The landing in Brunei Bay

On the morning of 10 June 1945, after a naval bombardment and raids by heavy bombers, American amphibious tractors put Australian infantry ashore at two places on Brunei Bay in the north-west of Borneo. The 24th Brigade landed on the island of Labuan, which guards the entrance to the bay, and the 20th Brigade on the islet of Muara and on the peninsula near Brooketon, on the coast of the Sultanate of Brunei. Three days later, on 13 June, the Australians took the town of Brunei itself – today’s Bandar Seri Begawan.

The operation was code-named Oboe Six and was the second stage of the Borneo campaign (after the landing on Tarakan on 1 May). It was carried out by Major General George Wootten’s Australian 9th Division, which together with its supporting units numbered about 29,000 men, transported and protected by American and Australian ships.

War chronologies record under 10 June that Australian troops landed in Brunei, and under 13 June that the Australians captured Brunei. Both dates are correct, but they need some precision. The landing of 10 June covered not only the coast of Brunei but also Labuan, which at the time was a separate British colony rather than part of the sultanate. And on 13 June the Australians took the town of Brunei, the capital of the sultanate; the western part of the country, with the Seria oilfields, was secured only in the last days of June.

Brunei Bay before the landing

Before the war northern Borneo lay within the British sphere. It comprised North Borneo, administered by a chartered company; Sarawak, ruled by the Brooke dynasty; the small Sultanate of Brunei under British protection; and the island of Labuan, part of the Straits Settlements. The region’s greatest wealth was oil: the fields at Seria in Brunei and at Miri in Sarawak, linked to the refinery at Lutong.

It was for this oil that the Japanese reached out in the first days of the Pacific war. On 16 December 1941 they landed near Miri and Seria, and on 22 December they occupied the town of Brunei. The weak British garrisons could offer no resistance; they managed only partly to destroy the oil installations. In Brunei the occupiers left Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin on the throne, without even stopping his stipend, but real power was exercised by the Japanese military administration. The occupation brought the inhabitants requisitions of food, forced labour, hunger and disease. In North Borneo an uprising broke out in Jesselton (today Kota Kinabalu) in the autumn of 1943, led mainly by local Chinese; the Japanese crushed it with bloody reprisals against the population, and some of the captured insurgents were later held on Labuan.

In 1944 the Japanese began to expect an Allied landing on the west coast of Borneo. The defence of the northern part of the island was entrusted to Lieutenant General Masao Baba’s 37th Army, headquartered in Jesselton. The Brunei Bay area was to be covered by Major General Taijiro Akashi’s 56th Independent Mixed Brigade, formed in Japan in the second half of 1944. According to Australian studies, by June 1945 the brigade had been weakened by exhausting marches from north-eastern Borneo, was at roughly half its establishment strength, and its soldiers were poorly trained and armed. Allied intelligence estimated the number of Japanese troops in North Borneo at about 8,800. About 550 men were stationed on Labuan, mainly from Captain Shichiro Okuyama’s 371st Independent Infantry Battalion.

The Oboe Six plan

The plan to retake Borneo was drawn up at the headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the South West Pacific Area. Brunei Bay – a large, deep anchorage sheltered by Labuan – was to become a forward base for the British Pacific Fleet ahead of further operations in South-East Asia. Labuan was to close the entrance to the bay and provide an airfield, and the undertaking as a whole was to deprive the Japanese of the region’s oil and rubber and restore British civil administration.

The plan did not command unanimous support. The British Chiefs of Staff believed that developing a base on Brunei Bay would take too long to be of use in this war, and feared that it would draw the fleet away from the main theatre off the coast of Japan; they preferred a base in the Philippines. The American Joint Chiefs of Staff nevertheless approved the operation, expecting it to be useful in later operations in South-East Asia. The Australian command, headed by General Thomas Blamey, also doubted the point of further operations on Borneo, but the government in Canberra agreed to the participation of its troops.

The task was given to Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead’s Australian I Corps, and within it to Major General Wootten’s 9th Division – veterans of Tobruk, El Alamein and the fighting in New Guinea. The division, however, fought with only two brigades, since the third, the 26th Brigade, had been tied down in the fighting on Tarakan since 1 May. The 24th Brigade was commanded by Brigadier Selwyn Porter and the 20th Brigade by Brigadier Victor Windeyer. Each received a squadron of Matilda tanks from the 2/9th Armoured Regiment. Together with air force, engineer and rear-echelon units, the force numbered more than 29,000 men, including about 1,100 Americans and Britons. The Americans manned, among other things, the amphibious tractors and landing craft. Also attached to the force was a group of officers from the British Borneo Civil Affairs Unit, which was to take over the administration and distribute relief among the inhabitants.

