Dark Days: December 1941 to April 1942

During four bleak months following the outrage of Pearl Harbor, more hard blows hammered American morale. In rapid succession that December, Germany and Italy declared war on the US. Japan invaded Hong Kong and Malaya, British colonies, and Guam and the Philippines, American territories. Off the Malay coast, Japanese aircraft sank Royal Navy ships Prince of Wales and Repulse. On the 23rd, Wake Island fell after heroic resistance by its US Marine Corps garrison. On Christmas Day, Britain surrendered Hong Kong.

The new year of 1942 brought more calamities. In January, the Japanese army entered Manila, capital of the Philippines. American and Filipino troops withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula. After overrunning Malaya, Japan laid siege to Singapore, Britain's strategic SE Asian "Fortress," and smashed into the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) and Burma. On the 25th, Japanese forces occupied the Solomon Islands, astride vital sea-lanes from Australia to the US.

In a "Happy Time" for German submariners from January to March, U-boats along the unprepared American Atlantic and Gulf coasts sank 216 ships, mostly tankers. Citizens saw them burn. On the frozen Eastern Front, the Nazi and Soviet war machines remained stalled in a terrible winter stalemate. Allied convoys suffered grievous losses in the Battle of the Atlantic, struggling to keep Russia supplied with food and war materiel. Also in January, the German Afrika Korps and its Italian allies mounted a new offensive that drove the British out of Libya back into Egypt.

In February the worst catastrophe yet befell allied forces in Asia when 70,000 British Commonwealth troops surrendered Singapore. Then a combined US, Netherlands, UK and Australian fleet was defeated in the Java Sea, leading in March to the capture of Java. At the end of March, the Japanese landed on New Guinea, threatening Australia.

April brought the heaviest burdens. On the 9th, Japanese soldiers captured Bataan. Only 54,000 of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners survived the brutal 65-mile "Death-March" into cruel captivity. The tiny Philippine island stronghold of Corregidor alone held out for almost another month. Also that day, British aircraft carrier Hermes and an Australian destroyer were sunk by Japanese bombers off Trincomalee, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The Indian Ocean now belonged to Japan.

With the fall of Corregidor looming, the Hawaiian Islands would soon stand as the only American outpost in the vast Pacific Ocean. Some feared that Japan might even attack the mainland US. Week after week, all war news was grim.