happened. Not much of an apology if you ask me. It's sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous.
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
GK Chesterton once wrote: "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people"
@@axelpatrickb.pingol3228 No. It's not. (I'm told the algorithm notices comments, so I'll make even inane ones to pitch in a fraction of a micro-penny for the channel. Any argument about what two strangers think about two different sayings.... not that important.) But I'm game to bitch & moan if you are?
My grandfather, then in his early twenty, resided in Sarawak when the Japanese occupied Borneo in Dec 1941. Seemed like a painful experience for those who went through the wartime. He seldom talked about his feeling about this period. I believe many Chinese were killed. Some hid in local Dayak long houses for years to avoid being rounded up by Japanese.
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Japan still refuses to take responsibility for comfort women and teach it in public schools despite America passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. They apologized on moral grounds but not legal, and public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it today. They compensated some women through private donations, not government, so they can deny legal responsibility.
As an aussie I think it's important to mention how much of events in signapore and Darwin was censored from the Australian public. Great series BTW enjoy it and look forward to each episode
This is wrong. It was never censored. It appeared in the papers at the time and was commented on by the Prime Minister. Given the exodus from Darwin it could never have been censored. It also would have served as very useful propaganda for the government of the day.
A footnote: Percival surrendered to Yamashita at Singapore. Wainwright of the US Army surrendered the Philippines. Yamashita was moved to the Philippines. Before the Japanese surrender of the Philippines Percival and Wainwright had been released from a POW camp in China. They were both flown to the Phillipines. Yamashita was shocked to see Percival standing there as he signed the surrender of Japanese forces.
My in-laws are Singaporean, and my father-in-law was a child when the Japanese took the island. He has described seeing severed heads strung from street lights. His father had to hide among the Malays to avoid being captured.
This is a very difficult episode to watch for me. My grandfather was captured at Singapore, and held in Changi jail, ironically across the road from his own house. He survived the hellships and was imprisoned in what is now North Korea. He was maltreated, and saw several of his comrades executed. Eventually he was liberated by the Red Army, kept alive by food and medical supplies dropped by the US Army Air Force and repatriated by the US Navy in Operation Magic Carpet. Thanks guys!
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Japan still refuses to take responsibility for comfort women and teach it in public schools despite America passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. They apologized on moral grounds but not legal, and public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it today. They compensated some women through private donations, not government, so they can deny legal responsibility. Sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
Yep. The Eastern Front in WW1 was often like this in winter too - whole armies could not work out whether they'd severed the enemy's supply lines or the enemy had severed their's. As in 1942, the question was sometimes resolved by who starved or froze to death first.
@@Mr2Reviews But it is not any good in visualizing the size and complexity of the organization running Bletchley Park or in its portrayal of the people working there.
Yes there were multiple air raids over Darwin, but I think the one on 19 February 1942 was probably more significant than the rest due to the panic it caused among Australia at the time when it coincided just after the Fall of Singapore a few days ago.
@@gunman47 Yep, same reason the Pearl Harbor attack is so memorable. Most Americans probably couldn't name a single Japanese attack other than that one, the rest get glossed over or forgotten in popular history.
When i look to this new thumbnail i don't only feel nostalgic because it resembles a bit the old Great War series, but also proud to be a part of supporting indirectly this project and to see it becoming a success of it's own. Great and wonderful work as always, even it is about something awful as war.
The comments on this channel are more interesting, more knowledgeable, and just generally better than comments on most RUclips channels. Which is to no small extent because of the quality of the channel itself. I'm a relatively new Time Ghost member.
Yea there are a lot of good historical channels, one of my favourites is Mark Felton (he goes over historical curiousities and the more zoomed in pictures) he covers atrocities aswell. Yet a lot of neo-nazi and general assholes come there to comment how it's bad they lost the war because w/e stupid racist reason.
@@laatmemetrustkutgoogle8896 didn't mark felton plagiarised stuff(also I didn't liekd when he called the tiger II a mbt). RUclips comment section on most WW2 stuff is cancer, that's why it's low hanging fruit on the subreddit shitwehraboosay
I believe the TimeGhost crew also monitors the comments heavily to ensure that there's nothing that breaks the rules. e.g. I've seen people attempt to post comments denying that major and well-documented atrocities happened, and they get deleted within minutes.
@@blueboats7530 When Indy explained that the Brits high command set TWO separate priority areas, then refused to allow the senior theater commander to apportion his men and material as he saw fit to meet those requirements, THAT was how a 4 to 1 British to IJA ratio caused Allied defeat. Inflexible command structure.
@@cstlbrvo5615 Looking at the troop composition you'll see that the defending army of Malaya was predominantly Indian and to a lesser extent Australian What made Singapore such a huge defeat was the fact that Churchill diverted an entire British division enroute to North Africa to assist however Malaya had already fallen by the time of their arrival and as they were deployed on the east side (the Japanese landed in the west) they saw little fighting before being ordered to surrender In hindsight this division would have been more effective being landed at Rangoon where it could have made things more difficult for the Japanese by defending the Burma road
The story of the survivors and nurses is just heartbreaking how did Japanese soldiers justify these actions to themselves? How can you just go on living after carrying out such acts..
According from that I read this is due of harsh military trading of officer corps wich were brutalized during their drill, whose when in charge, trained their men to be insensitive to prisoners. For example in China they forced their men to kill Chinese PoW and civilians in order to harden them. Often officers encouraged soldiers to rape and brutalize civilians. Interesting enough many Japanese veterans from that I read in "Japan at war" still only barely regrets that happened in Nanking and other places of atrocities. My references are "Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang and Theodore Cook's "Japan at war".
A mixture of reasons: They were ordered to be brutal (look up the "Three Alls Policy"). Japan in general was rather angry with the west's racial bias against Asians (America essentially turned Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war into a defeat at the table as an example). And the average Japanese conscript was taught that surrender made you lose any worth as an individual.
Training/Brutalization/Indoctrination does not absolve ANYONE of personal responsibility. And if you read accounts from Axis Soldiers during the war, these excuses are nowhere to be found or at best mentioned rarely. They only really start appearing after the war, when Axis Soldiers are forced to answer for what they did.
@@larslundandersen7722 It is rather unsettling though, when you compare the Einsatzgruppen to the average Japanese conscript. The Germans had to move to industrial genocide because the constant executions were making emotional wrecks out of grown men, while a lot of Japanese seemed to barely regret it at all.
Japanese military culture was quite brutal. New recruits were routinely beaten and humiliated, in return doing it to new recruits in their turn. British POWs occasionally saw Japanese officers slap their subordinates, who would then slap their juniors and so on. POWs, enemy civilians and even locals were obvious targets for brutality.
Yeah, like sexual slavery that Japan still denies today despite the U.S. passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. Japan is doing sneaky stuff like apologizing on moral grounds but not legal and even though they apologized, public officials and trolls on RUclips still deny it ever happened. Not much of an apology if you ask me. Some women were compensated but through private donations. Japan did this purposely so the government can deny legal responsibility. Disgusting and disingenuous if you ask me.
@@Mr2Reviews Oh sorry the Numbers are not high enough so its ok for u to kill Babys and Women when the numbers are low enough, what counts, 1, 2 , 100, 5000 .............? for Mister2 rewiews small massacres or colateral damage is no problem because it cost only 2,3,4......... lives. Victims (of war crimes) are victims, all, regardless of the numbers and every case is a WARCRIME. Japanese ultra nationalist? you have a big problem you are the same sort of twisted hateful people like a ultra nationalist or a Antifa with tunnelvision and black and white thinking ( Whoever is not for me is against me) wtf is wrong in your Brain, iam half arab(northafrican) half german and iam not even political, i hate political folks and iam not even animefan. Sry for my bad engl.
@@Sturminfantrist I never said it was ok. Sorry I thought you were a Japanese ultra nationalist. They always bring up Vietnam to deflect away from their atrocities.
I suppose this will likely be covered in the next episode of the War Against Humanity (February 1942 Part 2), but after the Japanese broke through at the Battle of Pasir Panjang on 14 Feb 1942, they would go on to conduct the Alexandra Hospital massacre where wounded soldiers, doctors and nurses were killed by the Japanese, many by bayonet. This has disturbing similarities to the St. Stephen's College massacre during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in December 1941.
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Japan still refuses to take responsibility for comfort women and teach it in public schools despite America passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. They apologized on moral grounds but not legal, and public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it today. They compensated some women through private donations, not government, so they can deny legal responsibility. Sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
@@Mr2Reviews Wikipedia has literally a page dedicated to list all war apology statements issued by Japan. US only compensated and apologized for internment of Japanese-Americans in 1988, half a century later. Sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
My great-granduncle was captured at Singapore and was then transported on the hell ship Kenkon Maru to Rabaul with 599 other members of his regiment. After this, he and the remaining healthy people had to get on another hell ship to Balalae Island where they were forced to build an airstrip. I'm not sure how he died specifically but it would have been from a beating, tropical disease, US bombing, or the massacre of POWs the Japanese did on June 30th, 1943. Thank you TimeGhost for producing these videos.
A few years ago at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, capital of Australia, I got to touch the table upon which the surrender of Singapore was signed. My grandfather on my father's side was in the 8th Division (Australia) and spent the rest of the war in Changi.
When Andy says the kill to wounded ratio is an indication now brutal the fighting is, that's a polite way of saying that the Japanese would shoot or bayonet the wounded to finish them off
Funnily enough, Percival will get a retribution for his surrender of Singapore when he was present at Yamashita's surrender in the Philippines in 1945.
@@maximilianolimamoreira5002 because in the Japanese military failure most likely was grounds for dismissal while the British most likely saw the ordeal as a situation beyond his control and gave him a chance to get even with the enemy
Yep. It was just a brain freeze for me reading the teleprompter (and I wrote the script) that no one picked up during filming. The editors at least got it right on screen.
@@Southsideindy There was one Australian, with a South African father, that did escape Singapore controversially. The 8th Division General Gordon Bennett handed over his command and flew back to Australia.
Interestingly, Adolf Hitler reportedly had mixed views about the Fall of Singapore, seeing it as a setback for the "white race", but ultimately it was still something in Germany's military interests. He did not allow Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop from issuing a congratulatory communique to the Japanese.
This highlights the strange bedfellows alliance of convenience between Germany and Japan at that time. Both see themselves as the superior race, and ideologically incompatible. The only reason they are allies is because they have the same enemies.
@@jaredkronk4614 Perhaps, we will never know. Of course he would be happy with any Japanese victories though, as every one tied down British resources that could have been used to fight against the Germans instead.
I'll never understand Hitler's racial views. The British (who are probably the most mixed ethnicity in western Europe) were Aryans, while the Slavs were subhumans?
I had two great uncles captured in Singapore. One survived, while the other died on the railway two days before the rest of his detail were relieved. One of their other brothers had been killed by a sniper during the defense. Yet there are Japanese that still deny POWs were used on the railway.
Just before Singapore fell a large amount of glass plate slides were secretly taken out of Singapore to Australia by submarine. These plate slides were all or most of the property ownership and bank account details for Singapore and the southern Malay Peninsula. They were taken to the Australian Army Survey Corps at Fortuna Mansion in Bendigo, Victoria (near my home - I can see it on the next hill). The slides were all copied then taken again by submarine to the USA for the duration of the war.
