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Landing at Singora on 8 December 1941, the fighting `samurai’ of the Japanese 5th Division spearheaded the drive towards Singapore
IT WAS DARK, in those hours just before dawn. Fourteen large, black and jagged‑edged shapes floated in the waters off the Thai port of Singora. Four were long and low: they were destroyers. The other 10 were bulky: they were merchant ships and transports. They carried two regiments of the Imperial Japanese Army’s 5th Infantry Division, together with most of its supporting units. Japan was about to attempt a seemingly impossible task ‑ to drive the Commonwealth troops out of the Pacific and Far East, establishing a new Japanese empire known as the Greater East Asia Co‑Prosperity Sphere. As part of the Twenty‑Fifth Army, the immediate task of the 5th Infantry Division in the Japanese plan of campaign was the seizure of the port and airfields at Singora. It was then to march south, into the British colony of Malaya. Its ultimate objective waste capture of Singapore, known around the world as the Gibraltar of the East.
The transports carrying the 5th Division anchored off Singora on the night of 8 December 1941. The seas were rough, and waves reached nearly three metres in height. When the order to commence the landing arrived, the engineers on board the transport Shinshu Maru were faced with a difficult task. These men would be responsible for taking the boatloads of troops ashore, but the small boats assigned to the operation were in danger of being battered to pieces. To prevent the boats from being hurled against the sides of the larger ships by the waves, the engineers pushed at the transports’ sturdy hulls with poles. Meanwhile, the infantrymen struggled down nets into the boats. The only illumination for both the infantrymen and engineers was the faint moonlight.
Darkness, combined with the rough seas, forced the Japanese soldiers to be exceptionally cautious. If they were to fall from the nets, they might be crushed between the hulls of boat and ship, or drowned in the turbulent waters. Weapons were passed down from hand to hand, and the precious, fragile radios were carefully wrapped and sealed in strong oiled paper. The disembarkation took about an hour and, thanks to care and discipline, there were no disasters. Once complete, the signal to head for shore ‑ three red lights displayed on the Shinshu Maru’s foremast was displayed.
It took a further hour for the first craft to reach the share. Some men, impatient with the long wait in the boats around the ships and the equally lengthy journey towards land, jumped out before the bow doors at the front of the craft had opened, wading ashore through chest‑high water. Soon thousands of men could be seen walking ashore, with their weapons held aver their heads.
Coming ashore, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, the Twenty‑Fifth Army’s chief of operations, found that one battalion of the 41st Infantry Regiment, under Major Kobayashi, had managed to organise itself into a coherent unit after the inevitable confusion of the landing. Kobayashi and Tsuji decided to march to the nearest military barracks, in this case housing the Thai Military Police, and arrange some kind of agreement with the local authorities. The battalion formed up into a column of fours, with buglers and a huge white flag at its head, and set off in the early morning sun down the road towards the barracks. The battalion had not gone very far before the Thais ambushed it with machine‑gun fire. The troops dived for cover to either side of the road, and opened up with their rifles. Some began to make their way around the flanks of the Thai position, in a manoeuvre that presaged the conduct of operations against the British in Malaya. Lieutenant‑General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the commander of the Twenty‑Fifth Army, put a stop to the fighting; he ordered Kobayashi’s men to confine their efforts to keeping the Thais from interfering with the seizure of the airfield by other troops, At around 1200, the Japanese fired a few artillery shells at the Thai position, and their resistance soon came to an end. Japanese aircraft were already landing on Singora airfield.
With Singora in Japanese hands, the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 5th Division began the advance southwards to Malaya. The men drove off in their trucks, with three tanks in the lead. The first encounter with British troops took place at the Thai village of Ban Sadao, near the frontier. Here the Reconnaissance Battalion encountered a small force of two British infantry companies plus attached anti‑tank guns and engineers. Although small, this force caused considerable trouble. The three lead tanks were quickly knocked out, and heavy fire from Bren guns was directed at the trucks. The aged yet aggressive commander of the Reconnaissance Battalion, Lieutenant‑Colonel Saeki, soon got his men moving. They leapt from their trucks and immediately began to work their way through a rubber plantation and around the flanks of the British position. As this flanking assault got underway, the battalions mortars opened up a barrage and hit one of the British Bren‑gun carriers. As flames pierced the gloom of the jungle around the British column, the flickering light revealed that the Japanese had almost worked their way into the enemy rear The British quickly limbered up their guns and retreated into Malaya.
