Malaysia. The Japanese invaded Malaysia in December 1941, on the way to Singapore, which they also captured. They remained in control of Malaysia when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in August 1945.
Guerillas. Most of these were Chinese communists. They seemed to care more about arguing esoteric politics than …fighting Japanese. They rarely had enough personnel or weapons – or scarcely any training in how to actually fight – to take on the Japanese. These units were as likely to be running from one camp to the next to get away from Jap armies than they were actually attacking or ambushing Japanese. This is one front where the guerillas were little more than a nuisance. The native Malays, the aboriginine Sakais, and local Sikhs and other ethnic groups were at best occasionally hostile to the Japanese, mostly neutral, and often (especially the Sikhs) pro-Japanese. The Chinese hated the Japanese the most and had the most intense antipathy, sufficient to take up arms against them – a motivation lacking in most other ethnic groups, including the Malays.
Possibly the most ambitious claim which could be made about the Chinese guerillas in Malaysia during WWII is that, to the extent they represented an armed force in opposition to Japanese occupation, the Japanese had to station regular forces in Malaysia to counter guerilla activity, which could otherwise have been fighting to the death on Iwo Jima or Okinawa. This seems to be most ambitious strategic goal or result of most guerilla armies. Historically, the French seem to be the only country whose conventional forces ever get beaten by guerillas; most recently in 1954, even in Haiti in the early 1800s. We defeated the English with conventional forces assisted by the French; we left Vietnam in 1973, 4 years after the Viet Cong were wiped out in the Tet Offensive.
Spencer’s original plan when he was in Malaysia during the Japanese invasion was to stay behind and organize guerilla resistance to the Japanese. He would ideally coordinate units and train them, and act as a liaison with the British outside Malaysia – ideally in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). As a practical matter he spent most of his time traveling through the jungle from various camps or laid up incapacitated with malaria, tick-typhus, or other jungle diseases.
Malaria. More than the Japanese, Chapman’s biggest foe as a practical matter was malaria. Since food was always a problem, vitamin deficiencies were also an issue. He diligently studied the jungle, its plants, animals, and idiosyncrasies, and even then was still prey to malaria and was frequently too sick to do much of anything.
Ultimately he decided that “the jungle is neutral”, neither inherently hostile to humans nor a natural paradise to be absent-mindedly enjoyed without fear or danger. Chapman felt that overstating the dangers or the beauties of the jungle, in either direction, was fatal – in the former case, a self-fulfilling prophecy. His attitude probably saved his life.
Japanese. Having invaded and occupied Malaysia, the Japanese made sporadic efforts to wipe out the guerillas, with mixed success. The British only returned after the Japanese surrender and accepted the surrender of local forces which had been bypassed by the Allies’ island-hopping. Japanese anti-insurgency efforts seemed to be “send in a huge force to wipe out literally everyone you find”, not particularly selective, beheading everyone and not concerned about winning “hearts and minds”.
Post-War Emergency. As noted earlier, I had been referred to this by the Devil’s Guard book. I had been aware of the 1948-60 war, but had been unaware that this book only dealt with WWII. In fact, Chapman’s book ends abruptly in 1945, and since the guerilla war began in 1948 and lasted until 1960 – long beyond the Vietnamese war which ended in 1954 – the SS men in northern Vietnam could not have benefited from any accounts of the success of the Malaysian counterinsurgency even if they wanted to.
The most important difference was that the Viet Minh were Vietnamese, the same ethnic group as the North Vietnamese (and South Vietnamese). The Malayans insurgents were Chinese, and Chapman notes that no one seemed to have any problem distinguishing Chinese from Malays. Because of Japanese atrocities in China from 1937 onwards, the Chinese had a definite beef against the Japanese, quite apart from any Communist ideology, whereas the Malays didn’t seem to care enough to fight against the Japanese. The Japanese mostly left the Malays alone except for counter-insurgency strikes, meaning whatever atrocities Japanese committed against Malays was due to activities of the Chinese guerillas, hardly a situation which would prompt any Malays to identify with, much less support, the guerillas.
In fact, the British had ample help from the Malays in their fight against the guerillas, who seemed to be 99% Chinese. So these Chinese guerillas were ignoring the advice of their own leader, Mao, about “fish swimming in the ocean”, just as Lenin ignored Marx’s opinion that Russia was backwards, quasi-feudal, far from ripe for proletarian revolution; the prime candidates were the US and Western Europe, those countries most advanced in capitalism. About the only time Marxists seem to follow their own ideology was in Spain, where they supported the bourgeois capitalist democracy against Franco, and discouraged the anarchists. Even there, many of the moderate democrats were wary that the PSUC (main Communist Party, which had Stalin’s support) was trying to turn Spain into a Soviet satellite. Time and time again – Russia, Spain, Malaysia, China, Cuba, Vietnam – the Reds show their prime concern is power for its own sake and zero interest or concern for the workers and peasants.
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