@@lotrlmao1648 USA and Australia and particularly Britain (it was a British colony) were denying the Japanese the knowledge of all property owners and bank details. There was a massacre by the Japanese of Singaporean locals who held wealth.
I love watching your videos when I have lunch. for a week now, you upload your videos after I have just finished eating and I get the big sad and regret for not eating later :(
@@brianhabel only sinners go to hell, there are no innocent bystanders, war is full of innocent bystanders. Apart from a few politicians and the brass pretty much everyone in a war is an innocent bystander.
@@brianhabel You may not have seen the episode, so I'll put the rest of the quote here. "How do you figure that, Hawkeye?" "Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to hell?" "Um, sinners, I believe." "Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
@@Al-vb6js nothing. But farmers aren't put in charge of the defence of Malaya usually. Percivial wasn't a bad commander because he was ugly though. He was a bad commander because he was fucking useless
Classic over-promotion, He was very brave (just look at his conduct in WW1) and a nice "chap" he would of been more effective if he were just a divisional commander. You have to be a bit ruthless at higher levels of command. I cant see Slim putting up with some of the crap Gordon Bennet gave Perceval for example.
Von Kluge - You're surrounded! Zhukov - Nuh-uh, you're surrounded. Von Kluge - Not if I surround you first! Zhukov - How are you gonna surround me if you're already surrounded? Von Kluge - No u.
A side note to the fall of Singapore is the story of RCAF pilots Howard Pilmore Low of Vancouver BC and Russell Charles Smith of Kamsack Saskatchewan. Low was captured by the Japanese on February 10 while leading a ragtag group airmen attempting to defend their airfield. Smith had been shot down over Singapore possibly on the 9th. The two squadron mates were reunited at the Boei Glodock PoW camp where together they would escape and attempt to steal a twin engine Japanese aircraft from the neighboring Kamarjam aerodrome. They managed to get one engine started before being re-captured. Two days later they were summarily executed by firing squad. The bravery and tenacity of these two young men (Smith was just 21) so far from home is something worth remembering.
The American Destroyer sunk by the Japanese at Darwin, was USS Peary (DD-226) a Great War vintage Clemson-class destroyer. She served in the U.S Asiatic Fleet, being present at Cavite on December 10th 1941 when the American naval depot was bombed. She was struck well alongside the pier, and had eight men killed as fires aboard forced her crew and other sailors to battle the blaze and the enemy. Her Captain was wounded, his XO killed. With a new Captain, Cmdr John Bermingham (Who Jeffery R. Cox in his book "Rising Sun, Falling Skies" explains was given command "...by virtue of the Asiatic Fleet's personnel commander running into him on the dock as he watched the repairs on the Peary...") she was tasked on December 26th alongside USS Pillsbury with withdrawing south to join Admiral Hart and U.S Task Force 5 at Soerabaja. (These vessels would soon become the American contingent of ABDA) Both ships split up, steaming the gauntlet across the Sulu and Celebes seas alone, less likely for both to be sunk if they were caught together by Japan warships or planes. At Negroes island, Cmdr Bermingham anchored close to the shore, and had Peary covered in foliage and her decks hastily painted green, in the hopes that Japanese aircraft wouldn't spot them. On the 28th, after entering the Celebes sea she was attacked by Japanese medium bombers and seaplanes, dropping torpedoes and bombs that Peary only barely manage to evade. Nearly Celebes island, she was again attacked, this time by Allied aircraft that mistook her for a Japanese vessel, as Australian Hudson bombers, seemingly ignored her signaling and made attack runs on her, one bomb striking aft, killing a man, and damaging a rudder and propulsion, defending herself the Pearly damage one Hudson with machinegun fire, the bombers leaving at sundown. (The Australians and Dutch were expecting two U.S Destroyers in a group, and didn't realize the lone American vessel was in fact, not Japanese, the green paint scheme didn't help either) Putting into a nearby port at Maitara, the crew made what repairs they could, refueled and, after almost three days, made radio contact with the T.F 5 to give a report of the situation. When American floatplanes arrived at her position (Dispatched since Bermingham was worried that the Japanese might track him via radio signal, he hadn't replied to T.F 5 after his initial report), they took three passes to spot the camouflaged Peary. When the PBY Floatplane landed , Bermingham was less then pleased with orders to head to Ambon (On the South coast of Indonesia) replying with some indignation: "I've been bombed by everyone else, and i'm not about to let you guys have a shot at me too." However, those were their orders, like them or not. With what little fuel remained, the Peary steamed for Ambon, outside the harbor being quickly halted by signaling. She had almost sailed into the port's minefield. She stayed for only a day before being ordered to Darwin, arriving on the 3rd of January, 1942. Where in six weeks time, she would be sunk, many of those who had crewed her through those three weeks of danger in the opening month of the war, would follow her to the grave, including Bermingham. In less then three weeks, the Peary’s crew had endured three bombings by the Japanese and one by the Australians, fought a fire aboard, spent three nights as an island, and narrowly sailed into a Dutch minefield, and this is only the beginning of her story. Of one vintage destroyers, in the Asiatic Fleet, soon to be ABDA. The Peary's story is ABDA in microcosm. Old ships crewed by old hands, far from their homelands, fighting with all their tenacity to halt the Japan drive south. They, the Americans, British, Dutch and Australians fought like tigers, but tigers with dulled claws, with shells that wouldn't detonate, ships that were as old as their crews, for colonial holdings some men amongst them viewed more as home then their own home countries from having so long served there. Though history little remembers them, only footnotes in those dark terrible months of defeat and disaster, they fought for their flag, fought for time, but above all, they fought for each other. Today the "4" inch gun of the Peary stands on the shore of Darwin harbor, a memorial to her crew.
Indi your my hero. You have the courage to tell the truth of Japanese atrocities in the war. This is so important as Japan and many on the left paint the Japanese as victims and this is taught in Japan. Soldier for soldier they were much wore than the Germans. You are a very honest historian. I salute you.
As well as Singapore and Darwin, on the 26th Feb 1942 Japanese recon plans launched from a submarine all the way down south were also spotted flying over Melbourne, further prompting fears of invasion.
You forgot to mention that on this week, 15 February, was the start of German U-Boats campaign to bombing Brazilian merchant and citizens naval convoys. Which led to the break of relations with the Axis forces and later, on August 1942, Brazil joining the war on the allied side. On this week ,15 and 18 February, they sunk two convoys. During the year of 1942 there would be more 23 Brazilian naval convoys sunk. Also, in 1942 the U.S would set strategic military bases on Brazil in Belém, Natal and in the island of Fernando de Noronha. If you are curious you can check the list here: pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_navios_brasileiros_atacados_na_Segunda_Guerra_Mundial
Why did they go after Brazilian shipping in the first place? Was it about the supplies they were shipping to the Allied nations, or did they have a particular issue with Brazil?
@@Raskolnikov70 They send 25 submarines to patrol Brazil. Which I believe 11 were destroyed by the Brazilian Navy and other 6 severed damaged. Officially the German Navy only registered 9 as sunk. Maybe the other 2 were Italians sub. They objective was to stop the shipping of supplies to U.S and Europe(Allied Forces). Most of the ships were registered containing : rubber, coffee, cotton, coal, leather, oil and fuel.
My granduncle was a survivor of Sook Ching. The stories he told when I was growing up the hatred of the Japanese was something I couldn't understand till I was much older. That generation saw stuff that I would hope none of us could ever see again. RIP uncle Robert
It's a big week for my relatives this week. My grandfather was on a ship on in Darwin when it was attacked, and my wife's grandparents lived on Bangka Island during the Japanese occupation/massacre. I also met Vivian Bullwinkle once.
There a few building still in use at RAAf Base Darwin from ww2 mainly the officers mess and we are told that there are still bullet holes in the building. I have not seen them myself.
On a side note. There are still holes on the hangar doors in RAF Seletar (now Seletar Airport/Seletar camp) Seen it with my own eyes. Wondered why they didn't patch it.
Yeah. I have not been there myself (no access to civvies) but there are some old facilities still in use and declares heritage sites. Actually, all of Darwin is filled with WWII history. There's the Oil tunnels, several air strips (Coomalie, Strauss, etc.), wreckages of planes including a B-24 Liberator and ships, old anti-bomb shelters in Charles Darwin National Park, etc. I loved my time in Darwin.
Vivian Bullwinkle was South Australian, not South African. She was later the Matron at the hospital in Melbourne where my Father was a doctor. I think she babysat me when I was really little, but I can't be sure.
You are correct, South Australian. There was a TV doc about her. A Polish? refugee wanted to train as nurse and went from hospital to hospital looking for work. In one hospital she came across a woman on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. The young lady told her her story and asked, who can she see about becoming a nurse. The woman said, "you can start on Monday at 9am." The young lady said, "but you're the janitor, how can you say that?" Vivian then stood up, smiling she said, "No, my dear, I am the Matron." That lady became a nurse and later a doctor. What hospital was your father at?
@@blueycarlton That sounds like her. My Dad was a Latvian refugee. Fairfield Hospital, The Queens Memorial Infectious Diseases Hospital, to give its full name. I grew up living in a house on the grounds. Wonder if anyone's wished that place was still there now? It'd be mighty handy! My Dad was one of the last, if not the last Medical Director there. Dr Alvis Kucers. Absolute rubbish that nobody knew that a great pandemic was coming! The top professionals in the field have known forever, that it was not a case of if the next big pandemic would cripple the World, but a matter of when. Dad fought to keep that place open for that reason.
@@ronasaurus74 You must have had a great time growing up with the hospital grounds in Fairfield. The ABC-TV documentary was wonderful. How Vivian and the other Australian nurses cared for themselves and the inmates, along with the young Dutch girl in the Japanese prisoner camp. The nurses' story and that of "Weary" Dunlop other doctors and men on the Burma railway, amazing, it still brings a tear to my eye when I think about it.
Good catch Ronald Kucers! Sorry for mix up here, Indy read the teleprompter wrong. While we rigorously fact check our scripts and videos, sometimes a few mistakes can slip through the cracks.
loving these new thumbnails! the old thumbnails always seemed poor quality to me personally, glad they now match the quality of the rest of the program!
"See Hans, Ivan seems to be dropping in on these fields with bonfires on them. If we lit bonfires ourselves, they would be dropping in exactly in front of our muzzles."
@@VisualdelightPro The British/Indian 14th Army gave the Japanese their greatest land defeat of the war and the Kohima/Imphal battle is recognised as the classic battle of the war.
Imagine being an Indian soldier in that fight and surrendering, it wasn't even their fight and they are caught up in it. Plus, the US troops in the Philippines must have started sweating nervously when they saw that report.
SPOILER The bulk of them captured in Singapore joined the Indian National Army. A number were given green armbands by the Japanese and used to guard British and Australian prisoners. Some were as atrocious as the Japanese.
One of the business professors at my university was a part of a US tank platoon in the Philippines. I found a copy of a book he wrote of his fight, the Bataan Death March and later his time as a POW in Japan. "My Hitch in Hell", by Lester Tenney. The signed dedication inside the first page is to his doctor, who he outlived.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Of_the_65,000_Indian_Army_troops_taken_prisoner_at_the_fall_of_Singapore...25,000_accepted...that_the_Japanese...needed_them_to_help_drive_(Britain)_out_of_East_Asia._Consequently_they_retained_their_arms_and_Art.IWMART1574744.jpg One of Searle's drawings, showing a "Sikh traitor" about to beat a British officer who refused to salute him.