Saeki did not hesitate to pursue, and immediately pushed his troops across the frontier into Malaya. They halted, however, when they came to a bridge that the retreating British had blown up to delay the Japanese advance. The lead troops waited here for the rest of the 5th Division to reach them. They reached Ban Sadao on 9 December, and the advance was resumed the next day.
Late on 10 December, the Japanese made contact with the next British position, around the village of Changlun. Yet another destroyed bridge blocked their advance across a river in front of the British defences. The 5th Division was undaunted. A battalion of the 41st Regiment negotiated the fast‑flowing water in the face of enemy fire and setup a temporary defence on the British side of the river. Covered by this advance battalion, engineers laboured through the night to repair and restore the bridge. The next day, after the 41st Regiment’s battalion had knocked a hole in the British line, Saeki’s Reconnaissance Battalion, once again reinforced by tanks, roared off down the road towards the British.
Two events now occurred to bring disaster down on the British plans. Japanese attacks, together with a torrential downpour, forced the defenders of Changlun to begin withdrawing to a new position at the village of Asun, eight miles to the south. When Saeki s men advanced into the ranks of the British, they encountered a confused mass of units preparing for movement. Within minutes, a whole British battalion ‑ its cohesion lost ‑was destroyed. The greatest misfortune occurred when a battery of anti‑tank guns, set up to cover the road Saeki’s men used for their advance, was overrun as the gunners sheltered from the heavy rain under nearby rubber trees.
After it had overrun the Changlun position, the Reconnaissance Battalion pushed on to Asun. Saeki and Tsuji were driving down the road in the wake of the vanguard. They had commandeered a captured car, and proceeded to take pot‑shots with their pistols at any British soldiers they passed along their route. There was another bridge to be negotiated at Asun, which had also been mined. The detonator failed to function, however, and the British engineers were driven off by the tanks’ machine guns before they had the opportunity to try again. A Gurkha sergeant managed to knock out two tanks with an anti‑tank gun, but the Japanese infantry following in trucks simply debussed and began to approach the British position from the flanks. By early evening, Asun was also in Japanese hands.
Saeki once again ordered his men to advance, this time towards the main British defensive line in northern Malaya, just north of the town of Jitra. The battalion reached this position at about 2030 on 11 December, one hour after Asun had been taken. Saeki’s men tried in vain to duplicate the successes of Changlun and Asun, but they were outnumbered two‑to‑one and the British proved too strong. Saeki refused to go over to the defensive, however, and instead kept up a steady campaign of skirmishing and sniping that prevented the British from getting any rest that night.
At 0300 on 12 December, the Reconnaissance Battalion managed to seize the main roadblock, but was forced to retreat by a fierce British counterattack. A second attempt at 0600 successfully ruptured the enemy front and once again the Japanese were in possession of the main roadblock. By now, reinforcements from the 41st and 1lth Infantry Regiments were arriving. These fresh troops were thrown at the British right flank and used to reinforce the Japanese holding the captured roadblock. When a second British counter‑attack failed, the 41st Regiment launched a major attack against the centre of the British position. As the spearhead of the attack, Saeki’s men would direct their efforts against the point along the defensive line where the sectors of two British battalions joined. The Japanese artillery had also moved up, and it proceeded to lay down an incredibly accurate barrage on the heads of the British troops. The British, fearing that their positions were compromised, pulled back a few miles to a line that afforded a better natural defence against enemy tanks. High Command then ordered them to pull back even further, to the town of Alor Star. The Jitra defensive line had been broken.
The British took up new position around the town of Gurun. But they were still in grave danger. While the main part of the 5th Division had landed at Singora, the 42nd Infantry Regiment had landed at Patani, another Thai port to the south. The regiment’s advance into Malaya would carry it into the rear of any British defenders in the north of the country. Threatened from the rear by the 42nd Regiment, and harried from the front by the rest of the 5th Division, the British defenders were rapidly forced out of northern Malaya. Kobayashi’s battalion broke through the British position at Gurun on 15 December, and the British retreated into central Malaya. Their only hope was to fight a series of delaying rearguard actions to hold the Japanese back until reinforcements could arrive.
The 5th Division refused to be held, and it never let the British troops rest for even a moment. It was imperative that the Japanese moved as fast as possible in order to maintain their local superiority in number and quality of troops. In addition, their schedule demanded that they be in Singapore by 17 March. Their advance was thus characterised by the elements of speed and surprise. The fighting developed into a series of brief engagements, normally in the vicinity of bridges, where the British were forced out of each position either by violent frontal assaults, or threats to their flanks as the 5th Division infiltrated men through the jungles and swamps. An attempt at Kampar to stem the Japanese tide of invasion failed when they simply landed troops by sea behind this strong defensive position. A further disaster to British arms occurred at the Slim River Bridge. Tanks supporting the 5th Division’s advance along the main road bulldozed their way through four British battalions in less than two and a half hours. The vital Slim River Bridge was captured intact ‑ the 5th Division had succeeded m driving the British out of central Malaya.
