On the first day of 1941 a bespectacled Japanese staff Colonel named Tsuji Masanobu reported to a modest building in Taipei. His job was to head a military small research department. The task of this unit of 30 officers, enlisted men and civilian workers was to plan a possible southward attack by the Japanese Army to conquer South Asia and the East Indies. As the year passed Colonel Tsuji himself began planning an attack on the British stronghold of Singapore.
The prospect was daunting. Singapore is an island off the southern coast of Malaya. The seaward side was heavily fortified, and could hardly be taken by direct attack. The landward side was vulnerable, but to get there an army would have to traverse the five hundred mile length of the Malay peninsula. The peninsula is accessible from both sides at its narrowest point, the Isthmus of Kra, where Malaya and Thailand meet. But further south the peninsula widens out, and the center is rugged jungle. The route south lies along the west coast. The Japanese would have to advance those hundreds of miles on the Indian Ocean side, where their naval strength could not help them. They would have to cross rivers and fortified positions. Then at the end of this odyssey, they would attack the Island of Singapore, considered by the British to be the keystone of their defenses in the far east.
Tsuji himself was a controversial figure, and would become more so. He had been heavily involved in the disastrous war with Russia in Nomonhon, on the borders of Mongolia and Manchuria. By his own account he was thrown out of China because of his involvement in a pan-Asian society. At the end of World War II he vanished to avoid the war crimes tribunal, to surface several years later as an author and member of the post-war Japanese legislature. A book has been written branding him as a war criminal ("The Criminal They Called a God", by Ian Ward). Tsuji wrote a colorful and interesting account of the Malaya campaign, which was translated into English as "Japan's Greatest Victory, England's Greatest Defeat", casting himself in a leading role. This book is a great source on the campaign from the Japanese side.. This article will assume that Tsuji's book is fairly accurate, keeping in mind that there are some things he chose to leave out.
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