The Japanese on Bali and Timor

On the morning of 20 February 1942 Japanese transport aircraft appeared over the hills east of Kupang, the capital of the Dutch part of Timor, and hundreds of parachutes opened above the road along which Australian troops were withdrawing. A dozen or so hours earlier Japanese infantry had come ashore at the south-western tip of the island, and a second force had landed near Dili in neutral Portuguese Timor. At the same time, several hundred kilometres to the west, in the narrow Badung Strait off Bali, a night battle was dying away in which the Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman had tried in vain to destroy a Japanese convoy. Within two days the Japanese had closed the eastern flank of the ring around Java, the last large island the Allies were still defending.

Chronologies record under 20 February that the Japanese invaded Bali and Timor, combining seaborne and airborne landings. In fact these were two separate operations. Bali was taken on 19 February by a seaborne landing alone, without paratroops. An airborne assault accompanied only the landing on Dutch Timor, on 20 and 21 February.

The Malay Barrier breaks

After the landings on Tarakan and Celebes in January, the Japanese advanced through the archipelago in bounds, each time under air cover from previously captured airfields. Ambon fell on 3 February, and its Australian garrison, Gull Force, went into captivity. At the beginning of February Japanese bombers struck Surabaya and the airfields of eastern Java for the first time. On the night of 8–9 February the Japanese landed near Makassar, and on 14 February army paratroops dropped on the oilfields near Palembang on Sumatra. The next day Singapore surrendered. General Archibald Wavell’s ABDA Command, which was supposed to hold the “Malay Barrier” from Malaya to Timor, was now defending only Java and its immediate approaches.

Bali and Timor lay east of Java, on the chain of the Lesser Sunda Islands. What mattered most to the Japanese were their airfields. From the airfield near Denpasar on Bali, fighters could cover raids on the naval base at Surabaya, and Bali itself was separated from Java only by a narrow strait. Penfui airfield near Kupang, for its part, was the most important staging point on the air route from Australia to Java. P-40 fighters, which lacked the range for a direct flight, were ferried along it. Taking both islands cut Java off from Australia by air and gave Japan airfields from which it could reach northern Australia.

Bali: an island without a fight

A single battalion was sent to Bali: the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Formosa Infantry Regiment from the 48th Division, reinforced with mountain guns and engineers. The Kanemura Detachment, as it was called, was commanded by Major Matabei Kanemura. Two transports, Sasago Maru and Sagami Maru, left Makassar on 18 February escorted by four destroyers of the 8th Destroyer Division: Asashio, Ōshio, Michishio and Arashio. Distant cover was provided by Rear Admiral Kyūji Kubo in the light cruiser Nagara with three destroyers. On the night of 18–19 February, in rain and darkness, the infantry began coming ashore on the beach near Sanur on the south-east coast of the island.

Bali had no real defence. Its only garrison was the Korps Prajoda, some 600 local auxiliaries with a few Dutch KNIL officers under Lieutenant Colonel W.P. Roodenburg. They put up no resistance, and most of them simply dispersed. The Japanese crossed the southern tip of the island unopposed and on 19 February itself took the airfield near Denpasar. According to Dutch accounts, the order to destroy the runway was misunderstood, so the airfield fell into their hands intact. During the day the transports were attacked by the American submarine Seawolf and the British Truant, and then by American B-17 bombers and A-24 dive-bombers. They damaged only Sagami Maru. The Japanese knew the convoy would be attacked again, so once the troops were unloaded they sent it back north.

The Battle of Badung Strait

Doorman decided that the loss of Bali could not be accepted without a fight. The ABDA striking force, however, was scattered: some ships lay at Cilacap (PL) (Tjilatjap) on the south coast of Java, others at Surabaya, and after the air attacks in the Flores Sea on 4 February the cruisers Houston and Marblehead were still nursing their damage. There was no time to concentrate all his forces in one place, so the admiral planned to attack in several successive waves. In what became known as the Battle of Badung Strait, the Allies had a clear superiority in numbers and firepower but were unable to exploit it.

The first wave sailed from Cilacap: the light cruisers De Ruyter and Java, the Dutch destroyer Piet Hein and the American destroyers John D. Ford and Pope. The destroyer Kortenaer ran aground on leaving harbour and was left behind. On the evening of 19 February the force entered the strait between Bali and Nusa Penida from the south. At about 10.30 p.m. the cruisers sighted Japanese ships and opened fire, but after a brief exchange without hits they steamed on north-east towards Surabaya. The destroyers were left on their own. Asashio and Ōshio closed on Piet Hein; a shell hit crippled her and cut her power, and then a torpedo struck her. According to Dutch figures 64 members of her crew were killed, including her captain, Lieutenant Commander J.M.L.I. Chömpff. Several dozen survivors later reached Java in a motor boat that John D. Ford had lost during the battle. Both American destroyers withdrew to the south-east, and the two Japanese ships, confused in the darkness, fired on each other for several minutes.

