The Long Sunset

The Long Sunset
By
Mo Zuckerman

On February 13, 1942, in Singapore, at sunset, Captain Patrick Duncan
Lawrence Heenan, Indian Army, faced the setting sun and a firing squad.
Amid the chaos of gunfire and shelling, British officers had taken time
to court-martial one of their own, New Zealand-born Heenan of the
Indian Army, on a charge of treason. Heenan's treason was most serious.
He had left RAF supplies, regimental silver and stocks intact on bases
as British Indian troops retreated, enabling advancing Japanese air
units to take advantage of them. He had also given information about
Malaya's defenses to the Japanese for years. The trial's conclusion was
foregone. Capt. Heenan was to be executed by a firing squad. A stake
was driven in the wet gravel of the courtyard of the Regimental Mess.
The firing squad and the drummers marched in and took their positions.
His hands were bound behind the post, as he stared in slow diminishing
disbelieve at the squad of Gurkha soldiers facing him 60 feet away. His
foot scuffed the gravel, a tiny release from tension, as a blindfold
was wrapped around his eyes, blotting out the light for the last
time.

The massed drums rolled as a counterpoint to the clicking of the
twenty-one Lee-Enfield rifle bolts locked in place. An officer ordered,
"Take your aim&;#8230;ready, and fire!" The crash of rifle fire
caused no ripple other than to send the frightened birds skywards. A
single crack second later of the coup de grace from a pistol left
Heenan crumpled at the stake. Captain Heenan had a pretty Anglo-Indian
girlfriend in Calcutta - Miss. Anita d'Souza - a bar hostess. It was
suspected she worked for Japanese Kempai Tai agents.

But when this story began, the sun never set on the British Empire. The
Golden 1930s was indeed the golden age of Calcutta. The city knew no
shortages. The streets glowed in its electric lights. Trams and
motorbuses plied the streets and motorcars were beginning to outnumber
horse-drawn coaches. Theater, cinema and fine dining defined Calcutta's
social life. Great Eastern, Spence's and the newer Grand and
Continental were the finest hotels in the Asian continent. The shops of
New Market and stores like the Hall and Anderson, Army &; Navy and
Whiteway, Laidlaw &; Co. did brisk business, and Ferazzini,
Marchetti's Peletti's, Firpo and Maxim's served the finest in French
and Italian foods on their tables. Trains linked Calcutta to all over
the Indian Empire and ships of all nations called at its docks. Even
the nascent air travel industry could not ignore Calcutta. Imperial
Airways' service linked Calcutta to London, while Calcutta was an
important stops on Air France the Paris to Saigon, French Indo-China,
and KLM's Amsterdam to Batavia, Dutch East Indies, services. Chinese
chefs and craftsmen arrived in Calcutta at about this time to escape
Japanese invasion or communist persecution. Calcutta welcomed
everybody, to her own advantage.

The 1940s and WW II brought gloom to Calcutta as with the rest of the
world. As trade collapsed and all energies were channeled into the war
effort, Calcutta watched as the Japanese army overran nation after
helpless nation until it stood at the Eastern borders of India. For the
first time since Lord Clive and General Watson restored the Union Jack
on Fort William, in 1757, Calcutta was under direct threat of invasion.
Nowhere, were they more severe than in Calcutta, in spite of its great
tradition in secularism. Calcutta's contribution to the war effort is
tremendous though very often forgotten. In 1940s, Bengal chose to take
upon itself the greatest man-made famine ever, in order to feed the
besieged Allied forces in China. For months the starving masses of
humankind watched as supplies were flown over the Himalayas. The famine
resulting from the biggest airlift in history until then left millions
dead.

The arrival of the American 10th Air Force, OSS and 30,000 American
soldiers changed the nightlife of Calcutta. Overnight swank nightclubs
like Capri's, Neera's, Blue Fox, Shanghai, Zanzibar and Silver Lady
opened up on Chowringhee and Park Street attracting droves of
Anglo-Indian, Indo-Chinese, French and English bargirls. Afternoon Tea
Dances and newly imported Jazz filled the festive air. Chevrolet and
Dodge taxis plied the streets. But at the top of the social pecking
order were Firpo, Ferazzini and Nanking. These were art-deco-and-neon
air-conditioned pleasure palaces.

