WWII On This Day: March 8

Dutch representatives at the unconditional surrender to Japanese forces at Kalijati, Java, 8 March 1942. Unknown photographer · Public domain in Indonesia and the United States Source

March 8, 1942 Occupation, Collaboration and Resistance in World War II

The surrender on Java opens Japanese military occupation

Dutch leaders met Lieutenant General Hitoshi Imamura at Kalijati on 8 March 1942 as organised resistance on Java collapsed. Lieutenant General Hein ter Poorten ordered the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army on Java to cease fighting, although isolated Allied units surrendered later. Japanese military rule replaced Dutch colonial administration on the island. Java came under the Sixteenth Army, Sumatra under the Twenty-Fifth Army, while much of the remaining archipelago fell under naval administration. The division reflected Japanese command requirements rather than the boundaries of the former colonial state. The new…

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A destitute mother and child on a Calcutta pavement during the Bengal famine of 1943-44. — Kalyani Bhattacharyee and Manoj Sarbadhikar / Bengal Speaks, Servants of Bengal Society · Public domain

March 8, 1942 World War II Famines

Burma falls, and an important rice supply disappears

Japan's capture of Rangoon cut Bengal off from Burmese rice imports that had helped balance regional shortages. The loss was a genuine external shock to a wartime food system already under pressure, but it did not by itself make famine inevitable. What followed was a sequence of harvest damage, inflation, market failure and policy responses that determined who could still obtain rice and at what price. Separating that initial shock from the later failures is essential to understanding why historians disagree about Bengal without disagreeing that the response failed catastrophically.

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Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival and the British surrender party walking to the Ford Motor Factory in Singapore on 15 February 1942. — British official photographer / Imperial War Museums HU 2781 · UK Government public domain · Source

March 8, 1942 · 12:00 The Fall of the Southern Empires

Rangoon Falls

Allied forces evacuated Rangoon and Japanese troops entered the city on 8 March. The loss removed Burma’s principal port and the maritime entry point for supplies that had moved north toward Lashio and then along the Burma Road to China. The campaign now turned inland. British and Indian formations withdrew north and west while Chinese forces operated farther east, and the question became whether a connected front could still protect central Burma and the route to Lashio. Without Rangoon, every supply problem worsened and every mile of retreat lengthened the…

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Searchlights and anti-aircraft tracer over Cologne during Operation Millennium, 30–31 May 1942. — Royal Air Force official photographer · Imperial War Museums C 2615 · Public domain

March 8, 1942 · 21:00 Area Bombing Begins

Gee reaches the Ruhr but cannot identify Essen

A force of 211 aircraft attacked Essen, including eighty-two equipped with Gee. The first wave reached the target region on schedule and dropped flares from radio fixes, exactly the kind of task for which the new system had been expected to transform the offensive. The final identification still failed. Flares burned out, industrial haze obscured the ground and scattered fires drew later crews away from the intended aiming point. Bombs fell across Hamborn, Duisburg, Oberhausen and the southern outskirts of Essen. Krupp's works were virtually untouched, and none of the…

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Horsa gliders on the ground near Hamminkeln after the airborne landing east of the Rhine, March 1945. — Horsa gliders near Hamminkeln, 25 March 1945 · Imperial War Museums BU 2287 · IWM Non-Commercial Licence · Source

March 8, 1945 The Rhine Crossings

Four officers shot

Hitler ordered a flying court martial. Four officers connected with the failure to destroy the bridge were tried and shot; a fifth had been captured by the Americans and so survived. Rundstedt was relieved of command in the west two days later. The system that produced the failure was the same one that produced the executions: no local officer could destroy a bridge without authority, and obtaining authority took longer than the Americans took to arrive.

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