The landing was originally set for 23 May, but a shortage of shipping delayed the movement of troops from Australia to the staging base on the island of Morotai, where elaborate landing exercises were held. In the end the date was put back to 10 June. The naval force – Rear Admiral Forrest Royal’s Task Force 78.1, about 85 vessels, mostly American, with Australian cruisers – left Morotai at the beginning of June, preceded by minesweepers and survey ships. American and Australian aircraft had been attacking targets in northern Borneo since the beginning of May, and from 5 June concentrated their strikes on the landing areas.

In the interior of the island, secret Special Operations Australia parties had been operating since March: “Agas” in North Borneo and “Semut” in Sarawak. Soldiers dropped by parachute, mostly Australians, gathered intelligence – including on the strength of the Labuan garrison – and organised guerrilla bands among the Dayaks. The guerrillas went into action on 9 June, the day before the landing.

The landing of 10 June

The landing was preceded by fire from cruisers, rocket and mortar gunboats, and by raids by eight squadrons of Liberator bombers, which dropped fragmentation bombs on the beach areas. The bombardment proved largely unnecessary: the Japanese had withdrawn from the coast and had abandoned Muara islet entirely. All three landings were unopposed.

On Labuan two battalions of the 24th Brigade – the 2/28th and 2/43rd – came ashore near the small town of Victoria and moved towards the airfield. By evening, after skirmishes with Japanese outposts and fighting among the aircraft dispersal bays, they had taken the town and the airfield. The 2/11th Commando Squadron covered the western flank. The brigade’s third battalion, the 2/32nd, remained in divisional reserve.

At the same time the 2/15th and 2/17th Battalions of the 20th Brigade landed on Muara islet and on the peninsula north of Brooketon, at the entrance to the bay on the Brunei side; the 2/13th Battalion remained in brigade reserve. By evening both beachheads were secure and losses negligible.

On the afternoon of 10 June a party of senior commanders came ashore on Labuan: MacArthur, who had watched the landing from the cruiser USS Boise, his air commander General George Kenney, Morshead, and the head of RAAF Command, Air Vice-Marshal William Bostock. According to Australian accounts, MacArthur insisted on seeing troops in action and visited a sub-unit of the 2/43rd Battalion that had just killed two Japanese; firing was still going on in the vicinity. For MacArthur it was another of his showpiece visits to landing beaches – he repeated it a month later at Balikpapan.

The capture of the town of Brunei (13 June)

From the beachhead near Brooketon the 2/17th Battalion advanced along the coast towards the town of Brunei, which lies at the head of the bay on the Brunei River. The Japanese rearguards put up no determined defence; for several days there were only skirmishes at section and platoon level. On 13 June 1945 the 2/17th Battalion entered the town of Brunei. The capital of the sultanate – mostly wooden buildings by the river, with the stilt village of Kampong Ayer – had been wrecked by Allied bombing in the preceding weeks.

The capture of the town ended the first phase of the 20th Brigade’s operations. Its task now was to secure the western shore of the bay and the oilfields. The 2/15th Battalion, which had earlier taken Muara, went upriver by barge and on 18 June occupied Limbang in Sarawak. On 20 June the 2/13th Battalion landed unopposed near Lutong, covered by Spitfire and Kittyhawk fighters already flying from the airfield on Labuan.

The worst sight awaited the Australians at Seria, which they reached on 21–22 June (sources give different dates). The retreating Japanese had set fire to the oil wells there – 37 or 38 of them, according to different sources. The columns of smoke could be seen from the sea tens of kilometres away. Putting out the fires was entrusted to Australian sappers of the 2/3rd Field Company; it took more than three months, and the last well was extinguished only at the end of September 1945. On 24 June the Australians reached Kuala Belait near the border with Sarawak and then moved on towards Miri. Only then was the whole coast of the sultanate under Allied control.

“The Pocket” on Labuan

On Labuan the easy start proved deceptive. Captain Okuyama’s garrison withdrew inland to wooded ridges surrounded by swamps, where it prepared a fortified position measuring about 1,100 by 550 metres. The Australians called it “the Pocket”. According to Australian estimates, it was initially held by about 250 Japanese. On 12 June the 2/12th Commando Squadron was brought over to the island from reserve to clear pockets of resistance that had earlier been bypassed, and on 13 June the 2/43rd Battalion took the Timbalai airstrip on the west coast. By 14 June the whole of Labuan except the Pocket was in Australian hands.

Attacks on the fortified area itself proved costly. An assault by the 2/28th Battalion with tanks on 16 June bogged down in dense forest and brought heavy losses; that day the brigade’s field hospitals admitted about 150 wounded and sick. Brigadier Porter decided not to squander his soldiers’ lives. In the last months of the war Australian commanders were under explicit orders to limit casualties and avoid unnecessary risks, so over the following days the Pocket was shelled by ships, artillery and aircraft; on 18 and 19 June the heavy cruiser HMAS Shropshire took part in the bombardment.