No, not really. The Philippines were set to become independent in 1946 and many, if not most, Filipinos viewed the Japanese invasion of the Philippines as another invasion by a foreign power. That meant that the Filipino soldiers remained quite loyal throughout the war and many escaped Scouts and Philippine Army soldiers joined the resistance that was led by evader US officers. By the time MacArthur came back to the Philippines those forces numbers in the thousands, and even tens of thousands. Many of these resistance fighters we incorporated into new Philippine Scout units that fought throughout the islands. A bigger concern was the Communist Houk (?) movement which fought at times against both the Philippine resistance and against the Japanese.
Indy and the rest of the team on time ghost, I’ve been following your work since the Great War in 2014 and can only say “Bravo”. The work you have achieved is phenomenal and easily the best full documentary of these events! Your coverage is excellent and informative! Special shout-out to Spartacus for covering the emotionally taxing but nonetheless important events of the war against humanity. Thank you for continuing to raise the bar and then exceed it; week by week!
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Japan still refuses to take responsibility for comfort women and teach it in public schools despite America passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. They apologized on moral grounds but not legal, and public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it today. They compensated some women through private donations, not government, so they can deny legal responsibility. Sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
@@alexanderthompson7164 Yeah, they're basically a one party government. Can you believe the ultra-nationalists have been controlling the government almost unbroken for more than 65 years? Only a handful of years had a Prime Minister of a different party since 1955. Love Japanese people and culture but I hate the ultra-nationalists.
The ultra nationalist Abe followers have infiltrated Taiwan's political sphere and saying that Taiwan Nipponland. Absolute disgusting prime minister Abe.
That story on the japanese killing those innocents on the beach sickened me. I... I don't have words right now. I know there are many stories like it, but the brutality, the needless murder... I have never felt more strongly than I do right now that war is the worst thing humanity has ever discovered.
@@Joshua_N-A Nah, stop it - of course we're all theoretically capable of such insane savagery, but it won't even occur to most of us to rape innocent people with bayonets and then set them on fire. Does it? Saying that kind of thing makes me a little concerned about you ... the only thing I have to keep in check is my gag-instinct from hearing about such depravity... maybe you should seek help?
Just discovered the instagram page from the comments. I never really used instagram, but a day by day wwii recap seems to be the perfect use for instagram that I never thought of. Subscribed over there.
I love that you included Ronald Searle's drawings. Ugly subject, but what beautiful line! That he kept drawing in captivity, and was able to hide the drawings from the Japanese makes him a hero of 20th century art.
The Japanese seem to have known he was an artist and some of them got him to draw portraits of them. In 1942 the Japanese demanded that POWs sign a declaration that they would not escape. Searle signed his but drew sketches of two scowling Japanese soldiers on his declaration, which they do not seem to have collected. www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/24294
@@kingkonut I am pretty sure he had to hide many, perhaps most of them but he certainly drew portraits of some of the Japanese at their request, including of one named Takahashi who was just about the only one whose name he knew and seems to have behaved decently. He tried to trace Takahashi after the war but could not locate him. Searle also seems to have lost many of his drawings. There was a shortage of paper for things like toilet needs, rolling cigarettes and so on.
Would be interesting that, given previous subjects on events like the Warsaw Uprising and partisan activities in Europe, if an episode about resistance against the Japanese in Malaya can looked into; we’ve heard and learnt about personalities like Lim Bo Seng, Adnan and the whole Force 136 in school but that was about it: piecemeal bites.
Absolutely agree. This topic would certainly be an interesting one. We would therefore get to know how the British was secretly communicating with the resistance groups while the Japanese tightened their grip on outside information which included strict control of local newspapers and radios.
We haven't done anything on the Warsaw Uprising because it hasn't happened yet, and neither has resistance to occupation. Of course we will address partisans and resistance of all stripes in all areas.
@@Southsideindy Thanks Indy! Glad to hear from you personally. My bad, I think my earlier comment was made because I was watching Sabaton history recently on these subjects, got them mixed up. But I look forward all the same! Great presentation once again.
This is already covered in the IG day by day of the channel, but on 14 Feb 1942, C Company commanded by Lieutenant Adnan bin Saidi under the 1st Malaya Brigade clashes with the Japanese during the Battle of Pasir Panjang at Bukit Chandu. The Japanese attempted to send in a group of men dressed in captured British Indian troops' uniforms in order to present themselves as allied Indian soldiers in the British Indian Army. However, soldiers of the British Army typically marched in a line of three columns while the supposed allied Indian soldiers in front of their lines were moving in a line of four columns. C Company saw through this deception and opened fire once the disguised Japanese reached their defensive lines, killing many and causing the remainder to retreat. The Japanese would return a few hours later to launch an all-out charge, overwhelming the defensive lines and resulting in fierce hand to hand combat. Lieutenant Adnan encouraged his men not to retreat or surrender, which was best illustrated in his motto: Better Death Than Dishonour. Eventually he was captured and executed by the Japanese. Today, Lieutenant Adnan is considered a local national hero in both Singapore and Malaysia for his actions at Bukit Chandu.
The day of the surrender and Fall of Singapore, 15 February, is now commemorated in Singapore through *Total Defence Day* . Every year, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) blares sirens island-wide with the Important Message signal through its Public Warning System (PWS) at 6.20pm. This is to remind us Singaporeans of what could happen if we cannot defend themselves, and to strengthen our resolve to keep Singapore safe, secure and independent. A memorial service is also held at the Civilian War Memorial near the Padang on the same day to remember the victims of the war.
@@ian_b Yes it is. For us locals in Singapore and Malaya, it was a big wake up call for us to defend our own sovereignty and not to depend on others for our defence.
Why didn't many chinese in Singapore and Malaysia enlist to fight against the Japanese for the UK? Even in HK & Dutch East Indies all other people groups made up the biggest bulk of soldiers fighting for the European powers against Japan just not the Chinese diaspora. Where's the loyalty at?
@@scarletcrusade77 Some of the local Chinese actually enlisted in Dalforce, or Singapore Overseas Chinese Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army during the Malayan Campaign. However, one must understand that many of the Chinese in Singapore were immigrants from China and at the time, they may not have intended to settle down in Singapore for a very long time and might return to China once they had made their lot of money. So loyalty wise, they were pretty content to let the British do the fighting as far as most were concerned.
What really gets me about all of the surrender was the bit about those people the Japanese executed surviving the execution and then surrendering a second time. Dead if you don't surrender, if your first encounter is any indication you are probably just as dead if you do. It's kind of like choosing how to die; on your terms or by your enemy's whim. Under those circumstances I'd choose to not surrender and die being as annoying as possible. Got to be better than their prison camps.
@Mars Attacks being a hypocrite makes no side right by any sense homever. Japan's wrong for not smallowing it all much like how the West is wrong on not returning the loot
In defence of the RN; It could not have a "china fleet" equal to that of the home or Mediterranean fleets due to the naval treaties. it was a general desire of the RN to have 3 battlefleets, Americans poo pooed the idea however. Nor would it be sensible to move the med fleet to Asia given the circumstances in the Med. In pure military terms the Japanese really earned the capture of Singapore, the "he who dares wins" really played out for them. Roll on the catastrophic advance of Burma.
Had more to do with the poor economy of the UK after WWI and the increased civil unrest of the Empire ."Naval Treaties" were just a byproduct of not wanting a arm race at sea.
@@bmc7434 In regards to a 3rd fleet, not really. In many ways the UK did seek the treaties, and saw that they could be advantageous. Thus the UK was the most enthusiastic player. But that doesn't take away from the RNs desire to have a substantial China fleet, and that the American stipulations were to curtail such. The US however considered that have the UK hold 3 battlefleets, particularly an Asian one undermined their own interests. Its one of the reasons that the US also demanded the end of the Anglo-Japanese treaty. Accepting terms, in some respects regardless of what those terms were, was still agreeable however; having theoretical constraints on nations prevented out of control build up (maintaining and planning a large, planned for, fleet was less an issue because that can be costed for). The UK would have hoped to be able to maintain 3 fleets within the treaties, not 2, but still have the treaties. IN short; the UK wanted 3 fleets, US said no, UK wanted the Treaty regardless, so agreed to US terms. if not for the constraints of the Treaty, the UK would have had a 3rd Battlefleet. Mostly composed of dreadnoughts and super dreadnaughts that were scrapped (I imagine the KGVs Iron dukes etc; and the older new ships being rotated to the china station before scrappage.).
Yes, the RN could not get there, and an RAF salvation was equally out of the question at that point. To me the issue is the land campaign should then have been re-configured, as Indy mentioned, too much Army effort was spent on retaining air (and naval) bases because the previous plan was they would be needed for the saviors' arrival.
@@blueboats7530 I have stated in a number of cases that the British should have fallen back to and entrenched in a line from Muar to Kuala Rompin , followed by a fall back line from Mersing to batu phat. In may not have held off japan indefinitely but would have allowed a concentration of forces as well as operational coherence. Losing these lines would mean losing the campaign; allowing the notion of evacuation to India much more possible than it was. The under stated airforce was an issue; though all things considered the RAF fought well considering. At very least a proper defence would have allowed a more exhausting and costly victory; thus making actions down the line in burma for more costly for japan, having less to work with and fighting seasoned more troops.
@@bmc7434 Nah, many warships (not just by the British) at the time were clearly designed to be on the very edges of acceptable with *completely not* the ability to be upgraded to exceed the treaty (such as slots for thicker armour plate to be added, or space and load capability for bigger guns).
Fuchida had an interesting life. Nearly killed at midway, he happened to be at hiroshima the day before the bomb. Called back to Tokyo, he and a fact finding group were sent back the day after. Everyone but him died of radiation poisoning. After the war he was forced to testify against jaoaneese war criminals and was infuriated what he percieved must be the allies hypocricy. He made it his mission to find jaoaneese pows and expose the allies had done the same things. He was shocked to find not only were the jaoaneese pows treated well but that a friend he thought died at midway was still alive. Still he didn't understand the Americans ability to treat their enemies well. He actually expected them to reciprocate the atrocities. A few years later he read a book by and later met an american pow who introduced him to christianity, which he converted to.. he once told admiral nimmets they made the right choice dropping the atom bombs as the toll to both sides from an allied invasion of the mainland would be catadtrophic. He eventually took up peanent residence in the united States though he never became a citizen
Whatever happens between Korea and Japan, let it be fair and in peaceful way as both are very nationalistic nowadays. But I doubt it'll be that way. One does not forgive and and one does not admit, they have a long way to go. War is the last thing people in Asia-Pacific need. History must be a lesson not a weapon yet everyone is using it as a weapon to undermine one another.
@@Joshua_N-A Japan is more nationalistic. Just look at their government. They're run by ultra-nationalists who held power almost unbroken for more than 65 years. There's only a handful of years that a different party got elected to Prime Minister. The Liberal Democratic Party or LDP continues to effectively control the whole government since 1955. They're basically a one party government.
@@Joshua_N-A How can you forgive when they don't even ask for it? They deny it ever happened. They're sweeping it under the rug. Soon, there won't be any living victims left to apologize to.