Venetian Bar, hidden on the top floor of Firpo Restaurant was the place
for action. It had a casino overseen by a Portuguese croupier from
Macao. Dinner-jacketed men and painted ladies in backless gowns graced
its tables. Ladies with plucked eyebrow, scarlet tipped fingers
exchanged their cigarette holders for puffs of gold-tipped Ritz
cigarettes and laughed at the way the sugar licked their sweet little
crimson lips. Russian refugees flocked there from Tehran, Shanghai and
Singapore looking for quicker routes to South America. There were
European princes destined to end their days as waiters and countesses
who propped up the walls at Ferazzini tea dances, hoping that someone
would scrape them off the silk lined floral wallpapers and take them
home. Minor maharajahs lost small fortunes at the tables. It only
accepted American dollars for bets.

Captain Paul Kelly, 27 was a Cornell man, born in Fond du Lac,
Wisconsin. Paul joined OSS in Algiers, shortly after Fernand Bonnier de
la Chapelle, a royalist, assassinated Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, the
chief architect of Vichy France's collaboration d'?tat with Nazi
Germany. He spoke French and Annamese, which he learned at University
of California, Berkeley. He was a regular Saturday night pleasure
seeker at the Venetian bar of Firpo Restaurant. He had company in the
form of Free French Gaullist Officers Capitaine Lucien Bonnard,
Capitaine Sebastian Thierry Drieu la Rochelle and Lieutenant Henri
Suhard. Madame Bonnard was the beautiful Eurasian wife - Princess
Monique Do Hun Thinh. Monique's uncle Nguyen Trong Phu was titular Vice
Governeur of Tonkin. Suhard's uncle was Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of
Paris. At the nearby table sat Pascal de Langlade, de Gaulle's envoy in
India and Paul Mathieu, former manager of Michelin rubber plantation in
Tonkin. Paul loved to do the rumba and mambo with Anita d'Souza - a
ravishing Anglo-Indian. Often they went to see movies in the Metro
Cinema. Anita formally worked for Mitsubishi Trading, which was seized
as Enemy Property. In reality Anita worked for Kempai Tai - Japanese
Intelligence. The Venetian Bar gave her the opportunity to sleep with
the enemy. She was the conduit to the Japanese. Love for Paul turned
Anita into a double agent - life became complicated like the footwork
in a tango.

On December 8, 1941 Singapore was bombed, and the Imperial Japanese
25th Army landed in Malaya. On December 11, 1941 they captured Kuala
Lumpur. In Malaya, under heavy rain, Japanese troops reached the Jitra
Line, which the British had been building for six months. Barely 500
Japanese troops attacked the 11th Indian division amid the downpour,
crushing all but the Leicesters and the 22nd Gurkhas. The 11th Indian
Division fled in total panic. The 15th Brigade loses a fourth of its
men, 28th Brigade more than 700 men. Over 3,000 British and Indian
troops surrender. The Japanese capture 50 field guns, 50 heavy machine
guns, 300 trucks and armored cars, and three months provisions,
ammunition, and fuel. The Japanese lose barely 27 killed and 83
wounded. Historians described the battle of Jitra as "a major disaster,
a disgrace to British arms."

