Talk:Malayan campaign

Untitled

Needs to be more neutral. Also needs to explain why the British couldn't deal with the Japanese onslaught despite numerical superiority - ie. bicycle infantry, etc. For the tone I've put up a "cleanup" page. Will plan to modify it heavily. -- Natalinasmpf 23:03, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

A more precise template for this objection would be {{POV}}, not cleanup. Since I've read bafflement (Wikipedia Talk:Cleanup#Why not fix it?) at how this objection could be accommodated, toning down words like "desperately", "devastating", "dangerously", "ill fated" and "unfortunately" would help, as all these words imply that the invasion was a very bad thing. But I'm not convinced that Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is really violated by saying that a very bad thing was a very bad thing. Tojo would disagree, but I think most Japanese today would write the article about the same way it's written now. So I think this article is covered by Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Undue weight, and I think making it "more neutral" would interfere with the need "to explain why the British couldn't deal with the Japanese onslaught". Art LaPella 03:39, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Heenan

The overemphasis of the affair of Heeman, who is a scapegoat for the debacle, reinforces the suggestion that this article lacks neutrality. As the article notes, the British were are at severe disadvantage in tanks and aircraft and were outflanked by sea so what relevance does the Heenan affair have to the outcome of the campaign other than providing a scapegoat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.3.11.157 (talk) 05:03, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Heenan should be completely dealt with under 5th columns and spies and not the final paragraph of the article. I think a line saying he was executed in Singapore in February 1942 would surfice. He does remain one of the list contributing factors to the loss. How major or minor that role was is undetermined. NealeFamily (talk) 09:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

British stragglers

Were there any British troops who got left in Malaya when most of the British troops retreated to Singapore, were not captured by the Japanese, and carried on fighting in the Malayan jungles (like some American troops in the Philippines)? There's no mention of them in this article. 222.165.42.62 (talk) 12:58, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

There's "... Freddie Spencer Chapman, who was isolated behind Japanese lines by the loss of Singapore and maintained a precarious existence among Malayan communists until regaining contact with British headquarters in 1943." See http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/S/p/Special_Operations_Executive.htm. Do not simply cite this source; it is tertiary and self-published and thus not a reliable source by WP standards. You need to hunt down appropriate secondary sources. --Yaush (talk) 15:10, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Casualties do not add up.

If the allies had 140,000 men, and 60,000 were casualties (including 40,000 captured), then what happened to the other 80,000? Very few escaped. Tuntable (talk) 07:13, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I suspect the remaining 80,000 were captured/killed in the Battle of Singapore. NealeFamily (talk) 22:48, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thai forces in the Malaya Campaign

An editor has added that Thai forces were involved in the Japanese invasion of Malaya. While I know they occupied several northern Malay states with the agreement of the Japanese later in the war, I can not find anything to support them being directly involved in the invasion and conquest of Malaya. Does anyone have any information to support the edit? NealeFamily (talk) 20:20, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Malayan Campaign

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Malayan Campaign's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Klemen":

• From Battle of Ambon: L, Klemen (1999–2000). "The Carnage at Laha, February 1942". Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
• From Japanese invasion of Malaya: L, Klemen (1999–2000). "Seventy minutes before Pearl Harbor - The landing at Kota Bharu, Malaya, on December 7, 1941". Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: date format (link)
• From Battle of Singapore: L, Klemen (1999–2000). "Seventy minutes before Pearl Harbor – The landing at Kota Bharu, Malaya, on December 7th 1941". Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941–1942. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: date format (link)
• From Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands: L, Klemen (1999–2000). "The capture of Andaman Islands, March 1942". Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
• From Battle of Guam (1941): L, Klemen (1999–2000). "Chronology of the Dutch East Indies, December 1941". Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 03:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Corrected - NealeFamily (talk) 21:42, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Grammar Error

In the line:

To counteract this plans for a pre-emptive invasion of southern Thailand, named Operation Matador, had been drawn up.

Adding a comma after "this" fixes it, but having "this" as the descriptor ruins the sentence. The sentence needs to be rewritten.

Done NealeFamily (talk) 04:33, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions

G'day, NealeFamily, it's good to see a bit of work being done on this important article. Not sure if you are planning on working on the article further, but I have a couple of suggestions if you are: AustralianRupert (talk) 01:37, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

• currently neither Yamashita or Percival are properly introduced in the article, so it would be good to add them probably to the Background section.
• images: the map size and the position of the gallery are creating a large amount of whitespace. I suggest moving the images of the commanders to an appropriate section, near to where they are introduced; the bicycle could probably be replaced as it seems a pretty low value addition given the reflection off the glass. I also suggest using the "thumb" (with a setting of around 350px or so) parameter for the map so that the text wraps around it;
• the links in the "Battles of the campaign" section should just be worked into the narrative of the campaign, providing a suitable description (using Wikipedia:Summary style) in the appropriate place
• some of the information in the Allied aircraft subsection possibly belongs in the description of the "campaign" subsection (e.g. the information about the Blenheim pilot)
• the Background subsection of the Air war section could probably just be worked into the Japanese and Allied aircraft subsections and if necessary, you might consider creating a separate article on the air war itself, so that you can use summary style here, and cover the topic in more detail there
• Anyway, that is it from me at this stage. If you are keen for a broader opinion, it might pay to put the article through peer review at some stage. Thanks for your efforts. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:37, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks AustralianRupert - good suggestions. Yes I am still working on the article, in particular the air campaign at the moment. I'll look at the other items in due course, if no one else has addressed them. NealeFamily (talk) 04:02, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Number count

There is a suggestion on the Taiwanese POW website that the number of troops cited in various sources is inaccurate. See: http://www.powtaiwan.org/archives_detail.php?THE-TRUTH-ABOUT-THE-NUMBERS-IN-SINGAPORE-3 Their page gives the following:

Japanese

• 25th Army under General Yamashita and Count Terrauchi - 83,000 men
• 5th Division commanded by Lt General Takuro - more than 20,000 men
• 18th Infantry Division led by Lt General Mutaguchi had 28,000 men
• the Imperial Guards under General Nishimura had 38,000 men plus a large number of Korean soldiers.
• one armoured division with more than 200 tanks
• two regiments of artillery
• 500 aircraft with 80 in reserve
• ten destroyers
• two aircraft carriers
• five submarines plus other support vessels.

Japanese solders = 150,000 men plus the Korean conscripts. Total more than 200,000 trained soldiers.

Commonwealth

• 19,000 British
• 15,000 Australian
• 37,000 Indian Army - including the 11th Division which was largely made up of British soldiers trained in India
• 17,000 Malay Volunteers.

Battle for Malaya = 88,000 (17,500 casualties - killed, missing or wounded)

Battle for Singapore = Balance from Malaya plus 20,000 from 18th Australian Division from 29 January 1942

Looking at the above data I think the Japanese units are double counted as the 5th, 18th and Imperial Guards were assigned to the 25th Army. The 15th Army is not counted and was held in reserve in case the 25th struck difficulties. This still gives the Japanese a numerically superior force. Does anyone have a better count. NealeFamily (talk) 02:13, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

The casualties on the info box also make no sense. How can 140,000 men have 145,000 casualties? This whole article is very odd, honestly and seems extremely biased against the British. 86.7.140.64 (talk) 23:40, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

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Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Burma Campaign which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:59, 26 June 2019 (UTC)