Fun fact, censorship was strong in Australia at that time, my now 90 year old grandmother only learned that Darwin was bombed over 100 times not just once in 1995 until then she thought it was a once off. Also the Japanese should be forced to learn their own war crimes the way the Germans are forced.
Well my father was stationed in Darwin and Adelaide River during WW2 and it was common knowledge that they were raided about 60 times. I also learnt that at school long before 1995. I believe what was censored was the death toll of the initial raid, the panic that occurred, and the ineptitude of the military authorities who had been warned of the raid by a priest on Bathurst Island who had radioed a report of a large formation of aircraft heading towards Darwin.
My late father in law was captured and survived after Changi and Burma Railway. He was released after the dropping of the atom bomb. All allied prisoners would have been executed if the Japanese mainland had been invaded.
"It was the illusion that a Two-Hemisphere Empire can be defended by a One-Hemisphere Navy that sealed the fate of Singapore" ~ Admiral Herbert Richmond RN, 'Statesmen and Sea Power' (1946) In a similar vein, I've seen another good statement (the source of which, unfortunately, I cannot recall) to the effect that Britain was trying to fight a five ocean war with, at best, a two ocean navy.
re naval power, singapore was brown bread on 03 September 1939, both ze germans and the italians could use a fleet-in-being strategy to tie down disproportionate numbers of ships by sitting in port all war (though the italians at least sailed around the med and had air cover over large areas) and without the metaphorical cavalry to arrive, the japanese had relative free reign. It's like having a maginot line with no french army to reinforce areas being attacked, all you've done is create a giant speed bump
QUESTION: So the Japanese citizens of the U.S.'s West Coast were only interned if they lived in a "military zone"? I had been led to believe that ALL Japanese on the West Coast had been interned. Are you saying otherwise? If so, what percent of the total Japanese population there were interned?
Some Japanese that were born in America and therefore more Americanized were lucky to be let go if they passed a loyalty test. More than 120,000 Japanese were interned and more than 80,000 of them received $20,000 dollars each totaling more than $1.64 billion dollars, an official apology, and the subject taught in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Meanwhile, Japan still denies American POWs and comfort women. They may have apologized on moral grounds but not legal and their public officials and trolls still deny it ever happened. Some women were compensated but Japan set it up through private donations so the government can deny legal responsibility. It's sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
In Australia there is something of myth or perception that the Fall of Singapore was the moment that the British Abandoned Australia to the Japanese and why we threw ourselves into the arms of the USA for protection.
3:12 ... "Not far across the water from Japan" ... Everything is relative. But Tokyo to Singapore is 5,308 km. That's roughly the same distance from Anchorage Alaska to Los Angeles
I had a colleague of mine from Muntok. I don't think she ever knew about the massacre that happened there. Lots of what happened in Dutch Indies I just discovered by watching this series.
They held on as best they could, but Singapore was always going to fall. Now for 4 brutal years of captivity, or fleeing to the jungles. Neither option sounds promising...
I have notifications set up on my phone for when a new video comes in, it came up around 5 hours ago, usually I'd watch it right away, but to-day I didn't. Silly I know, but I saw the title, Singapore Falls and just couldn't bring myself to click on it right away.
@@stc3145 Colonel Saito was unwilling to get a translation from Colonel Nicholson during an argument about the legality of forcing officers to work on the bridge over the Kwai river and the railroad connecting Bangkok with Rangoon
Japan takes Singapore, a huge prize, and one more in a series of humiliations for the British. The Japanese are also pretty public about the atrocities they commit against civilians, already from the beginnings of their offensives and occupation. To learn more about that dark aspect of an already dark war, check out our War Against Humanity subseries, which deals with that in depth. It comes out twice a month; the playlist is right here: ruclips.net/p/PLsIk0qF0R1j4cwI-ZuDoBLxVEV3egWKoM
For more depth about individual dates and events, follow our day by day coverage on Instagram: instagram.com/WW2_Day_By_Day/
And please read our rules of conduct before you comment, saves everyone headaches (and loads of time): community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
I started shitposting before week 1, signed up right before TGA reached the $5000 milestone while Poland still existed, and have been waiting for this episode ever since. It's been a long 130+ weeks.
@@pnutz_2 and we love you for all of that - especially your patience!
Still glad I found this channel.
Ground has been set for the formation of INA
Hy
Person: “I am from Hainan.”
Japan: “That’s a weird way to say ‘communist’.”
"Its a regional dialect"
Person: 😦
@@Marinealver Funny, I didn’t think English became the official language of business until after the war. Wow this channel is really educational!
@@thenewmayorofcrazytown7392 English emerged as the global language after the cold war.
Prior to the end of the cold war there was still no global lingua franca.
France still tried to be Europe's lingua franca even after the world wars but wasn't too succesful after the second time around, and its status as a lingua franca was really limited to diplomacy.
@@DawidKov honestly, no. sure, english might have been the most important language even during the cold war but it definitely wasn't a language you could take anywhere on earth and be able to get by just expecting as a matter of course to find at least one person who speaks a little english.
My grandad was taken POW at Singapore. Ended up in Changi and on the infamous Thai-Burma railway. He survived, at least physically. Had a lot of issues due to his time there. After the war he only worked for a short time before being pensioned off
No one but his wife knew he had actually been there. We didn't find out until the early 90s when my sister did a school project on the Thai-Burma railway, which helped us understand why he was the way he was.
Thank you for your story, coming from a Singaporean here. The imprisonment of the Allied POWs at Selarang Barracks and Changi Prison were terrible experiences for them and many died of illnesses due to overcrowding and ill treatment from the Japanese.
@Prince Harambe I expect POWs to be treated decently. Fed and sheltered. Silk and champagne are not necessary.
Thank you for your story Andrew. My grandpa's brother was taken POW at the fall of Singapore as well. Grandpa lied about his age and enlisted when he got the news. His brother ended up with the INA, something grandpa did not know at the time. They will eventually reunite when his brother became a POW during the Burma campaign.
Note the drawings in this episode, they were made at the time by the late Ronald Searle. He thus documented his journey to Singapore and the atrocities endured by British and Australian POWs on the railway.
@@pierrecat3842 Interesting, I was actually not aware of the origin of the drawings. Thank you for this fact.
I wonder how long Singapore would've held out if the Allies knew how the Japanese treated their POWs. I'm also looking forward to the final episode in 2053 (1974), after the last Japanese soldier surrendered.
They've known for a while. They could just see the Sino-Japanese War and more recently at Battle of Malaya. The Allies just had incredibly low morale.
Ah yes the Japanese soldiers that fought in the Philippines “gathering intelligence” for 20 years. Simple History made a good video about those soldiers
Probably not for very long even if they had known this due to their dire situation. Perhaps they might have been able to push out the Japanese with one last counterattack, or force the Japanese into costly urban house to house combat in the Town area of Fortress Singapore. Either way, it would just delay the inevitable due to low morale anyway.
They knew how they did. Indy even said wounded in Malaya wanted to be shot rather than left behind to be captured. Sometimes you just don't want to fight to the end.
The allies knew. The defense of Singapore was botched at pretty much every step of the campaign. Even after the initial Japanese landings, had the allied forces counter attacked, they likely would have been able to crush the 12,000 Japanese who had landed. But they didn't counterattack.
Japan to Portugal: "No problem, we'll recognize your neutrality."
Manuel Quezon:"Wait, what?"
"Welcome to the Great Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Please do not resist."
Japan: Engage Three Alls Policy - Kill all, burn all, loot all.
[Then proceeds to force hundreds of thousands of women into sexual slavery]
Can another one happen without a gunshot?
@@Joshua_N-A There was a lot more than one gunshot. And it CAN happen without a genocide and there was more than one of those.
Mr2 Reviews that’s right, “杀光，强光，烧光‘ -三光！every Chinese know this
I appreciated your joke bro, don't worry.
In the west: “I got wounded, at least I get to go on leave.”
In the east: “I got wounded, now I have to lie here and find out whether it’s a Japanese bayonet or a disease that gets me.”
infrastructure determines opportunities, basically
as I`ve read japanese army often didn`t even provide food for their soldiers, expecting them to live from land
@@sodinc that's because japan itself isnt a large country, it did not have the industrial capacity of the us nor the empire of the british and having already been at war with china for years its resources are drawing ever thinner. it's only powerful when compared to the other asian nations such as china which was agrarian, fragmented and in civil war and the fact that europe is at war with itself and the us was isolationist.
@@mxn1948 yeah, that is absolutly true. Japan was using what she had as much as it was possible.
@@sodinc that in no way explains or mitigates japanese brutality.
Yo its toby wood the og phly daily suggestion man
I'm always reminded by the tales of veterans I had met about this campaign. Australian, British, Japanese, Indonesians, Singaporeans, Dutch soldiers as well as civilians who endured the war were either in prison or went about their ways to survive. My parents were teens on Java who told these tales and introduce me to others. Kudos to the Time Ghost team for these episodes. 👍✌
Jan Ruff O'Herne was a white woman from the Dutch East Indies who was forced into sexual slavery. The Dutch government tried and convicted Japanese soldiers for this crime. But Japan still denies that Korean comfort women were forced. Though they apologized to Korea on moral grounds, they refuse to do so legally and teach it in public schools. They compensated some women through private donations instead of government so they can deny legal responsibility all while public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it ever happened. Not much of an apology if you ask me. It's sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous.
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
GK Chesterton once wrote:
"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people"
Just a more convoluted rehash of "keep your friends close and your enemies closer"...
@@axelpatrickb.pingol3228 No. It's not.
(I'm told the algorithm notices comments, so I'll make even inane ones to pitch in a fraction of a micro-penny for the channel. Any argument about what two strangers think about two different sayings.... not that important.)
But I'm game to bitch & moan if you are?
And so the Finns frequently referred to the Russians who invaded them as their "neighbours."
If my neighbours put me through what the Japanese did, I'd hate them for life.
Well, they can become the same people.
My grandfather, then in his early twenty, resided in Sarawak when the Japanese occupied Borneo in Dec 1941. Seemed like a painful experience for those who went through the wartime. He seldom talked about his feeling about this period. I believe many Chinese were killed. Some hid in local Dayak long houses for years to avoid being rounded up by Japanese.
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Japan still refuses to take responsibility for comfort women and teach it in public schools despite America passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. They apologized on moral grounds but not legal, and public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it today. They compensated some women through private donations, not government, so they can deny legal responsibility.
As an aussie I think it's important to mention how much of events in signapore and Darwin was censored from the Australian public. Great series BTW enjoy it and look forward to each episode
This is wrong. It was never censored. It appeared in the papers at the time and was commented on by the Prime Minister.
Given the exodus from Darwin it could never have been censored.
It also would have served as very useful propaganda for the government of the day.
A footnote:
Percival surrendered to Yamashita at Singapore. Wainwright of the US Army surrendered the Philippines. Yamashita was moved to the Philippines. Before the Japanese surrender of the Philippines Percival and Wainwright had been released from a POW camp in China. They were both flown to the Phillipines. Yamashita was shocked to see Percival standing there as he signed the surrender of Japanese forces.
My in-laws are Singaporean, and my father-in-law was a child when the Japanese took the island. He has described seeing severed heads strung from street lights. His father had to hide among the Malays to avoid being captured.
