An incident occurred on the road when a Dutch militia group fired at the Japanese column. Enraged, Mitsuyoshi quickly sent a platoon to deal with it. Then he selected out four of the 15 Aussies, ordering an officer to force them to kneel in the road and shoot them one by one in the back of the head. It was a spiteful act of cruelty, all too common in this theater. Every army would have lapses and failings in the ranks, and atrocities would come hand in hand with war, but the Japanese army would prove to be specialists at the art of this depravity.
Five years earlier, they had set their troops loose on Chinese prisoners of war, and civilians, in the city of Nanking in one of the greatest atrocities of the century. Chinese were bayoneted, beheaded, raped, burned, starved, buried alive, and infants were even thrown into pots of boiling water. It was cruelty and barbarity on a scale to rival the atrocities committed by the Germans in their concentration camps. Over 200,000 were killed in Nanking, for the Japanese mindset seemed to regard a fallen enemy as subhuman, particularly one who would suffer the dishonor of surrender instead of fighting to the death. Just weeks ago, after the desperate defense of Laha Airfield at Ambon, scores of Australian and Dutch P.O.Ws were executed, many simply beheaded as they knelt, bound and blindfolded. The Naval Marines were again behind the incident, where over 300 prisoners were put to the sword.
There was a saying among these hard minded warriors, coming down through the ranks from the days of the Samurai: “Loyalty and honor are heavier than a mountain, and your life is lighter than a feather.” A human life counted for nothing in those days. It could be taken at the whim of a Samurai lord, for the most trivial of reasons, and in many ways the modern Samurai of 1942 held the same mindset towards their enemies. Their lives were feather light. Whatever Lieutenant Mitsuyoshi’s reasons were here, he took those four lives that day, and later, he had the remaining men herded into a shed and summarily beheaded, one by one.
The rest of 2/2 Independent Company soon saw that they were badly outnumbered, and learning of the demise of Sparrow Force, they knew they would get no help from the west. Yet Timor was a very big island, and they had a clear line of retreat, which they soon took, hiking up into the highlands. The decision was made to disperse the company into small groups, and to fight on guerilla style until relieved. Soon their only connection to Australia would be a single radio cobbled together from spare parts found and collected over months by signaler Joe Loveless. When it finally came to life and actually worked, they promptly dubbed the radio “Winnie the War Winner.”
With ‘Winnie’ operating, the Commandos were able to make regular intelligence reports to the homeland, and also receive messages as to when they might expect secret shipments of air or sea dropped supplies. They soon became a band of shirtless bearded rogues, and the bane of the Japanese for long months. When asked if they wanted to be extracted, the men instead simply requested delivery of more ammunition for their Tommy guns. Their choice to fight on alone prompted Churchill to smile and give his own tribute, which would become the official motto of the unit: “They Alone Did Not Surrender.” It would be a long year in the steamy jungles and tortured highlands of Timor before they would finally be pulled off in Fedorov’s history. Yet here, in these altered states, that story would soon change….
Part V
A Roll of Thunder
“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.”
Chapter 13
The Japanese plan for the invasion of Java would be dubbed “Operation J” in this telling of events. With Bali and Timor well in hand, the main thrust for the offensive was now about to begin. It would employ three full divisions, the first being the tough 48th Division under General Hitoshi Imamura coming from the Philippines. Among the best divisions in the army, the 48th had special training for amphibious landings, and had performed as expected on the Philippines, participating in the capture of Manila. It would be further strengthened by the “Sakaguchi Detachment,” a regimental sized gift from the 56th Division in Burma.
This division would land well west of Surabaya at Kragan, push southeast and attack that city by indirect means, as the Japanese had done at Koepang on Timor. The Sakaguchi Detachment had a special assignment, ordered to drive south through the city of Surjakarta and along the south coast of the island to the port of Tjilatjap. If taken it was thought this would prevent any successful Allied attempt to evacuate.
The 2nd, “Courageous” Division, was a reserve unit taken from the Sendai region of Japan. As such, the 2nd was not one of the veteran fighting units of recent months. It had seen action on the Siberian front and China years earlier, but after being recalled home, it languished to a point that Prince Mikasa once said it had become the worst equipped division in the army. All that had to change, and quickly, and the man to change it was Yamashita’s confederate planner and master strategist, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, the man who had cherry picked the best fruit in the army to assemble Yamashita’s 25th Army for the Malayan Campaign.
The 2nd had once been a “Square division” with two brigades of two regiments each. After its recall to Japan, it was made triangular, leaving one regiment behind to form a nucleus for forces being raised to replace it at home. For this operation it would be made square again by receiving the support of the 230th Regiment of the 38th Division, under Colonel Toshihari Shoji. The “Shoji Detachment” would land east of Batavia on the coast to block the enemy retreat and take a valuable airfield, and the remainder of the division would land west of the city near Merak on the Sunda Strait, and Banten Bay. This main force would send two of its three regiments at Batavia, and loop one further south to take Bandung in the center of the island, the location of the Allied Java Command HQ.
It was a well conceived plan, and in Fedorov’s history, with only the Dutch and a scattering of Allied units present, it became overwhelming force. This time, however, the entire British 18th Division was on the island, along with a reinforced brigade of Australians, two battalions off the Orcades, the 2nd New Zealand Brigade, and the Gurkhas. Allied strength on Java was now more than doubled.
It was for this reason that the entire 5th Division had been pulled off of Singapore Island after Yamashita’s departure. Once perhaps the strongest division in the Army after Colonel Tsuji had buttressed it with the best units he could find, it had been badly worn down from the long campaign in Malaya, and the heavy casualties sustained at Tengah Airfield on Singapore. Now it could muster no more than a Brigade strength unit, with six battalions under Major General Takuro Matsui, formed into two regiments, the 11th and 21st. Most of the rest of the division was dead, and the living had been told the enemy they faced at Tengah Airfield had made a cowardly withdrawal to Java, and that now they would have the honor of hunting them down and finishing the battle that had been joined earlier. Now they would avenge their fallen dead.