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straightforward as had been anticipated. One of the political justifications for attacking the British and the Americans was that both powers would be forced to reduce their support for the Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. This was less than realistic since Chiang was much more reliant on support from the Soviet Union, but it did have a certain appeal to popular opinion in Japan and the news media – totally under Japanese government control – encouraged the belief that the Chinese forces would be mortally weakened by the loss of American aid. Similarly, there was a view that the Chinese government was heavily reliant on the fundraising activities of the Chinese diaspora of merchants and professionals across South Asia generally, but in Singapore and Malaya in particular. This was not unfounded; the Chinese communities did raise substantial sums for the war effort at home, but certainlynot enough to have a profound effect on China’s ability to resist the Japanese invasion. In reality, fundraising in the British colonies and American contributions to the Chinese government were insignificant issues compared to the wider questions of Japan’s economic need for raw materials and foodstuffs, as well as her political desire to be a great international power and the leading force in Asia; neither issue – singly or in combination – was enough of a challenge to provoke war.
    The attacks of December 1941 brought the Western Allies together with a shared objective: the defeat of Japan. In the early months of the war active co-operation was almost non-existent. The United States was not in a position to intervene in support of Britain or the Netherlands; although America had been providing arms and other supplies to Britain for some considerable time, the tide of public opinion in the US had not turned in favour of active participation. Pearl Harbor changed everything in that regard. America had been attacked with no declaration of war, thousands of lives and millions of dollars’ worth of material had been destroyed and the American public was now ready for a fight even if their military was not. In that sense, the Pearl Harbor attack can be seen as a gigantic political and strategic error. It is not absolutely certain that the United States would have entered a war with Japan on the basis of her invasions of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, but there could be little doubt that a direct attack on an American port or on the Philippines would force the issue.
    Japan’s attack on America did more than bring war to the Pacific. Germany chose to declare war on the United States in support of her Asian ally. President Roosevelt had been pushing toward declaring war with Germany for some time, but had not had the political support which would enable him to do so; now Hitler had saved him the necessity by declaring war on the United States.
    In a sense, this clearly defined who was fighting for what. At its simplest, the Western Allies were committed to a war which would destroy the power of Germany, Japan and Italy, and in turn those nations were committed to a war which would destroy the power of Britain and America. In the case of Britain and the Netherlands, this included ensuring that they retained possession of the mineral and agricultural wealth of Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. They could only do this by preserving a certain aura of invincibility and convincing local public opinion that the European powers could protect their communities from invasion.

    Malaya. Location of military formations, airfields and air force units, 8 December 1941.

    Singapore Island. Location of military formations, airfields and air force units, 8 December 1941.

THE ARMIES
The British Defence
    The British defence posture in Malaya was bound by several constraints, some of which were effectively contradictory. Both Malaya and the Dutch East Indies had long been seen as military backwaters. Despite the economic significance of South East Asia to