The Purple Machine part is where other channels would sneak a VPN sponsorship in.
But this channel doesn’t do sponsorships and I love them for that.
The attack on Darwin would have been ideal for the spot for RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS, just sayin'.....
This is a very difficult episode to watch for me. My grandfather was captured at Singapore, and held in Changi jail, ironically across the road from his own house. He survived the hellships and was imprisoned in what is now North Korea. He was maltreated, and saw several of his comrades executed. Eventually he was liberated by the Red Army, kept alive by food and medical supplies dropped by the US Army Air Force and repatriated by the US Navy in Operation Magic Carpet. Thanks guys!
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Japan still refuses to take responsibility for comfort women and teach it in public schools despite America passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. They apologized on moral grounds but not legal, and public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it today. They compensated some women through private donations, not government, so they can deny legal responsibility. Sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
@@Mr2Reviews Japanese-Americans weren't PoWs tho. They were civilians and american citizens.
I can't even tell who's encircling who anymore.
yes
Sounds like it's all going according to Stavkas' directives, then.
...on a peninsula??
the soviets neither, so let´s drop some more paratroopers!
Yep. The Eastern Front in WW1 was often like this in winter too - whole armies could not work out whether they'd severed the enemy's supply lines or the enemy had severed their's. As in 1942, the question was sometimes resolved by who starved or froze to death first.
The story of what happened to the Purple Machine in Singapore could be a great plot idea for a semi historic novel
Ask Mark Felton about this. He will find an answer.
(sings) I have a purple machine and I want it painted black..
Well, the movie, The Imitation Game, with Benedict Cumberbatch covers the European side.
@@Mr2Reviews But it is not any good in visualizing the size and complexity of the organization running Bletchley Park or in its portrayal of the people working there.
There were 65 air raids over Darwin in WWII the last one in November 1943 lots of people think there was only one for some reason .
Yes there were multiple air raids over Darwin, but I think the one on 19 February 1942 was probably more significant than the rest due to the panic it caused among Australia at the time when it coincided just after the Fall of Singapore a few days ago.
@@gunman47 There were also many British air raids on Cologne but
SPOILER
the "1,000 bomber raid" in May 1942 is still the best remembered.
@@gunman47 Yep, same reason the Pearl Harbor attack is so memorable. Most Americans probably couldn't name a single Japanese attack other than that one, the rest get glossed over or forgotten in popular history.
@@gunman47 Because the first raid caused more death and destruction than all the other raids.
With over 100 air raids over Australia during the war.
When i look to this new thumbnail i don't only feel nostalgic because it resembles a bit the old Great War series, but also proud to be a part of supporting indirectly this project and to see it becoming a success of it's own. Great and wonderful work as always, even it is about something awful as war.
Thanks Luis!
The comments on this channel are more interesting, more knowledgeable, and just generally better than comments on most RUclips channels. Which is to no small extent because of the quality of the channel itself. I'm a relatively new Time Ghost member.
Welcome to the TimeGhost Army!
Yea there are a lot of good historical channels, one of my favourites is Mark Felton (he goes over historical curiousities and the more zoomed in pictures) he covers atrocities aswell. Yet a lot of neo-nazi and general assholes come there to comment how it's bad they lost the war because w/e stupid racist reason.
@@laatmemetrustkutgoogle8896 didn't mark felton plagiarised stuff(also I didn't liekd when he called the tiger II a mbt). RUclips comment section on most WW2 stuff is cancer, that's why it's low hanging fruit on the subreddit shitwehraboosay
@@thebunkerparodie6368 no clue, personally not that interested with tanks and equipment so might be.
I believe the TimeGhost crew also monitors the comments heavily to ensure that there's nothing that breaks the rules. e.g. I've seen people attempt to post comments denying that major and well-documented atrocities happened, and they get deleted within minutes.
Great take on Singapore's importance to China, and the What If about the almost captured Purple Machine. And as always, great writing.
This is SUCH an important video! For most of my life I never could understand WHY the Brits were unable to stop Imperial Japan in SE Asia.
Are you able to understand now? I'm still confounded.
@@blueboats7530 When Indy explained that the Brits high command set TWO separate priority areas, then refused to allow the senior theater commander to apportion his men and material as he saw fit to meet those requirements, THAT was how a 4 to 1 British to IJA ratio caused Allied defeat. Inflexible command structure.
@@cstlbrvo5615
Looking at the troop composition you'll see that the defending army of Malaya was predominantly Indian and to a lesser extent Australian
What made Singapore such a huge defeat was the fact that Churchill diverted an entire British division enroute to North Africa to assist however Malaya had already fallen by the time of their arrival and as they were deployed on the east side (the Japanese landed in the west) they saw little fighting before being ordered to surrender
In hindsight this division would have been more effective being landed at Rangoon where it could have made things more difficult for the Japanese by defending the Burma road
The story of the survivors and nurses is just heartbreaking how did Japanese soldiers justify these actions to themselves? How can you just go on living after carrying out such acts..
According from that I read this is due of harsh military trading of officer corps wich were brutalized during their drill, whose when in charge, trained their men to be insensitive to prisoners. For example in China they forced their men to kill Chinese PoW and civilians in order to harden them. Often officers encouraged soldiers to rape and brutalize civilians.
Interesting enough many Japanese veterans from that I read in "Japan at war" still only barely regrets that happened in Nanking and other places of atrocities.
My references are "Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang and Theodore Cook's "Japan at war".
A mixture of reasons: They were ordered to be brutal (look up the "Three Alls Policy"). Japan in general was rather angry with the west's racial bias against Asians (America essentially turned Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war into a defeat at the table as an example). And the average Japanese conscript was taught that surrender made you lose any worth as an individual.
Training/Brutalization/Indoctrination does not absolve ANYONE of personal responsibility. And if you read accounts from Axis Soldiers during the war, these excuses are nowhere to be found or at best mentioned rarely. They only really start appearing after the war, when Axis Soldiers are forced to answer for what they did.
@@larslundandersen7722 It is rather unsettling though, when you compare the Einsatzgruppen to the average Japanese conscript. The Germans had to move to industrial genocide because the constant executions were making emotional wrecks out of grown men, while a lot of Japanese seemed to barely regret it at all.
Japanese military culture was quite brutal. New recruits were routinely beaten and humiliated, in return doing it to new recruits in their turn. British POWs occasionally saw Japanese officers slap their subordinates, who would then slap their juniors and so on. POWs, enemy civilians and even locals were obvious targets for brutality.
"Somethings shouldn't happen,not even in war"
Yeah, like sexual slavery that Japan still denies today despite the U.S. passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. Japan is doing sneaky stuff like apologizing on moral grounds but not legal and even though they apologized, public officials and trolls on RUclips still deny it ever happened. Not much of an apology if you ask me. Some women were compensated but through private donations. Japan did this purposely so the government can deny legal responsibility. Disgusting and disingenuous if you ask me.
"Somethings shouldn't happen,not even in war" and i wait for a Vietnam war episode and the "My Lai Massacre"
@@Sturminfantrist Hey, a Japanese ultra-nationalist joined the chat. You can't even compare the number of victims. It's like 500 vs tens of millions.
@@Mr2Reviews
Oh sorry the Numbers are not high enough so its ok for u to kill Babys and Women when the numbers are low enough, what counts, 1, 2 , 100, 5000 .............? for Mister2 rewiews small massacres or colateral damage is no problem because it cost only 2,3,4......... lives.
Victims (of war crimes) are victims, all, regardless of the numbers and every case is a WARCRIME.
Japanese ultra nationalist? you have a big problem you are the same sort of twisted hateful people like a ultra nationalist or a Antifa with tunnelvision and black and white thinking ( Whoever is not for me is against me) wtf is wrong in your Brain, iam half arab(northafrican) half german and iam not even political, i hate political folks and iam not even animefan.
Sry for my bad engl.
@@Sturminfantrist I never said it was ok. Sorry I thought you were a Japanese ultra nationalist. They always bring up Vietnam to deflect away from their atrocities.
I suppose this will likely be covered in the next episode of the War Against Humanity (February 1942 Part 2), but after the Japanese broke through at the Battle of Pasir Panjang on 14 Feb 1942, they would go on to conduct the Alexandra Hospital massacre where wounded soldiers, doctors and nurses were killed by the Japanese, many by bayonet. This has disturbing similarities to the St. Stephen's College massacre during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in December 1941.
Really glad you guys are using Tower of Skulls as a source. It does a really good job of emphasizing just how brutal the Asia-Pacific War really was.
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Japan still refuses to take responsibility for comfort women and teach it in public schools despite America passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. They apologized on moral grounds but not legal, and public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it today. They compensated some women through private donations, not government, so they can deny legal responsibility. Sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
@@Mr2Reviews Wikipedia has literally a page dedicated to list all war apology statements issued by Japan. US only compensated and apologized for internment of Japanese-Americans in 1988, half a century later. Sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
My great-granduncle was captured at Singapore and was then transported on the hell ship Kenkon Maru to Rabaul with 599 other members of his regiment. After this, he and the remaining healthy people had to get on another hell ship to Balalae Island where they were forced to build an airstrip. I'm not sure how he died specifically but it would have been from a beating, tropical disease, US bombing, or the massacre of POWs the Japanese did on June 30th, 1943. Thank you TimeGhost for producing these videos.
Should've mentioned the Singapore hospital incident, was even more gruesome than the hospital ship one.
Probably will be brought up in war against humanity series
I believe by "incident" you mean "massacre".
Alexander Hospital massacre to be exact
A few years ago at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, capital of Australia, I got to touch the table upon which the surrender of Singapore was signed. My grandfather on my father's side was in the 8th Division (Australia) and spent the rest of the war in Changi.
When Andy says the kill to wounded ratio is an indication now brutal the fighting is, that's a polite way of saying that the Japanese would shoot or bayonet the wounded to finish them off
Funnily enough, Percival will get a retribution for his surrender of Singapore when he was present at Yamashita's surrender in the Philippines in 1945.
Yamashita - somewhat thinner than in his 1942 triumph as a result of the harsh conditions on the Philippines in 1945 - was surprised to see Percival.
but ,why?
@@maximilianolimamoreira5002 because in the Japanese military failure most likely was grounds for dismissal while the British most likely saw the ordeal as a situation beyond his control and gave him a chance to get even with the enemy
And In Yamashita's trial.
I`ve met a comparison of Singapore and Leningrade blockade, it is surprisingly similar situation (in some aspects) with very different outcomes.
Vivian Bullwinkle was born in Kapunda South Australia not South Africa
Yep. It was just a brain freeze for me reading the teleprompter (and I wrote the script) that no one picked up during filming. The editors at least got it right on screen.
@@Southsideindy There was one Australian, with a South African father, that did escape Singapore controversially. The 8th Division General Gordon Bennett handed over his command and flew back to Australia.
Interestingly, Adolf Hitler reportedly had mixed views about the Fall of Singapore, seeing it as a setback for the "white race", but ultimately it was still something in Germany's military interests. He did not allow Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop from issuing a congratulatory communique to the Japanese.
This highlights the strange bedfellows alliance of convenience between Germany and Japan at that time. Both see themselves as the superior race, and ideologically incompatible. The only reason they are allies is because they have the same enemies.
