Pearl Harbor, Singapore, and the International Date Line
On Friday, October 17, we are honored to be hosting at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92 a lecture by Jeyathurai Ayadurai, Director of Singapore History Consultants and the Changi Museum, which researches and interprets the rich World War II history of Singapore. The lecture will focus on the Fall of Singapore to Japanese forces in 1942.
While most Americans know about the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was supposedly the opening salvo of the war in the Pacific (leaving aside the 4+ years of full-scale war between Japan and China), fewer know about the Japanese campaigns in Southeast Asia, nor are they aware that Pearl Harbor was just part of an enormous, coordinated offensive across the Pacific Rim by the Japanese. Within the span of less than 12 hours, Japan launched attacks at seven different locations, opening up a front that spanned more than 4,000 miles, from the Malay Peninsula to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
When looking at the timing of these attacks, it is difficult to discern coordination, as they appear a day apart. This is thanks to the International Date Line, so while Hawaii was attacked on December 7 – on the east side of the line – other locations were attacked simultaneously on December 8 – on the west side. Below all the campaigns are translated into Eastern Standard Time:
Landings in Malaya (UK) and Thailand -- Dec 8, 12:00am (Dec 7, 12:00pm EST)
Attack on Pearl Harbor (US) -- Dec 7, 7:48am (Dec 7, 12:48pm EST)
Attack on Guam (US) -- Dec 8, 8:27am (Dec 7, 5:27pm EST)
Attack on Wake Island (US) -- Dec 8, 12:00pm (Dec 7, 6:00pm EST)
Attack on Hong Kong (UK) -- Dec 8, 8:00am (Dec 7, 7:00pm EST)
Attack on Philippines (US) -- Dec 8, 12:40pm (Dec 7, 11:40pm EST)
The latest of these assaults, on the Philippines, was actually supposed to happen much earlier, but Japanese aircraft were fogged in at their bases on Formosa (Taiwan). And among all these, Pearl Harbor was arguably the least consequential, as it was the only attack that was not followed by a full-scale land invasion, as, for example, the invasion of Malaya would culminate in the fall of Singapore 10 weeks later. This attack was designed instead to cripple America's Pacific Fleet so that it could not intervene in Japan's campaign across Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. The attack on Pearl Harbor was audacious and destructive, and it pushed the operational limits of Japan's Navy, but it was not the knockout blow its architects had hoped.
The fall of Singapore, meanwhile, sent a shockwave across the globe. The city touted as the "Gibraltar of the East," with defenses designed to withstand a siege of three months or more, fell in one week, to an army one-third the size. The result was the largest surrender in the history of the British Army (to be followed two months later by the largest surrender in the history of the American Army, at Bataan, Philippines).
Join us tomorrow at 7pm for this free lecture at BLDG 92 which will help put the Pacific War and the role of the home front (like the Brooklyn Navy Yard) into a global context.