The second wave, from Surabaya, arrived after midnight, on 20 February: the light cruiser Tromp and four old American destroyers, Stewart, Parrott, John D. Edwards and Pillsbury. Their torpedoes missed again. Asashio and Ōshio engaged Tromp and hit her a dozen or so times. The Dutch cruiser later had to go to Australia for repairs, while one of her shells killed seven men on the bridge of Ōshio. Heading north, the Allied ships also ran into Michishio and Arashio, escorting the damaged Sagami Maru. Michishio, hit by Tromp and the American destroyers, was disabled, with 13 dead and 83 wounded, and had to be towed away. The third wave, Dutch motor torpedo boats from Surabaya, found no one. The badly damaged Stewart went into dry dock at Surabaya. As Java fell her crew scuttled her in the dock, but the Japanese raised the ship and took her into their navy as a patrol vessel.

The outcome was unambiguous. Two Japanese destroyers, later joined by two more, had beaten off a force of three cruisers and seven destroyers, sunk one ship and badly damaged two others. They themselves lost not a single vessel, and both transports got away. The battle showed what was to be confirmed a week later: the Japanese navy was better trained for night fighting and had better torpedoes and better communications, while the Allied ships, hastily gathered from four navies, could not fight together.

Timor before the invasion

Timor had long been divided between two colonial powers. The western part, with Kupang, belonged to the Dutch East Indies; the eastern part, with Dili, together with the enclave of Oecusse in the west, was a Portuguese colony. The Portugal of António de Oliveira Salazar remained neutral. Under pre-war agreements Australia had promised the Dutch reinforcements in the event of war with Japan, and on 12 December 1941 Sparrow Force arrived at Kupang. It comprised the 2/40th Battalion from Tasmania, Major Alexander Spence’s 2/2nd Independent Company (commandos trained to operate behind enemy lines) and a coastal artillery battery, some 1,400 men in all under Lieutenant Colonel William Leggatt. Lieutenant Colonel Nico van Straten’s Dutch garrison numbered between 500 and 650 soldiers, depending on the source, and in February a British anti-aircraft battery also arrived. A dozen or so Lockheed Hudson bombers of the Royal Australian Air Force were stationed at Penfui airfield.

Portuguese Timor was the most awkward problem. The Australians and British feared that the Japanese would take it without difficulty and turn it into a springboard against Darwin. The governor, Manuel de Abreu Ferreira de Carvalho, refused to admit Allied troops, and Lisbon promised to send reinforcements of its own from Mozambique. On 17 December 1941, therefore, some 400 Dutch and Australian troops landed at Dili over the governor’s protests. Carvalho declared himself a prisoner in order to keep up the appearance of neutrality, and Salazar protested to the Allied governments. In January an Anglo-Portuguese agreement was concluded: the Allies were to withdraw when a Portuguese force arrived. It sailed from Lourenço Marques, today’s Maputo, on 28 January but did not arrive in time. Most of the Dutch and the whole of the 2/2nd Company were deployed in small groups across Portuguese Timor.

In Tokyo the Allied presence in Dili settled a question that had previously been in dispute. Originally there had been no intention of attacking neutral Portuguese Timor: Japan valued its relations with Lisbon, and Germany needed Portuguese raw materials. The Chief of the Army General Staff, Hajime Sugiyama, however, demanded a strike on Dili, while the Foreign Minister, Shigenori Tōgō, urged respect for Portuguese neutrality. The government of Hideki Tōjō eventually adopted the army’s position: troops were to remain in Dili until Portugal itself was able to defend its colony. From the end of January Japanese aircraft bombed Penfui, and on 8 February they bombed Dili for the first time too. Sparrow Force was to be reinforced, but the convoy carrying an Australian pioneer battalion and American artillery, which left Darwin on 15 February under the cover of the cruiser Houston, was attacked the next day by Japanese bombers and flying boats. The convoy turned back to Darwin. There, on 19 February, the eve of the invasion of Timor, the port and airfield were wrecked by a Japanese air raid, which took away Timor’s last hope of help.

The landings on Timor

The invasion was carried out by a force under Major General Takeo Itō, infantry commander of the 38th Division, which had taken Hong Kong in December. Its core was Colonel Sadashichi Doi’s 228th Infantry Regiment, brought from Ambon. On the night of 19–20 February some 1,500 troops began landing near Dili. According to some accounts, in the darkness the Allies mistook the Japanese ships for the expected vessels carrying the Portuguese. The garrison nevertheless withdrew in good order, and eighteen Australian commandos defending the airfield held up the Japanese for several hours. Japanese losses are disputed: the Portuguese and Australians spoke of some 200 killed, while Japanese documents give a few dozen. Another section of commandos fared worse: unaware of the landing, they drove a lorry into a Japanese roadblock. According to Australian findings the soldiers surrendered and the Japanese murdered all but one of them. The commandos of the 2/2nd Company withdrew into the mountains, and some 200 of van Straten’s Dutch troops set off south-west towards the border. Governor Carvalho described in his reports how Japanese soldiers occupied government offices and looted shops, and called the first days of the occupation “a veritable hell”.