I have always thought of that as a made up quote. He certainly was happy with other Japanese success
@@jaredkronk4614 Perhaps, we will never know. Of course he would be happy with any Japanese victories though, as every one tied down British resources that could have been used to fight against the Germans instead.
Congrats, you can copy and paste info from Wikipedia.
I'll never understand Hitler's racial views. The British (who are probably the most mixed ethnicity in western Europe) were Aryans, while the Slavs were subhumans?
I had two great uncles captured in Singapore. One survived, while the other died on the railway two days before the rest of his detail were relieved. One of their other brothers had been killed by a sniper during the defense. Yet there are Japanese that still deny POWs were used on the railway.
Just before Singapore fell a large amount of glass plate slides were secretly taken out of Singapore to Australia by submarine. These plate slides were all or most of the property ownership and bank account details for Singapore and the southern Malay Peninsula. They were taken to the Australian Army Survey Corps at Fortuna Mansion in Bendigo, Victoria (near my home - I can see it on the next hill). The slides were all copied then taken again by submarine to the USA for the duration of the war.
Why were glass plates so importent?
@@skaraturbo These plate slides were all or most of the property ownership and bank account details for Singapore and the southern Malay Peninsula.
@@pantonman What would USA and Australia gain from these property ownership and bank account details of Singapore and South Malay penisula
@@lotrlmao1648 USA and Australia and particularly Britain (it was a British colony) were denying the Japanese the knowledge of all property owners and bank details. There was a massacre by the Japanese of Singaporean locals who held wealth.
I like how, despite him not being in this episode. Rommel still gets name dropped
I love watching your videos when I have lunch.
for a week now, you upload your videos after I have just finished eating and I get the big sad and regret for not eating later :(
It has reminded me of a movie, Paradise road, about the nurses of Singapore. Great movie, I think underrated. Impressive testimony told by Indy.
16:10 to quote M*A*S*H 4077: "War isn't hell. War is war, and hell is hell, and of the two, war is a lot worse."
war is a lot worse? hell lasts forever, and if you're there, there is no way out.
@@brianhabel only sinners go to hell, there are no innocent bystanders, war is full of innocent bystanders. Apart from a few politicians and the brass pretty much everyone in a war is an innocent bystander.
@@brianhabel You may not have seen the episode, so I'll put the rest of the quote here.
"How do you figure that, Hawkeye?"
"Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to hell?"
"Um, sinners, I believe."
"Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell, but war is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
When looking at Percival, he looks like the most uncharismatic commander ever...
He looks like a farmer, not a military leader.
@@Al-vb6js nothing. But farmers aren't put in charge of the defence of Malaya usually. Percivial wasn't a bad commander because he was ugly though. He was a bad commander because he was fucking useless
Do you prefer Monty?
@@simunooi5306 monty actually won so yes
Classic over-promotion, He was very brave (just look at his conduct in WW1) and a nice "chap" he would of been more effective if he were just a divisional commander. You have to be a bit ruthless at higher levels of command. I cant see Slim putting up with some of the crap Gordon Bennet gave Perceval for example.
Von Kluge - You're surrounded!
Zhukov - Nuh-uh, you're surrounded.
Von Kluge - Not if I surround you first!
Zhukov - How are you gonna surround me if you're already surrounded?
Von Kluge - No u.
Guderian at that time was in the recruiting department of the headquarters of the 3rd Army Corps in Berlin and did not command troops at the front.
@@MemoryOfTheAncestors Was that mentioned in a previous show? I may have skipped a few.
@@divyanshsukhija6344 Okay. I'll edit the post.
A side note to the fall of Singapore is the story of RCAF pilots Howard Pilmore Low of Vancouver BC and Russell Charles Smith of Kamsack Saskatchewan. Low was captured by the Japanese on February 10 while leading a ragtag group airmen attempting to defend their airfield. Smith had been shot down over Singapore possibly on the 9th. The two squadron mates were reunited at the Boei Glodock PoW camp where together they would escape and attempt to steal a twin engine Japanese aircraft from the neighboring Kamarjam aerodrome. They managed to get one engine started before being re-captured. Two days later they were summarily executed by firing squad. The bravery and tenacity of these two young men (Smith was just 21) so far from home is something worth remembering.
The American Destroyer sunk by the Japanese at Darwin, was USS Peary (DD-226) a Great War vintage Clemson-class destroyer. She served in the U.S Asiatic Fleet, being present at Cavite on December 10th 1941 when the American naval depot was bombed. She was struck well alongside the pier, and had eight men killed as fires aboard forced her crew and other sailors to battle the blaze and the enemy. Her Captain was wounded, his XO killed.
With a new Captain, Cmdr John Bermingham (Who Jeffery R. Cox in his book "Rising Sun, Falling Skies" explains was given command "...by virtue of the Asiatic Fleet's personnel commander running into him on the dock as he watched the repairs on the Peary...") she was tasked on December 26th alongside USS Pillsbury with withdrawing south to join Admiral Hart and U.S Task Force 5 at Soerabaja. (These vessels would soon become the American contingent of ABDA)
Both ships split up, steaming the gauntlet across the Sulu and Celebes seas alone, less likely for both to be sunk if they were caught together by Japan warships or planes. At Negroes island, Cmdr Bermingham anchored close to the shore, and had Peary covered in foliage and her decks hastily painted green, in the hopes that Japanese aircraft wouldn't spot them. On the 28th, after entering the Celebes sea she was attacked by Japanese medium bombers and seaplanes, dropping torpedoes and bombs that Peary only barely manage to evade.
Nearly Celebes island, she was again attacked, this time by Allied aircraft that mistook her for a Japanese vessel, as Australian Hudson bombers, seemingly ignored her signaling and made attack runs on her, one bomb striking aft, killing a man, and damaging a rudder and propulsion, defending herself the Pearly damage one Hudson with machinegun fire, the bombers leaving at sundown.
(The Australians and Dutch were expecting two U.S Destroyers in a group, and didn't realize the lone American vessel was in fact, not Japanese, the green paint scheme didn't help either)
Putting into a nearby port at Maitara, the crew made what repairs they could, refueled and, after almost three days, made radio contact with the T.F 5 to give a report of the situation. When American floatplanes arrived at her position (Dispatched since Bermingham was worried that the Japanese might track him via radio signal, he hadn't replied to T.F 5 after his initial report), they took three passes to spot the camouflaged Peary. When the PBY Floatplane landed , Bermingham was less then pleased with orders to head to Ambon (On the South coast of Indonesia) replying with some indignation:
"I've been bombed by everyone else, and i'm not about to let you guys have a shot at me too."
However, those were their orders, like them or not. With what little fuel remained, the Peary steamed for Ambon, outside the harbor being quickly halted by signaling. She had almost sailed into the port's minefield. She stayed for only a day before being ordered to Darwin, arriving on the 3rd of January, 1942. Where in six weeks time, she would be sunk, many of those who had crewed her through those three weeks of danger in the opening month of the war, would follow her to the grave, including Bermingham.
In less then three weeks, the Peary’s crew had endured three bombings by the Japanese and one by the Australians, fought a fire aboard, spent three nights as an island, and narrowly sailed into a Dutch minefield, and this is only the beginning of her story. Of one vintage destroyers, in the Asiatic Fleet, soon to be ABDA. The Peary's story is ABDA in microcosm.
Old ships crewed by old hands, far from their homelands, fighting with all their tenacity to halt the Japan drive south. They, the Americans, British, Dutch and Australians fought like tigers, but tigers with dulled claws, with shells that wouldn't detonate, ships that were as old as their crews, for colonial holdings some men amongst them viewed more as home then their own home countries from having so long served there. Though history little remembers them, only footnotes in those dark terrible months of defeat and disaster, they fought for their flag, fought for time, but above all, they fought for each other.
Today the "4" inch gun of the Peary stands on the shore of Darwin harbor, a memorial to her crew.
Indi your my hero. You have the courage to tell the truth of Japanese atrocities in the war. This is so important as Japan and many on the left paint the Japanese as victims and this is taught in Japan. Soldier for soldier they were much wore than the Germans. You are a very honest historian. I salute you.
❤️
As well as Singapore and Darwin, on the 26th Feb 1942 Japanese recon plans launched from a submarine all the way down south were also spotted flying over Melbourne, further prompting fears of invasion.
I started with "Between Two Wars" and now have just caught up with this latest series. It is the best history series I've seen. Thank you.
We're glad you like it.
You forgot to mention that on this week, 15 February, was the start of German U-Boats campaign to bombing Brazilian merchant and citizens naval convoys. Which led to the break of relations with the Axis forces and later, on August 1942, Brazil joining the war on the allied side. On this week ,15 and 18 February, they sunk two convoys. During the year of 1942 there would be more 23 Brazilian naval convoys sunk.
Also, in 1942 the U.S would set strategic military bases on Brazil in Belém, Natal and in the island of Fernando de Noronha.
If you are curious you can check the list here:
pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_navios_brasileiros_atacados_na_Segunda_Guerra_Mundial
Why did they go after Brazilian shipping in the first place? Was it about the supplies they were shipping to the Allied nations, or did they have a particular issue with Brazil?
@@Raskolnikov70 Rubber supplies from Brazil were critical allied strategic material.
@@Raskolnikov70 They send 25 submarines to patrol Brazil. Which I believe 11 were destroyed by the Brazilian Navy and other 6 severed damaged. Officially the German Navy only registered 9 as sunk. Maybe the other 2 were Italians sub.
They objective was to stop the shipping of supplies to U.S and Europe(Allied Forces). Most of the ships were registered containing : rubber, coffee, cotton, coal, leather, oil and fuel.
Salve!
They forget too the 16th the nazi atack a refinery in Aruba and ships from venezuela.
My granduncle was a survivor of Sook Ching. The stories he told when I was growing up the hatred of the Japanese was something I couldn't understand till I was much older. That generation saw stuff that I would hope none of us could ever see again. RIP uncle Robert
Where was Gondor when Singapore fell?!
No my Lord Areywhit, we are alone.
Where is Boromir when you need him
One does not simply fight on without food and ammo.
The beacons! The Soviet beacons are lit!
@@SpazzyMcGee1337 Yep, the Russians and Germans used up all the beacon fuel.....
Thanks Indy again for a lot of info packed into your presentation, cheers
Thanks for a great episode!
You're very welcome! Thank you for your support!
That is a redundant statement. Please, show me a bad episode they have done? None, they are all either good or great.
It's a big week for my relatives this week. My grandfather was on a ship on in Darwin when it was attacked, and my wife's grandparents lived on Bangka Island during the Japanese occupation/massacre. I also met Vivian Bullwinkle once.
Thus ends my most anticipated part of WW2, the invasion of my homeland. Looking forward to more coverage of the war.
Don't worry, there'll be more to come, with an Operation Jaywick soon in the near future with a certain Mr Lyons...
There a few building still in use at RAAf Base Darwin from ww2 mainly the officers mess and we are told that there are still bullet holes in the building. I have not seen them myself.
On a side note. There are still holes on the hangar doors in RAF Seletar (now Seletar Airport/Seletar camp) Seen it with my own eyes. Wondered why they didn't patch it.
