As Madras trembled - 1942

The Japanese Indian ocean raid and the Madras exodus..

Everybody talked about the Great War as the summer months seared the South. Even though there was an imminent fear of a Japanese invasion in India, the Mahatma and the Congress were quite upset with the British dragging India into what they essentially thought was a white man’s war and were focused on finding the right opportunity to push through with the Indian claims. The British government sent Sir Stafford Cripps on 22 March 1942, to talk terms with the Indian political parties and secure their support in Britain's war efforts. His weak offer was rebuffed with Gandhiji terming it ‘a postdated cheque on a crashing bank’.

Japan entered the war with the attack on the American Pearl Harbor naval base at Hawaii, in Dec 1941. It was a devastating attack, launched mainly from Japanese aircraft carriers, destroying a large number of ships in the American Pacific fleet. The primary intention was to cripple the western command, thereby preventing the Pacific Fleet from interfering with Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya without interference. Having succeeded in that effort, they bombed Burma’s Victoria point next and secured entry into Burmese mainland from its south and Eastern borders. Simultaneous forays into Malaysia and Singapore resulted in rapid allied capitulation. In all of these frontiers the might of the British forces was found wanting. By February Singapore had fallen. By March 1942, Rangoon had fallen after Malaya, so had the strategic Andaman. Hundreds of thousands of Indian workers in SE Asia were in full flight across the land borders into India, their ancestral home. Their belief was total that the British Raj would do nothing to help them, for they had not seen any overt support either at Malaya, Singapore or in Burma. One could hear the refrain – that invasion was imminent, the Japanese were coming, and that the British were set to flee. As the British manipulated the war news channels, rumor machines took over and wild tales were told and retold.

Strategically, the Japanese aims were multi fold and involved destruction of other key Allied strongholds of SE Asia, in the march towards India. The eastern cities of India namely Calcutta and Madras took note, for they were British regional capitals. Air raid actions were practiced, blackouts were observed and businessmen slowly started to pack up and leave to more Westerly and Northern cities. It was apparent that the invasion would be from the East and that the British may not stay to fight. Bose and the INA were fighting side by side with the Japanese, and Bose was exhorting his countrymen to join his side. Richer families sent women and children farther from coastal cities to interior villages. In places like Calcutta, some city administrators even tried to utilize this opportunity to relocate many thousands of beggars, but failed.

Down south, in Madras, things were no better. As often mentioned, the Japanese soldier, though quite a bit smaller than a Burmese elephant, evoked a bigger fear. British officials in the coastal areas sent their families away to the hills; Indian officials sent their families away to relatives in villages and there was a fear that the Japanese would murder civilian officials without batting an eye, based on rumors coming from Burma. Initial orders prohibited them from moving, but officials were later told that they should stay so they could help the population, and it was not a matter of if, but when. The British hardly mentioned the aftermath of the unlikely event of naval invasions, large scale air attacks and so on, for they had little idea of ‘what then’. Many expected a land invasion across Bengal and Assam, with the Japanese hordes streaming through, in attack.

But the Japanese had other plans though with their Indian Ocean raid, and their immediate point of focus was actually Ceylon, for the British navy had retired to Ceylon after the debacle at Singapore. With the defensive perimeter set at Singapore shattered, coupled with the Japanese taking of the Andaman Islands, the British were vulnerable. By launching operation C, the Japanese aimed to catch the British navy by surprise at Ceylon.

Admiral Somerville knew of an impending attack from various signal intercepts, (I wrote about this some time ago in the PNS Ghazi story) and was awaiting the Jap flotilla led by Admiral Naguomo with his own attack force of carriers, destroyers and submarines. Many of these ships were based at the isolated Maldives, at Addu Atoll, where earlier in 1941, the Royal Navy established a base ("Port T"). Air strips, oil tanks, supply stations etc. were kept in place, and strangely its existence was largely unknown to the Japanese, so also Indian nationalists who supported the INA. Somerville expected the attack to take place on the 1st or 2nd April, but Nagumo delayed it forcing Somerville to send back some of his bigger ships to Addu and elsewhere. Nagumo arrived with his fleet on the 4th and wreathed havoc on the shipping plying the Indian West coast and Ceylon. 28 ships were sunk in all. On 5th, Easter Sunday, the Japs bombarded Ceylon with 125 planes. Later they decimated the harbor at Trincomalee and sunk a number of Allied ships.

Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, the commander of Ceylon, stated "The Japanese Fleet has retired to Singapore, to refuel and rearm, and to organize an invasion force, which we think is coming back to attack us." But Sir Andrew Caldecott, Governor of Ceylon, speaking in Tamil, asked shopkeepers near the harbor to not panic. The death toll was only 50, “much less than the daily casualties from the street accidents in London,” he tried to reassure. People fled Ceylon, taking the Dhanushkodi route to India. Madras thus started receiving not only Burmese refugees, but also Ceylon refugees, both parties giving first hand details of Japanese prowess. Even though the Japanese attack demonstrated their superiority in carrier operations, Somerville was able to save the bulk of his fleet, including the carriers HMS Indomitable and Formidable, to fight another day.