That same night the main body of Itō’s force, two battalions totalling up to 4,000 men according to various sources, landed on an undefended shore at the mouth of the Paha river in the south-west of Dutch Timor. With light tankettes they advanced north, cutting off the Dutch positions in the west and striking at Penfui. Leggatt had the airfield demolished and began withdrawing the 2/40th Battalion eastwards, towards the supply base at Champlong. It was then, on the morning of 20 February, that the airborne assault came down: some 300 paratroops of the 3rd Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force landed near the village of Usapa Besar (Usau), about 22 kilometres east of Kupang, and seized the hills above the only line of retreat. The next day a second wave of similar size was dropped. It was the second Japanese naval parachute operation of the campaign, after Manado.

Instead of surrendering, the Australians spent two days attacking the positions that cut them off, ending their last attack with a bayonet charge. The paratroops suffered very heavy losses. According to frequently cited Australian findings, fewer than a hundred of the first wave survived, and some sources give a figure as low as 78, although Japanese and Allied figures differ widely here. The road was briefly opened, but the main Japanese column, with tankettes and artillery, was already coming up from the west. On the morning of 23 February, after another clash during which Japanese bombers mistakenly bombed their own tankettes as well, the exhausted battalion, without water and running out of ammunition, found itself surrounded. Leggatt accepted the Japanese call to surrender and capitulated near Usapa Besar. The 2/40th Battalion lost 84 killed and 132 wounded in the fighting, and more of its men later died in captivity, among other places on the construction of the Burma Railway, than had been killed in action. Brigadier William Veale, who had taken command of all Allied forces on the island only on 12 February, broke through eastwards into Portuguese Timor with some 290 Australians and Dutch from headquarters and rear units.

Guerrilla war in the mountains

That was not the end of the Timor campaign. In the mountains of Portuguese Timor the 2/2nd Independent Company, about 270 men, began a guerrilla war. They were helped by Timorese guides and porters, and often by the Portuguese as well. When Colonel Doi sent the Australian honorary consul David Ross to them with a demand for surrender, Major Spence replied with a refusal that Australian tradition preserves in a considerably less polite version. For several weeks no one in Australia knew that the commandos were still fighting, because they had no working radio. Only in April did a set cobbled together from parts, christened “Winnie the War Winner”, make contact with Darwin. From then on they were supplied by air and by sea.

The guerrilla war lasted until early 1943. In September 1942 the 2/4th Independent Company joined it, and the Japanese had to bring the whole 48th Division to the island. The exhausted Australians were evacuated gradually in December 1942 and January 1943, the last of them taken off by an American submarine on 10 February 1943. They were the last Allied ground forces fighting in South-East Asia after the Japanese victories of 1941–1942.

Place in the war

The capture of Bali and Timor closed the eastern flank of the Japanese ring around Java. From now on fighters from the airfield on Bali escorted bombers over Surabaya, and the loss of Kupang broke the air bridge from Australia. Fighters for Java now had to be carried by ship, and the last such attempt ended on 27 February with the sinking of the old aircraft carrier Langley south of the island. The defeat in the Badung Strait cost Doorman’s fleet a destroyer and the cruiser Tromp, which was missing from the Battle of the Java Sea on 27 February. In that battle Doorman himself and most of the Allied fleet were lost. ABDA Command was dissolved on 25 February, and on 1 March the Japanese landed on Java, which capitulated on 9 March.

Timor also became Australia’s front line of defence. For the next year and a half Japanese bombers attacked Darwin and the northern coast of the continent from its airfields. For Australians the fate of Sparrow Force, like that of Gull Force on Ambon and Lark Force at Rabaul, was proof that scattering small garrisons across islands without naval and air support condemned them to destruction. The commandos’ guerrilla campaign, on the other hand, showed how much a small, well-trained unit supported by the local population could achieve.

The heaviest price, however, was paid by the people of Timor. Portugal formally preserved its neutrality and Carvalho remained governor until the end of the war, but the Japanese occupied the whole island until the surrender in 1945. They took revenge on the population for the help given to the Australians, conscripted Timorese into auxiliary units, killed Portuguese officials and priests, and forced Timorese women into sexual slavery as so-called “comfort women”. According to the most frequently cited estimates, between 40,000 and 70,000 inhabitants of Portuguese Timor died during the occupation, from hunger, in reprisals and in the fighting. After the war Bali, Dutch Timor and the rest of the archipelago became part of Indonesia, while Portuguese Timor remained a colony until 1975. The memory of the Timorese people’s wartime solidarity with the Australian commandos later resurfaced in Australian debates over policy towards East Timor.