Before dawn on 21 June a group of several dozen Japanese – about 50 men, according to Australian accounts – slipped out of the Pocket and attacked the brigade’s rear: the harbour area, the stores, the prisoner-of-war compound and the airfield. The raiders were wiped out in fighting around Victoria and the airfield. That same day two companies of the 2/28th Battalion, supported by standard Matilda tanks and their flamethrower variant (the Matilda “Frog”), assaulted the Pocket and broke the resistance. The flamethrower tanks played a decisive part in the attack. According to brigade reports, about 60 Japanese were killed in the final assault, and the earlier bombardment had killed about 117.

The fighting for Labuan cost the Australians 34 killed and 93 wounded. A total of 389 Japanese dead were counted; only 11 were taken prisoner. As late as 24 June survivors of the garrison attacked the camp of the British civil administration but were driven off.

Weston and Beaufort

After the capture of Labuan the 24th Brigade shifted its operations to the eastern shore of the bay, in North Borneo. On 16 June the 2/32nd Battalion landed at Weston, about 23 kilometres from Beaufort – a junction on the only railway line into the interior. The lack of roads meant that the Australians advanced along the Klias and Padas rivers; smaller landings were made at Mempakul on 19 June and at Sabang on 23 June.

Beaufort, through which ran the main Japanese line of retreat, was held, according to Australian estimates, by 800 to 1,000 soldiers. On 27 June, in torrential rain, the 2/43rd Battalion attacked the town, covered by the 2/32nd and 2/28th Battalions. By nightfall the Australians had reached their objectives, but during the night they repulsed six Japanese counter-attacks, which turned into hand-to-hand fighting. On 28 June one of the companies, going to the aid of a cut-off platoon, fought its way through a series of Japanese positions and killed at least a hundred defenders. In this action Private Tom Starcevich of the 2/43rd Battalion single-handedly destroyed several machine-gun posts, for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. On 29 June the Japanese began to abandon Beaufort in small groups.

Civilians and guerrillas

For the inhabitants of the coastal towns liberation had a bitter taste. The air raids and bombardment before the landing had destroyed almost all the buildings on Labuan; within a few days of the landing about 3,000 homeless civilians were gathered in a camp within the beachhead. The dozen or so officers of the British civil affairs unit could not care for so many people on their own, so the 24th Brigade had to detach soldiers and transport to distribute food. It was much the same in the town of Brunei and in other settlements around the bay. The 9th Division fed thousands of starving people, set up hospitals and rebuilt ruined towns; local officials from the British era returned to the new administration. According to estimates cited in studies, about 16 per cent of the population of North Borneo died or were killed during the three years of occupation.

A separate war was being fought in the interior. The “Semut” parties with their Dayak bands harried the Japanese withdrawing from the coast into the interior, ambushing river posts and columns in the jungle while avoiding open battle with the stronger enemy. They operated largely independently of the regular troops, although there were joint actions: in July “Semut” guerrillas took Marudi on the Baram River, lost it to a Japanese counter-attack and recaptured it on 15 July together with the 2/17th Battalion. According to Australian estimates, the guerrillas killed more than 1,800 Japanese in North Borneo and Sarawak, although some studies give lower figures.

The toll

According to Australian figures, about 115 Australians were killed and more than 200 wounded in the whole North Borneo operation; most of these losses fell on Labuan and Beaufort. The 20th Brigade, which took Brunei, lost only about 40 men killed and wounded in the entire campaign. The Japanese lost about 1,200 killed in fighting with the regular troops; these figures, based on body counts, are approximate.

Significance

In Australian historiography the Brunei Bay landing is regarded as one of the most efficiently executed amphibious operations of that army. Its objectives were achieved quickly and at small cost, and yet the strategic point of the operation proved limited. The base for the British Pacific Fleet, for the sake of which the bay had chiefly been taken, never began operating – the war ended before it was built. The airfield on Labuan, repaired and enlarged, was used by the Australian air force to attack Japanese targets on Borneo. After the war the operations in North Borneo became one of the examples in the Australian debate over the “unnecessary campaigns” of the last year of the war, in which soldiers’ lives were paid for objectives with little bearing on the outcome of the war.

In July the Australians continued a cautious advance: on 12 July the 2/32nd Battalion took Papar, after which offensive operations petered out. Meanwhile, on 1 July, the 7th Division landed at Balikpapan in eastern Borneo, in the last stage of the campaign. Labuan became the centre of the Allied presence in the region: in September 1945 General Masao Baba signed the surrender of the Japanese 37th Army on the island, and from December 1945 Australian military courts tried Japanese war criminals there, including those responsible for the death marches of prisoners from Sandakan.

Restored after the fires of 1945, the Seria oilfields became the foundation of Brunei’s post-war wealth. The sultanate returned to British protection and gained full independence in 1984. Labuan and North Borneo became part of a new British crown colony in 1946, and in 1963 – together with Sarawak – joined Malaysia.