The cause of this debacle was the poor training of the British and
Indian troops for jungle warfare, poor equipment, and British guns
could only fire 12 rounds a day. And weak British leadership - Lt. Gen.
Sir Lewis Heath, leading the 3rd Corps had a "withdrawal complex."
Australian Maj. Gen. Gordon Bennett was only concerned with providing
snappy quotes for reporters and planning his own escape. Lt. Gen. Sir
Arthur Percival, the army commander, was an unimaginative staff officer
who refused to build entrenchments on Singapore Island because it would
be "bad for morale." His previous command was the ceremonial duties at
the Tower of London Beefeaters. Sir Shenton Thomas, the senior
civilian, refused to break civilian rules of long tea breaks, lunches
and weekends off. When awakened by his English butler at 1 AM in the
morning to be informed on the Japanese landing, he said, "Well, I
suppose you will have to shove these little Japanese men
off&;#8230;"And the overall commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert
Brooke-Popham, was "near nervous collapse."
On December 10, 1941, HMS Prince of Wales, Britain's newest battleship,
and HMS Repulse, had to abort their mission to attack Japanese shipping
off Malaya. On their way back to Singapore, the British are spotted by
chance by a Japanese reconnaissance plane. The Japanese hurl 84
Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bombers at the two battleships, which had no
fighter cover. Admiral Sir Tom Phillips never believed airplanes could
sink a battleship. The Japanese quickly crippled Prince of Wales with
bombs, and slammed 10 torpedoes into Repulse, sinking both. In all, 840
officers and men drown, including Phillips, who made no move to flee.
He just asked for his best Royal Navy hat. The loss of the two
battleships, British Empire's only serious naval defense, made the
Japanese masters of the South China Sea and the Pacific.

It also left all of Malaya, Indonesia, New Guinea, the Solomons, and
Australia, open to invasion. The Indian 9th Division suffered heavy
losses at Johore. The commanding officer of the Indian Forces, Major
General A.E. Barstow, was killed. The British ordered a general retreat
south. In Malaya, Maj. Angus Rose of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders tries to set up a strongpoint on a golf course. The
'British-only' club's secretary said, "Nothing can be done until we've
called a meeting of the committee." In Singapore, frenzied preparations
were made for its defense. Newspapers were censored, movie theaters
were turned into food dumps and dancehalls were closed, curfew was
imposed and looters were shot at sight. In Singapore, the Governor, Sir
Shenton Thomas published the following order: "The day of minute papers
has gone. There must be no more passing of files from one department to
another, and from one officer in a department to another." Singapore's
Strait Times commented, "The announcement is about two and a half years
too late."

The same day, a British officer commanding a detachment of ambulances
drove up to a British Manager's villa on a rubber plantation near Kuala
Lumpur. The gramophone was playing Jack Hylton's Jazz tune "Painting
the Clouds with Sunshine." The manager popped out to ask with a stiff
upper lip how the officer had dared trespass on private property. The
manager threatened a formal complaint on this breach of regulations.
The officer replied, "We will be leaving very soon, as the Japanese
will be arriving. Perhaps they will listen to your complaints."

British discovered that their own pre-war propaganda about Japan being
a nation of incompetent near-sighted men with buckteeth was hopelessly
wrong. Japanese troops look like badly wrapped parcels in their brown,
ill-fitting uniforms. They could go for days on balls of rice and fish,
moved swiftly on bicycles.

Percival took command of all defending forces in Singapore. He had
135,000 men from 13 British battalions, six Australian, 17 Indian, and
two Malay. The Japanese were attacking with less than 40,000 men. The
remaining Royal Air Force planes were flown out that day, and the $ 300
million Royal Navy base that took 17 years to build was evacuated in
panic - half-finished meals littered the galley - and nearly all the
equipment, ranging from enormous dry-docks to cases of Johnny Walker
Black Label, were left behind intact. Meanwhile, the top Japanese
general in Malaya, Tomoyuki Yamashita, toasted his officers with warm
sake, and told his men it will take four days to reconnoiter the Johore
Strait between his men and Singapore, and warned that he suspected that
he would be assassinated by Japan's Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.

Within days Sir Arthur Percival abandoned Malaya. The last two
surviving pipers of the 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
marched across the Johore Causeway from Malaya to Singapore, playing
"Highland Laddie" leading the battalion. After the last Indian
straggler marched across, the causeway was dynamited, severing
Singapore's land link with Malaya. In Malaya, Yamashita summoned his
top officers at 11 a.m. and gave them their battle orders. Gen.
Percival announced that Singapore would be defended to the last man.
That evening, the Japanese invaded the island, crossed the Johore
Straits to seize Palau Ubin Island.