Once the men of the 5th Division entered the Malayan capital of Kuala Lumpur on 11 January 1942, they were given a beef, two‑day rest It was well deserved, for they had been in combat for 35 days. Their coming role m the battles in Johore state would be a secondary one, but they were still the first troops to reach Johore Baharu, across the straits from Singapore, on 31 January They were right on schedule The Twenty‑Fifth Army then paused briefly m its offensive action to bang up reinforcements and supplies. To prepare the 5th Division for its attack on the fortress island, its troops were given a refresher course in landing operations.
On the night of 8/9 February, the 440 guns attached to the Japanese Twenty‑Fifth Army brought down a heavy barrage on the northern coastline of Singapore. At around midnight, the first wave of the 5th Division assault force began to cross the straits Star shells were fired by the guns and mortars to illuminate their crossing, and, as the boats touched the shore, the men leapt out and began to make their way inland. Mangrove swamps and were entanglements inhibited movement and made the going difficult, but casualties were not severe the: heavy barrage prevented the Australian defenders of this sector from using machine guns effectively. The assault force was soon pushing inland, and blue flares were fired into the sky to indicate to divisional and army headquarters that the landings had been successful. At the sight these twinkling blue lights the second wave began to cross the straits.
By dawn most of the 5th Division was across the strait, and the observers in Malaya could see ‘Rising Sun’ flags fluttering on Singapore island, marking the progress of the troops inland Throughout 9/10 February, the pressure was kept on the British defenders while Japanese reinforcements poured over the straits. Among the latter were the tanks that had proved so useful on the mainland. By the evening of 10 February, the British had been forced back to Bukit Timah, overlooking the city of Singapore.
That night, the 5th Division launched an attack against British positions alone the Choa Chu Kuang road. The Japanese used tanks in place of artillery support, and these broke through the British line at the northern end of the heights By midnight, the 5th Division’s vanguard was at Bukit Timah village, at the southern end. After a British attempt to launch a counter‑attack at noon on 11 February failed, the Japanese were able to celebrate the Kigensetsu – the 1282nd anniversary of the foundation of the Japanese monarchy ‑ on the heights overlooks Singapore.
The battle continued for three more days with the Japanese forcing their way closer and closer to the city in the face of stiff resistance. But when the last reservoir was captured from the British on 13 February, it was only a matter of time.
On 15 February, a staff officer and two orderlies were seen approaching from the British line along the Bukit Timah Road towards the 5th Division’s positions. They carried a large white flag and a Union Jack It was a deputation to secure surrender terms from the Japanese. At 1810, the instrument of surrender was signed It was 30 days ahead of schedule. The fighting samurai of the Japanese 5th Division had accomplished their objective with a degree of speed and proficiency that stunned the Commonwealth defenders of Malaya and Singapore.
5TH ‘SAMURAI’ DIVISION
The Japanese Army that existed in 1941 was a relatively recent creation. It dated from the introduction of conscription in 1873, and save its first combat four years later when it was employed to suppress a rebellion by expansionist samurai warriors. Its first success in the international arena was the defeat of Chinese troops in Korea daring the Sino‑Japanese War of 1894‑8. The 5th Division, nicknamed the `Samurai’ Division, first came to prominence during the Russo‑Japanese War of 1904‑5. When the second Japanese war with China broke out in 1937, the 5th Division soon went into action in the north of the country. During the fighting along the Great Wall in 1937, the 42nd Infantry Regiment distinguished itself and received a citation from the Emperor. Since combat often took place along rivers during this campaign, the division was given special training in river crossing and amphibious operations that was later to prove invaluable during the campaign in Malaya.
Indeed, the expertise that the division acquired in the course of this training was one of the main reasons for the Japanese High Command selecting it to spearhead the assault on Malaya. After the victory at Singapore, the 5th Division returned to Japan as part of a general redeployment of the Imperial Army. It was sent to New Guinea in October 1943, but was bypassed by the Allied forces during their reconquest of the Pacific. Along with the rest of the Japanese Army, the 5th Division surrendered on 15 August 1945 and was later disbanded.
