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Articles
John Smithback Discovers Churchill’s Sins in Asia
- By WILLIAM JOHN SHEPHERD
- | November 2, 2022
- Category: Books
John Bell Smithback. Asia Betrayed: How Churchill Sacrificed the Far East to Save England (Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2017, 276 pages), paperback $19.99, Kindle $6.99.
A prolific newspaper columnist, teacher, and poet, Mr. Smithback has lived much of his life in Hong Kong, Singapore, Portugal and France. His aim in Asia Betrayed is to remind us of the widespread suffering and atrocities the Japanese Empire inflicted on Asia during the Second World War. The victims were native Asians and European soldiers forced into inhuman conditions for slave labor.
The tragedy was compounded, Smithback argues, by Winston Churchill. The Prime Minister, he writes, played a deadly covert game: luring Japan into aggression. Stonily, Churchill ignored the human cost. Japan’s attacks would bring the neutral United States into the war—the decisive strategic tipping point.
This is not a new argument. Traces of it surfaced years ago in the canard that Churchill (and/or Roosevelt) knew in advance about Pearl Harbor. Smithback’s focus is more novel. He alleges that Churchill purposely invited Japan to strike. How? By stationing second-rate, inexperienced military and civilian leaders in British-run Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaya. Churchill also made sure they were inadequately supplied and ill-equipped. It is remarkable how he found time for this in the midst of a battle for survival.
Tempting Japan
The Smithback case against Churchill comprises part one of Asia Betrayed. Though he references established historical sources, only infrequently do they adequately support his contentions. Smithback often bases his arguments on hearsay from former POWs and natives of Hong Kong and Singapore, including his own father-in-law (245). Unfortunately, except for a limited bibliography, there are not nearly enough endnotes. Nor are there an index, glossary, appendices, photos, illustrations or maps.
Here are two examples of Churchill’s perfidy. In 1941, he personally orders top-grade Hurricane fighter planes earmarked for Singapore to be diverted to the Middle East. In 1940, he allegedly arranges for the capture of the unarmed merchant ship SS Automedon. Planted on board is secret information about Britain’s poor defenses in the Far East. Both actions supposedly demonstrate Churchill’s efforts to spur Japanese aggression.
Established historiography has long explained early Japanese successes against western powers. Primarily the west had an essential fixation on the threat from Nazi Germany. Another factor was the racist underestimation of an Asian power’s war-making abilities. There was the ridiculous notion that Japanese pilots were so myopic as to be unable to aim and drop bombs accurately.
Britain was indeed overstretched in the Far East, with inexperienced troops and second-rate weaponry. That was because all the best soldiers and materials were sorely needed in the war against Germany and Italy. And they were spread throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Churchill was very well aware of this. Yet he sent the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse to Singapore hoping to cow the Japanese. They would act, he said, as “a vague menace.” It is hard to consider such actions—however doomed—as efforts to signal British weakness.
Japan’s aggression
In part two, Smithback details the suffering of western prisoners of war and Asian civilians. In part three, he establishes the responsibility of Japanese military leaders, including the Emperor, for the ensuing war crimes. The documentation, as their fleeting empire is battled into submission, is presented well. But it has no connection to Churchill as the Machiavellian architect of all this suffering that somehow saved Britain.
Before Japan’s attacks, Churchill rejoiced over America’s immense Lend-Lease aid, secured by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A far more credible argument, if only circumstantially, is that Roosevelt not Churchill entangled America in the war. Part three is quite good in some areas, in particular showing the inner working of Japan’s leadership. Smithback capably catalogues the reasons Japan finally surrendered. The second atomic bomb (on Nagasaki) and Russia’s invasion of Manchuria were decisive. They saved thousands of American and British soldiers from certain death in a forced invasion of Japan. But none of this makes a damning case against Churchill.
Skillful exaggerations
Smithback’s journalistic skills are on display with clever phrasing. On Singapore in 1941 he writes, “Never before had so few been asked to defend so much” (56). Well over the top is his assertion that Churchill worked “to reclaim by hook, crook or deceit every last centimeter of British colonial soil taken away by the Japanese” (213). The only valid charge is that Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1924-29 Baldwin government, cut millions of pounds from defenses at Singapore. This certainly proved to be a mistake nearly two decades later.
All other criticisms stray wide of the mark. The Scottish Lord Sempill had longstanding ties to the Japanese military. Undoubtably he provided them with key military advice over the years. But he was forced into retirement after the Japanese attack. Not prosecuting him proves nothing, except that the Churchill government was avoiding the distraction and embarrassment of attacking the reputation of a former military hero.
Unskillful editing
Mr. Smithback has not benefitted from his editors. A problem with this book is simply poor editing and proofreading. We are told that Roosevelt died in 1944 (166), that Britain not Australia administered “British New Guinea” (252). The casualties list (242-43) is very confusing. It shows 375,000 in Indonesia but 4,000,000 in the Dutch East Indies—which are the same place. Among prisoners of war who died under Japanese control, Smithback lists 8,500 Dutch and 25,000 from the Netherlands!
Finally, in perhaps the most inaccurate analogy of all time, Smithback compares the Japanese capture of Singapore’s water supply to “Attila the Ostragoth’s” sacking of Rome by seizing its aqueduct in A.D. 546 (80). Obviously he meant Alaric the Visigoth in A.D. 410. The other Attila (406-453) invaded Italy but never took Rome. And who does not apply the epitaph “the Hun” to Attila?
That one made me chuckle. It reminded me of an old Saturday Night Live skit about the “stoner” who asks his pal if he remembers when Ozzy Osbourn crashed the Crazy Train into that school house? His friend responds by saying that was Randy Rhodes (Ozzy’s guitarist). Also, it was an airplane, and it hit a bus.
The author
William John Shepherd, an archivist and historian, is a longtime contributor to The Churchill Project.