Japanese troops fanned out from their bridgehead on Singapore Island,
beneath skies blackened with smoke from burning oil tanks. At sunset,
Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita crossed the straits, walking over bound British
and Indian PoWs. More than a million civilians had no relief from
unrelenting Japanese air attacks, and food was short. Field Marshal
Wavell, who commanded the Allied forces in Southeast Asia, flew from
Calcutta into Singapore to find morale at bottom, the British and
Indian troops retreating in panic, and ordered, "No surrender, fight to
the bitter end." Singapore was in chaos, covered with smoke, full of
half a million refugees, with Australian and British military deserters
looting liquor shops, stealing cars from showrooms, and attacking food
shops. Many civilians and deserters boarded overloaded ships of all
sorts pulling out of Singapore in a desperate evacuation, which in turn
runs into Japanese aircraft and bombs.

February 13, 1942 - "Black Friday" in Singapore saw the Japanese seize
or damage most of the reservoirs, leaving the city with only seven days
supply. Indian, Australians and British forces were in full retreat,
with hordes of deserters causing chaos. Troops on duty had barely an
hour's sleep in days, and were exhausted. The famed 15-inch guns of
Singapore - pointing in the wrong direction, had been destroyed or
captured. Percival signaled Wavell in New Delhi, India, that he doesn't
think he can fight for more than two days. Wavell ordered Percival to
fight on. General Percival summoned his top officers to plan their next
move. Gordon Bennett urged Percival to surrender. Australian General
Bennett, however, did not plan to join his men in captivity. He had the
great escape to Australia all planned.

On February 15, 1942, the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year of
Horse, in the early morning, Malaya's commanding general, Gen. Sir
Arthur Percival, took communion at Fort Canning in a freshly starched
uniform with the red tabs of a General. After church, he received a
message from Field Marshal Wavell, in New Delhi. India, which stated,
"So long as you are in a position to inflict losses and damage to enemy
and your troops are physically capable of doing so, you must fight on.
Time gained and damage to enemy and your troops are of vital importance
at this juncture. When you are fully satisfied that this is no longer
possible, I give you discretion to cease resistance. Inform me of your
intentions. Whatever happens I thank you and all your troops for
gallant efforts of last few days. God Save the King."

Percival summoned his top officers, and told them he had the permission
to surrender. There is almost no water, food reserves are only
sufficient for a few days, and the only fuel left is in the tanks of
vehicles. "Silently and sadly we decided to surrender," wrote
Australian Major General Gordon Bennett, Australian Army, in his diary.
Percival sent two emissaries to the Japanese lines at Bukit Timah Road
with a Union Jack and white flag to ask for a ceasefire at 4 p.m.,
under heavy Japanese bombing and shelling. General Yamashita insisted,
"I will only talk to British General Sir Arthur Percival." Yamashita's
note was blunt. No terms, no discussion of terms, no ceasefire, until
Percival had "signed on the dotted line." Exhausted, drenched with
sweat, Percival walked down Bukit Timah Road to the Ford Motor Factory
Board of Directors room to meet his conqueror. General Percival in long
knee length shorts, accompanied by Colonel Wild carrying a huge white
flag and Brigadier T. K. Newbigging carried a large British Union Jack,
was met by the Knights of Bushido.

There, Percival faced a shaven-head bully Yamashita, who demanded an
immediate British surrender. Percival pleaded for time. "All I want
from you is an answer," shouted Yamashita. "Yes or no?" Percival had no
choice. He signed at 6:10 p.m., then standing straight as a ramrod on
his heel. At 8:30 p.m., the shelling stopped. Thus the long sunset
ended on the British Empire's impregnable fortress - Singapore.
Percival ordered his officers to stay with their men and go into
captivity. Gordon Bennett ordered the same to his Australians. Then
Bennett fled to the docks, and escaped south to Sumatra. For this act,
Bennett was condemned by Australian Army, and never again held field
command. The guns of Singapore fell silent.

British casualties were 8,708, Japanese 9,824. However, more than
130,000 British troops, 100,000 Indian, 16,000 British and 14,000
Australian, were taken prisoner. More than half eventually died as
PoWs. In occupied Singapore, British and Australian PoWs were forced to
sweep the streets, while Japanese newsreel cameras rolled, showing
Western weakness. Singapore is re-named "Shonan," meaning "Bright
South," and Japanese troops start removing British Imperial statues
signs, and memorials. Winston Churchill was in a gloomy mood, wrote to
King George VI: "Burma, Ceylon, Calcutta and Madras in India, and part
of Australia, may fall into enemy hands."