Yeah. I have not been there myself (no access to civvies) but there are some old facilities still in use and declares heritage sites. Actually, all of Darwin is filled with WWII history. There's the Oil tunnels, several air strips (Coomalie, Strauss, etc.), wreckages of planes including a B-24 Liberator and ships, old anti-bomb shelters in Charles Darwin National Park, etc. I loved my time in Darwin.
Vivian Bullwinkle was South Australian, not South African. She was later the Matron at the hospital in Melbourne where my Father was a doctor. I think she babysat me when I was really little, but I can't be sure.
You are correct, South Australian.
There was a TV doc about her.
A Polish? refugee wanted to train as nurse and went from hospital to hospital looking for work. In one hospital she came across a woman on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor. The young lady told her her story and asked, who can she see about becoming a nurse. The woman said, "you can start on Monday at 9am." The young lady said, "but you're the janitor, how can you say that?" Vivian then stood up, smiling she said, "No, my dear, I am the Matron." That lady became a nurse and later a doctor.
What hospital was your father at?
@@blueycarlton That sounds like her. My Dad was a Latvian refugee. Fairfield Hospital, The Queens Memorial Infectious Diseases Hospital, to give its full name. I grew up living in a house on the grounds. Wonder if anyone's wished that place was still there now? It'd be mighty handy! My Dad was one of the last, if not the last Medical Director there. Dr Alvis Kucers. Absolute rubbish that nobody knew that a great pandemic was coming! The top professionals in the field have known forever, that it was not a case of if the next big pandemic would cripple the World, but a matter of when. Dad fought to keep that place open for that reason.
@@blueycarlton Oh, also- I think I may also have met the Polish refugee lady. More I think about it, the more familiar the story sounds.
@@ronasaurus74
You must have had a great time growing up with the hospital grounds in Fairfield.
The ABC-TV documentary was wonderful.
How Vivian and the other Australian nurses cared for themselves and the inmates, along with the young Dutch girl in the Japanese prisoner camp.
The nurses' story and that of "Weary" Dunlop other doctors and men on the Burma railway, amazing, it still brings a tear to my eye when I think about it.
Good catch Ronald Kucers! Sorry for mix up here, Indy read the teleprompter wrong. While we rigorously fact check our scripts and videos, sometimes a few mistakes can slip through the cracks.
loving these new thumbnails! the old thumbnails always seemed poor quality to me personally, glad they now match the quality of the rest of the program!
"See Hans, Ivan seems to be dropping in on these fields with bonfires on them. If we lit bonfires ourselves, they would be dropping in exactly in front of our muzzles."
Indy Neidell: "Britain's worst defeat!"
Homer Simpson: "You mean Britain's worst defeat, so far!"
BRitain then loses Burma and Indian army revolt kills General Wingate.
@@VisualdelightPro The British/Indian 14th Army gave the Japanese their greatest land defeat of the war and the Kohima/Imphal battle is recognised as the classic battle of the war.
Imagine being an Indian soldier in that fight and surrendering, it wasn't even their fight and they are caught up in it. Plus, the US troops in the Philippines must have started sweating nervously when they saw that report.
SPOILER
The bulk of them captured in Singapore joined the Indian National Army. A number were given green armbands by the Japanese and used to guard British and Australian prisoners. Some were as atrocious as the Japanese.
One of the business professors at my university was a part of a US tank platoon in the Philippines. I found a copy of a book he wrote of his fight, the Bataan Death March and later his time as a POW in Japan. "My Hitch in Hell", by Lester Tenney. The signed dedication inside the first page is to his doctor, who he outlived.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Of_the_65,000_Indian_Army_troops_taken_prisoner_at_the_fall_of_Singapore...25,000_accepted...that_the_Japanese...needed_them_to_help_drive_(Britain)_out_of_East_Asia._Consequently_they_retained_their_arms_and_Art.IWMART1574744.jpg
One of Searle's drawings, showing a "Sikh traitor" about to beat a British officer who refused to salute him.
@@stevekaczynski3793 Can you find a source about the atrocities of the INA?
No, not really.
The Philippines were set to become independent in 1946 and many, if not most, Filipinos viewed the Japanese invasion of the Philippines as another invasion by a foreign power. That meant that the Filipino soldiers remained quite loyal throughout the war and many escaped Scouts and Philippine Army soldiers joined the resistance that was led by evader US officers.
By the time MacArthur came back to the Philippines those forces numbers in the thousands, and even tens of thousands. Many of these resistance fighters we incorporated into new Philippine Scout units that fought throughout the islands.
A bigger concern was the Communist Houk (?) movement which fought at times against both the Philippine resistance and against the Japanese.
Indy and the rest of the team on time ghost, I’ve been following your work since the Great War in 2014 and can only say “Bravo”. The work you have achieved is phenomenal and easily the best full documentary of these events! Your coverage is excellent and informative! Special shout-out to Spartacus for covering the emotionally taxing but nonetheless important events of the war against humanity. Thank you for continuing to raise the bar and then exceed it; week by week!
Thank you Entarukun, we appreciate your comment and thank you for watching and staying with us for all that time!
Really puts into perspective Japan's ultimate fate in the war.
40% of American POWs died under Imperial Japan compared to 1% in Nazi Germany and Japan still refuses to apologize. time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/ The Japanese-Americans that were interned were treated humanely and even received $20,000 each (more than $1.65 billion dollars total), an official apology, and taught about in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Japan still refuses to take responsibility for comfort women and teach it in public schools despite America passing H.Res 121 in 2007 and pressure from the United Nations, the Netherlands, and other countries. They apologized on moral grounds but not legal, and public officials and trolls STILL openly deny it today. They compensated some women through private donations, not government, so they can deny legal responsibility. Sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
@@alexanderthompson7164 Yeah, they're basically a one party government. Can you believe the ultra-nationalists have been controlling the government almost unbroken for more than 65 years? Only a handful of years had a Prime Minister of a different party since 1955. Love Japanese people and culture but I hate the ultra-nationalists.
The ultra nationalist Abe followers have infiltrated Taiwan's political sphere and saying that Taiwan Nipponland. Absolute disgusting prime minister Abe.
@@VisualdelightPro Well Suga has a 34% approval rating right now so there's that.
@@alexanderthompson7164 I have a similar view of the US except i don't like Americans as a people either.
The series I look forward to most on all of RUclips. Great work!
Thanks Ben!
That story on the japanese killing those innocents on the beach sickened me. I... I don't have words right now. I know there are many stories like it, but the brutality, the needless murder... I have never felt more strongly than I do right now that war is the worst thing humanity has ever discovered.
If Japan is capable of such thing, then anyone can do it too. It's the darkside of ourselves. We have to keep it in check.
@@Joshua_N-A Nah, stop it - of course we're all theoretically capable of such insane savagery, but it won't even occur to most of us to rape innocent people with bayonets and then set them on fire. Does it? Saying that kind of thing makes me a little concerned about you ... the only thing I have to keep in check is my gag-instinct from hearing about such depravity... maybe you should seek help?
Just discovered the instagram page from the comments. I never really used instagram, but a day by day wwii recap seems to be the perfect use for instagram that I never thought of. Subscribed over there.
Cheers!
Malayan: I'm from Hainan
Japanese: SO YOU HAVE CHOSEN DEATH!
More like fated to death than a choice.
I love that you included Ronald Searle's drawings. Ugly subject, but what beautiful line! That he kept drawing in captivity, and was able to hide the drawings from the Japanese makes him a hero of 20th century art.
The Japanese seem to have known he was an artist and some of them got him to draw portraits of them. In 1942 the Japanese demanded that POWs sign a declaration that they would not escape. Searle signed his but drew sketches of two scowling Japanese soldiers on his declaration, which they do not seem to have collected.
www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/24294
@@stevekaczynski3793 I didn't know that. I thought he had to hide his materials. Maybe the drawings inspired mercy in the otherwise harsh guards.
@@kingkonut I am pretty sure he had to hide many, perhaps most of them but he certainly drew portraits of some of the Japanese at their request, including of one named Takahashi who was just about the only one whose name he knew and seems to have behaved decently. He tried to trace Takahashi after the war but could not locate him.
Searle also seems to have lost many of his drawings. There was a shortage of paper for things like toilet needs, rolling cigarettes and so on.
Thank you for sharing the artist name
Would be interesting that, given previous subjects on events like the Warsaw Uprising and partisan activities in Europe, if an episode about resistance against the Japanese in Malaya can looked into; we’ve heard and learnt about personalities like Lim Bo Seng, Adnan and the whole Force 136 in school but that was about it: piecemeal bites.
Absolutely agree. This topic would certainly be an interesting one. We would therefore get to know how the British was secretly communicating with the resistance groups while the Japanese tightened their grip on outside information which included strict control of local newspapers and radios.
Especially with the Kempeitai around doing Gestapo things
We haven't done anything on the Warsaw Uprising because it hasn't happened yet, and neither has resistance to occupation. Of course we will address partisans and resistance of all stripes in all areas.
@@Southsideindy Thanks Indy! Glad to hear from you personally. My bad, I think my earlier comment was made because I was watching Sabaton history recently on these subjects, got them mixed up. But I look forward all the same! Great presentation once again.
@@Southsideindy I appreciate the hardwork and commitment you put to bring us WW2 every week.
Indy, Thank you for your deeply felt, humanitarian, and poignant statement toward the end of this video.
This is already covered in the IG day by day of the channel, but on 14 Feb 1942, C Company commanded by Lieutenant Adnan bin Saidi under the 1st Malaya Brigade clashes with the Japanese during the Battle of Pasir Panjang at Bukit Chandu. The Japanese attempted to send in a group of men dressed in captured British Indian troops' uniforms in order to present themselves as allied Indian soldiers in the British Indian Army.
However, soldiers of the British Army typically marched in a line of three columns while the supposed allied Indian soldiers in front of their lines were moving in a line of four columns. C Company saw through this deception and opened fire once the disguised Japanese reached their defensive lines, killing many and causing the remainder to retreat. The Japanese would return a few hours later to launch an all-out charge, overwhelming the defensive lines and resulting in fierce hand to hand combat. Lieutenant Adnan encouraged his men not to retreat or surrender, which was best illustrated in his motto: Better Death Than Dishonour. Eventually he was captured and executed by the Japanese.
Today, Lieutenant Adnan is considered a local national hero in both Singapore and Malaysia for his actions at Bukit Chandu.
These week to week videos are becoming a event I look forward to. I get the feeling the war is only going to get more bloody and deadly. No holds bar.
The day of the surrender and Fall of Singapore, 15 February, is now commemorated in Singapore through *Total Defence Day* . Every year, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) blares sirens island-wide with the Important Message signal through its Public Warning System (PWS) at 6.20pm. This is to remind us Singaporeans of what could happen if we cannot defend themselves, and to strengthen our resolve to keep Singapore safe, secure and independent.
A memorial service is also held at the Civilian War Memorial near the Padang on the same day to remember the victims of the war.
It was a terrible day, and a shameful failure by us British.
@@ian_b Yes it is. For us locals in Singapore and Malaya, it was a big wake up call for us to defend our own sovereignty and not to depend on others for our defence.
@@gunman47 A very harsh way to learn that lesson :(
Why didn't many chinese in Singapore and Malaysia enlist to fight against the Japanese for the UK? Even in HK & Dutch East Indies all other people groups made up the biggest bulk of soldiers fighting for the European powers against Japan just not the Chinese diaspora. Where's the loyalty at?
