Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

Japan did attack the U.S., Britain, Australia, and the Dutch East Indies beginning on December 7, 1941. On December 10, just the third day after Japan’s declaration of war, Japanese bombers sank Britain’s only two large warships available in the Far East to defend Australia, the battleship Prince of Wales (Plate 7.6) and the battle cruiser Repulse. On February 15, 1942, the British general in command at Singapore surrendered to the Japanese army, sending 100,000 British and Empire troops into prisoner-of-war camps—the most severe military defeat that Britain has suffered in its history (Plate 7.7). Sadly, those troops surrendering included 2,000 Australian soldiers who had arrived in Singapore only three weeks earlier, on January 24, in order to serve in the hopeless task of its defense. In the absence of British ships to protect Australia, the same Japanese aircraft carriers that had bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor heavily bombed the Australian city of Darwin on February 19, 1942 (Plate 7.8). That was the first of more than 60 Japanese air raids on Australia, in addition to an attempted raid on Sydney Harbor by a Japanese submarine.