On February 15, 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese army. A day later
Imperial Japanese Army held a triumphal victory parade at the captured
British Army base. Another day later, in an impressive ceremony held at
Farrar Park in the heart of the town, Indian troops were handed over to
the Japanese as prisoners-of-war by their commanding officer, Colonel
Hunt. Major Fujiwara took them over on behalf of the victorious
Japanese, and then announced that he was handing them over to Captain
Mohan Singh, deserter, Indian Army. The Japanese promoted Mohan Singh
to the rank of a General and appointed him the Supreme Commander of
Indian National Army, INA. Their leader Subhas Chandra Bose was
dispatched to Singapore by Hitler on a German submarine.

March 7, 1942 - another victory parade for the Imperial Japanese Army
as it strutted into Rangoon, Burma. The Japanese forces have advanced
faster than anyone has anticipated. The British and the Indian Armies
conducted the longest retreat after the fall of Rangoon, Burma,
abandoning all their equipment, under the leadership of British General
Alexander, all the way back to India. Japan swept over South East Asia
like a tidal wave. The Japanese were soon at the gates of India. This
was the most ignominious defeat in the history of British arms.

In India August 1942 saw the launch of the Quit India Movement by
Mahatma Gandhi at a meeting in Bombay. Calcutta became the headquarters
of the Southeast Asia Command of the allies and the allied troops
landed in the city. The American forces arrived in India to open the
supply route to China. Calcutta became the melting pot - harassed
British officials and the defeated British Armies from their lost
empire in Southeast Asia. Gaullist Free French colons evicted from
Indo-China, American soldiers, Chinese warlords, Russian diplomatic
commissars and displaced Europeans.

On December 20, 1942, the Japanese bombed Calcutta. The Kidderpore
docks went up in flames; two cargo ships capsized and one ship sank.
Panic-stricken British women and children were evacuated from Calcutta
to hill stations. The Indians fled the city. Governor R. G. Casey
imposed dusk to dawn curfew, blackout and orders shoot to kill looters
and deserters. The military band stopped playing at the Eden
Gardens.

In late 1942, the Joint Chiefs of Staff authorized OSS to run American
commando units behind enemy lines. These were small formations of
specially trained US Army soldiers - many recruited from ethnic
communities in America - who fought in uniform and had no obvious
connection to OSS, so they would be less likely to be shot as spies if
captured.

OSS Detachment 101 was controlled from Calcutta, India, by the office
of Commodore Milton E. Miles, the commander of an unorthodox US Navy
liaison unit. In Burma, OSS Detachment 101 operated under the
leadership of "the most dangerous colonel," Carl Eifler. With barely
120 Americans at any one time, the unit under the command of Paul
eventually recruited almost 11,000 native Kachins to fight the Japanese
occupiers in Burma. Detachment 101 received the Presidential
Distinguished Unit Citation for its service in the 1945 offensive that
liberated Rangoon.

It was a warm evening, prelude to a monsoon squall over Calcutta. The
skies were leaden, but the ambiance was exciting in the Venetian Bar
and nightclub. Paul loved to dance with Anita. Anita loved to rumba and
do the mambo, but best of all she loved the tango. He came to his
elements in an Argentine Tango, "La Cumparsita". Paul went to great
lengths to make sure Anita got the meaning of las reglas del juego -
the rules concerning the play of legs.

Paul danced in milonguero style - brutally male interpretation of the
Tango, and Anita was his imaginary milonguita - the girl dazzled by
city lights - a girl led astray. "Woman led astray - because in a Tango
the woman are assigned a passive role." Anita replied with a smile,
"Yes, your plaything for the moment!" Anita did the ochos (figure 8)
and the turns. Paul turned on fully his Tango macho with sacadas,
ganchos, voleos, giros (turns) and enrosques for the men.