@@scarletcrusade77 Some of the local Chinese actually enlisted in Dalforce, or Singapore Overseas Chinese Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army during the Malayan Campaign. However, one must understand that many of the Chinese in Singapore were immigrants from China and at the time, they may not have intended to settle down in Singapore for a very long time and might return to China once they had made their lot of money. So loyalty wise, they were pretty content to let the British do the fighting as far as most were concerned.
Sorry, I just had to pop to see The Bridge On The River Kwai - now back to see the rest of the vid.
Kudos to Alec and Hudson; what a great movie.
What really gets me about all of the surrender was the bit about those people the Japanese executed surviving the execution and then surrendering a second time. Dead if you don't surrender, if your first encounter is any indication you are probably just as dead if you do. It's kind of like choosing how to die; on your terms or by your enemy's whim. Under those circumstances I'd choose to not surrender and die being as annoying as possible. Got to be better than their prison camps.
@Mars Attacks being a hypocrite makes no side right by any sense homever. Japan's wrong for not smallowing it all much like how the West is wrong on not returning the loot
Happy to see Indy again. I’m new here but used to watch him on ww1
We're happy to have you here!
In defence of the RN; It could not have a "china fleet" equal to that of the home or Mediterranean fleets due to the naval treaties. it was a general desire of the RN to have 3 battlefleets, Americans poo pooed the idea however.
Nor would it be sensible to move the med fleet to Asia given the circumstances in the Med.
In pure military terms the Japanese really earned the capture of Singapore, the "he who dares wins" really played out for them. Roll on the catastrophic advance of Burma.
Had more to do with the poor economy of the UK after WWI and the increased civil unrest of the Empire ."Naval Treaties" were just a byproduct of not wanting a arm race at sea.
@@bmc7434 In regards to a 3rd fleet, not really.
In many ways the UK did seek the treaties, and saw that they could be advantageous. Thus the UK was the most enthusiastic player.
But that doesn't take away from the RNs desire to have a substantial China fleet, and that the American stipulations were to curtail such. The US however considered that have the UK hold 3 battlefleets, particularly an Asian one undermined their own interests. Its one of the reasons that the US also demanded the end of the Anglo-Japanese treaty.
Accepting terms, in some respects regardless of what those terms were, was still agreeable however; having theoretical constraints on nations prevented out of control build up (maintaining and planning a large, planned for, fleet was less an issue because that can be costed for). The UK would have hoped to be able to maintain 3 fleets within the treaties, not 2, but still have the treaties.
IN short; the UK wanted 3 fleets, US said no, UK wanted the Treaty regardless, so agreed to US terms. if not for the constraints of the Treaty, the UK would have had a 3rd Battlefleet. Mostly composed of dreadnoughts and super dreadnaughts that were scrapped (I imagine the KGVs Iron dukes etc; and the older new ships being rotated to the china station before scrappage.).
Yes, the RN could not get there, and an RAF salvation was equally out of the question at that point. To me the issue is the land campaign should then have been re-configured, as Indy mentioned, too much Army effort was spent on retaining air (and naval) bases because the previous plan was they would be needed for the saviors' arrival.
@@blueboats7530 I have stated in a number of cases that the British should have fallen back to and entrenched in a line from Muar to Kuala Rompin , followed by a fall back line from Mersing to batu phat. In may not have held off japan indefinitely but would have allowed a concentration of forces as well as operational coherence. Losing these lines would mean losing the campaign; allowing the notion of evacuation to India much more possible than it was. The under stated airforce was an issue; though all things considered the RAF fought well considering.
At very least a proper defence would have allowed a more exhausting and costly victory; thus making actions down the line in burma for more costly for japan, having less to work with and fighting seasoned more troops.
@@bmc7434 Nah, many warships (not just by the British) at the time were clearly designed to be on the very edges of acceptable with *completely not* the ability to be upgraded to exceed the treaty (such as slots for thicker armour plate to be added, or space and load capability for bigger guns).
This series is a gift to humanity.
Fuchida had an interesting life. Nearly killed at midway, he happened to be at hiroshima the day before the bomb. Called back to Tokyo, he and a fact finding group were sent back the day after. Everyone but him died of radiation poisoning. After the war he was forced to testify against jaoaneese war criminals and was infuriated what he percieved must be the allies hypocricy. He made it his mission to find jaoaneese pows and expose the allies had done the same things. He was shocked to find not only were the jaoaneese pows treated well but that a friend he thought died at midway was still alive. Still he didn't understand the Americans ability to treat their enemies well. He actually expected them to reciprocate the atrocities. A few years later he read a book by and later met an american pow who introduced him to christianity, which he converted to.. he once told admiral nimmets they made the right choice dropping the atom bombs as the toll to both sides from an allied invasion of the mainland would be catadtrophic. He eventually took up peanent residence in the united States though he never became a citizen
@@Mr2Reviews they still refuse to admit comfort women weren't prostitutes too.
@@scottaznavourian540 I know. That's what I meant by them refusing to accept responsibility. I hope Korea wins in the International Court of Justice.
Whatever happens between Korea and Japan, let it be fair and in peaceful way as both are very nationalistic nowadays. But I doubt it'll be that way. One does not forgive and and one does not admit, they have a long way to go. War is the last thing people in Asia-Pacific need.
History must be a lesson not a weapon yet everyone is using it as a weapon to undermine one another.
@@Joshua_N-A Japan is more nationalistic. Just look at their government. They're run by ultra-nationalists who held power almost unbroken for more than 65 years. There's only a handful of years that a different party got elected to Prime Minister. The Liberal Democratic Party or LDP continues to effectively control the whole government since 1955. They're basically a one party government.
@@Joshua_N-A How can you forgive when they don't even ask for it? They deny it ever happened. They're sweeping it under the rug. Soon, there won't be any living victims left to apologize to.
Yamashita: So are you surrendering or not?
Percival: OK we surrender
Yamashita: Wait, that's dishonourable!
Fun fact, censorship was strong in Australia at that time, my now 90 year old grandmother only learned that Darwin was bombed over 100 times not just once in 1995 until then she thought it was a once off.
Also the Japanese should be forced to learn their own war crimes the way the Germans are forced.
Well my father was stationed in Darwin and Adelaide River during WW2 and it was common knowledge that they were raided about 60 times. I also learnt that at school long before 1995. I believe what was censored was the death toll of the initial raid, the panic that occurred, and the ineptitude of the military authorities who had been warned of the raid by a priest on Bathurst Island who had radioed a report of a large formation of aircraft heading towards Darwin.
The only way to "force" someone to do anything is to put a gun to their head. And that wouldn't go well with the rest of the world.
@@ivvan497 or you could just put it in the national curriculum? We're all "forced" to learn maths, it'd be the same deal
@@SuperNuclearUnicorn I dont think Japanese government will do that ever.
This is the best channel on youtube. Thank you for your work, it's great.
You're welcome!
My late father in law was captured and survived after Changi and Burma Railway. He was released after the dropping of the atom bomb. All allied prisoners would have been executed if the Japanese mainland had been invaded.
Ww1 indy: this war just keeps growing.
Ww2 indy: this war just keeps getting darker.
12:50 Indie, Vivien Bullwinkle was South Australian, not South African.
The phone calls are honestly my favorite part of these episodes, other then the rest of it.
"It was the illusion that a Two-Hemisphere Empire can be defended by a One-Hemisphere Navy that sealed the fate of Singapore"
~ Admiral Herbert Richmond RN, 'Statesmen and Sea Power' (1946)
In a similar vein, I've seen another good statement (the source of which, unfortunately, I cannot recall) to the effect that Britain was trying to fight a five ocean war with, at best, a two ocean navy.
re naval power, singapore was brown bread on 03 September 1939, both ze germans and the italians could use a fleet-in-being strategy to tie down disproportionate numbers of ships by sitting in port all war (though the italians at least sailed around the med and had air cover over large areas) and without the metaphorical cavalry to arrive, the japanese had relative free reign. It's like having a maginot line with no french army to reinforce areas being attacked, all you've done is create a giant speed bump
@@pnutz_2 "rein"
/pedantry
9:43 that's a good image. Shows just how close Australia is in relation to Singapore. And how close Australia was to being invaded.
Singapore showed the issue of trying to fight a war on four fronts at the same time (Europe, North Africa, Singapore and Australia).
There isnt any Australian front
Thank you for the information treat! Greetings from Singapore 🇸🇬
QUESTION: So the Japanese citizens of the U.S.'s West Coast were only interned if they lived in a "military zone"? I had been led to believe that ALL Japanese on the West Coast had been interned. Are you saying otherwise? If so, what percent of the total Japanese population there were interned?
Most Japanese and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii weren't intern, not just practical despite the Ni'ihau incident.
The entire west coast was designated as a military zone.
Some Japanese that were born in America and therefore more Americanized were lucky to be let go if they passed a loyalty test. More than 120,000 Japanese were interned and more than 80,000 of them received $20,000 dollars each totaling more than $1.64 billion dollars, an official apology, and the subject taught in public schools through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Meanwhile, Japan still denies American POWs and comfort women. They may have apologized on moral grounds but not legal and their public officials and trolls still deny it ever happened. Some women were compensated but Japan set it up through private donations so the government can deny legal responsibility. It's sneaky, disgusting, and disingenuous if you ask me.
@@jrt818 Too many of them - some were interned but selected, not en masse.
11:57
I felt pretty happy to see that Kuching has gotten a cameo
In Australia there is something of myth or perception that the Fall of Singapore was the moment that the British Abandoned Australia to the Japanese and why we threw ourselves into the arms of the USA for protection.
3:12 ... "Not far across the water from Japan" ...
Everything is relative. But Tokyo to Singapore is 5,308 km. That's roughly the same distance from Anchorage Alaska to Los Angeles
We're looking at it from a cosmic scale ;-) or perhaps more figuratively than literally.
I always forget just how ruthless Japan was.
I had a colleague of mine from Muntok. I don't think she ever knew about the massacre that happened there. Lots of what happened in Dutch Indies I just discovered by watching this series.
Great episode, you guys are doing great work
Glad you enjoyed it, Scott.
Thanks for this great video, it’s my birthday today which makes it even better!
Happy belated birthday!
They held on as best they could, but Singapore was always going to fall. Now for 4 brutal years of captivity, or fleeing to the jungles. Neither option sounds promising...
ER no. Yamashita had run of ammunition. Percival never knew that.
I have notifications set up on my phone for when a new video comes in, it came up around 5 hours ago, usually I'd watch it right away, but to-day I didn't. Silly I know, but I saw the title, Singapore Falls and just couldn't bring myself to click on it right away.
Allied troops at Singapore: We surrender
Geneva Convention: Exists
Japanese: I’m gonna pretend that never existed...
The Geneva convention didn’t translate into Japanese
@@stc3145 Colonel Saito was unwilling to get a translation from Colonel Nicholson during an argument about the legality of forcing officers to work on the bridge over the Kwai river and the railroad connecting Bangkok with Rangoon
While Japan did sign the convention they never ratified it, and it was only later in 1942 that they indicated they would follow it
@@davidjarkeld2333 "follow it" surrreeee.
Great episode- thanks again!👍👍👍
Glad you enjoyed it, Linn!