Tango is a very complicated dance because it tries to have two
embracing bodies - Anita and Paul, together accomplish figures, pauses,
movements, "cortes y quebradas" - pauses and breaks. But tango is tango
precisely because it includes two dancers - Anita and Paul. Despite
their tight embrace, Anita and Paul spontaneously execute very
different steps, which nevertheless go together, to make up a single
dance. To Anita Tango Argentino accomplished the miracle of inserting
the figure of the enlace - the link - between herself and Paul. This is
the secret of its success. Anita knew the Imperial Japanese Navy had
met with defeats in its battles with the Americans in the western
Pacific. Tokyo was being firebombed each day - but she wanted to know
more about the American plans in Burma, Thailand and Indo-China. She
went with Paul to the Great Eastern Hotel for a tropical night love
tryst. But this evening she wanted to forget about Kempai Tai and her
Japanese paymasters - she was already in the pay of Capitaine Lucien
Bonnard, Free French military intelligence chief in India. But that did
not deter her from sleeping with the enemy.

General de Gaulle had declared in Brazzaville, French Equatorial
Africa, "French Indo-China would not be granted independence, not even
in the most distant future." President Roosevelt, on the other hand
told Cordell Hull, "We should not hand over Indo-China to the French to
be milked as had been the case for decades." Therefore, the Gaullist
Free French in Calcutta and the Vichy French in Saigon under Admiral
Decoux viewed suspiciously the activities of the Americans in French
Indo-China. But the Japanese occupiers of Indo-China acted first - they
arrested Admiral Decoux in Saigon, seizing banks, radio stations, and
administrative buildings and interned all French troops.
On July 16, 1945 against the wishes of America's French and Chinese
allies, OSS "Mission Gazelle" had aided the Communist insurgent leader
Ho Chi Minh in his fight against the Japanese in northern Indo-China.
OSS Officer Kelly and a French officer, Capitaine Sebastian Thierry
Drieu la Rochelle parachuted into Laos. Disregarding the warning of
Indo-Chinese Communist forces Kelly and the French officer la Rochelle
crossed the Mekong River. As soon as they reached the other side of the
river they were met by the OSS American officers and Communist
Indo-Chinese troops, who announced," The Frenchman is under arrest. He
must come with us. France has declared war against us in Saigon." Capt.
la Rochelle tried to escape to their boat. The Indo-Chinese shot him in
the back. He fell to the ground. Paul was angry, and shouted at the
embarrassed OSS Americans officers," I hope you are proud of your
Indo-Chinese friends." Pointing to la Rochelle's dead body on the
ground he cried, "That is the direct result of your dirty work."

On August 6, 1945 "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima. People saw
another sun in the sky when it exploded On August 9,"Fat Man" was
dropped on Nagasaki. Over 210,000 people were victims. The world
achieved brilliance without wisdom, power with conscience. On September
2, 1945 the Imperial Japan surrendered to the American Mikado, General
McArthur on USS Missouri moored in Tokyo bay.

On September 13, 1945, British General Douglas Gracey accompanied by
Indian Gurkha troops and Free French paratroopers flew into Saigon's
Than Son Nhut airport. General Gracey organized a spectacular victory
parade in Saigon with the Gurkha Military Band playing 'Aiyo Gurkhali'.
He released the interned Vichy French troops. On September 23, the
French pillaged the arsenal. They went on a rampage of massacre, rape
and arson against the Indo-Chinese civilian population in Saigon. On
September 25, the Indian Gurkha's brought the undisciplined French
forces under control. But violence erupted again, and the French forces
continued their butchery. On the morning of September 27, 1945 Paul had
a flight to Calcutta. He looked forward to the delights Anita's company
at the Firpo Restaurant and the Venetian Bar. The Communist guerrillas
in Saigon ambushed Lt. Colonel Paul Kelly in his Jeep, apparently in a
case of mistaken identity. He tragically became one of the first
Americans to be killed in Indo-China. Radio Hanoi said it was the work
of the French intelligence agents and agent provocateurs. Ho Chi Minh
sent personal condolences to OSS. Paul's body was never
recovered.

It was the end of a long sunset on the European Empires in Asia.