On April 6, at about seven in the morning, a single Japanese plane strafed Kakinada, a port town 400 miles north of Madras, damaging two ships, killing one person and injuring five. In the afternoon, a small group of planes attacked Vizag, another later on in the evening, bombed the area. The government press release mentioned that some 20 bombs were dropped but that not much damage had been caused. Nevertheless, the officials admitted that five were killed and 40 were wounded.

Old-time residents of Vizag mention rumors of Japanese ships, the resulting panic and the hurried digging of crude air raid shelters. Civil defense drills and blackouts were practiced, and car headlights had their top half blacked off. But naturally, the prices of essentials rocketed, as shortages hit the merchants due to their diversion to the military up NE. Ration cards were issued and ‘Standard Cloth’ was issued as a ration, while new recipes were perfected from leftovers and in general the populace  quickly adapted to live with little. Source (Chandramathy Moses – Vizag)  

As news of the attacks in Ceylon and the cities of Andhra in the North reached Madras, panic set in. The residents expected Madras to be next. Madras as you can imagine was already in preparation for the invasion. Let’s see what they did and while doing so, let me also record my thanks and indebtedness to A Srivathsan, who collated much of the input and presented it in a series of Hindu articles in the autumn of 2012.

As early as in January, the air raid precautions unit had been set up. By March over 4,000 volunteers had been trained in first aid, shelters and handling blackouts. Siren identification brochures had been printed. As the harbor was prone to raids, plans were made to move offices, commercial firms and banks from the sea side to interior areas. A proposal to shift the operations of the office of the Accountant General, except for payment of pensions to Bangalore was bandied about. Library books had been moved. Concrete air raid shelters were built while inhabitants of Madras nervously scanned the sea for signs of the Japanese navy, as a landing was feared on the beaches of Madras. The leading business houses shifted elsewhere, for example while Burmah-Shell moved to Salem, Standard-Vacuum relocated to Bangalore.

By April 6, 1942, the Madras police commissioner Gasson ordered all employees of the water supply and transport departments to stay, fearing an exodus. Fears of shortages were paramount, items such as milk and food were important. Then came the fear of hotels closing and all of this adding to a food shortage. The Madras government quickly came up with the idea of starting co-operative shops to control distribute provisions and vegetables, and they also ensured that private shop pricing was regulated. Nevertheless, most hotels closed, and the remaining ones sported long lines and much higher prices serving mostly food packets - the first-class packet included sambar rice with curry and curd rice with pickles priced at 3 annas. The second-class packet containing only sambar rice with pickles was priced at an anna and a half.

A false alarm on the dawn of April 7^th alarmed the Madras folk, and though an ‘all clear’ signal was sounded an hour later, panic quickly engulfed the residents. The city came out with blackout requirements and the staffing of volunteer forces. Five days later, the government issued a communique advising all non-essential population to leave. The common took it quickly that Madras was no longer safe and with that the railways stations at Central and Egmore were besieged, and the general flight was east and south to Bangalore and Malabar. Close to 50,000 people railed it out every day to distant locations and in a couple of weeks, over 500,000 had fled, most of them going to their native villages or towns, while others camped with relatives and friends in those distant locations. For those who had nowhere to go, the government set up six temporary camps at Nandivaram, Nandambakam, Periyapalayam, Attur, Vengattur and Thruapallam. Some of the officers were relocated to the Sherman Girls school and a military contingent was placed at Ranipet. The ARP officers stationed themselves at the St Christopher’s training college while the trainees moved to CMC Vellore temporarily.

Prisoners were shifted to jails in Andhra Pradesh by special trains; wild animals in the zoo were shot as a precautionary measure. Patients at hospitals also fled in panic. The bustling metropolis was quickly reduced to look like a ghost town. The Madras secretariat was disbanded and while the essential staff and departments were shifted to Madanpalle, the non-essential offices moved to Ooty (of course!). Some other departments moved to Vellore, Salem and Anatpur. But Arthur Hope the Governor decided to stay in Madras. The 22 miles of slit trenches built looked like a wasted effort for an abandoned city. An old escape road was readied through Kodaicanal to Munnar and from there to Cochin with the hope that British ships could evacuate the Brits back home, if it came to that.

Even celebrities like the dancer Balasaraswathi the dancer and her mother Jayammal fled to Chingleput, while many of the affluent families moved to Mysore while the landlords there tried their level best to dislodge their existing tenants to make hay while the Japanese sun rose. Madhavikutty (her family lived in Andhra in those days) was sent off to Malabar. Trees were camouflaged as guns on the beach, idlis and dosas were starting to get replaced with wheat dishes and coins were in short supply. An unused small center gate of the Fort St George was sealed with bricks. Madras university offices were relocated to Coimbatore.

Pulla Reddi the commissioner wrote that the British officers simply fled and when he asked for instructions about what he should do if the Japanese landed, he was told to do what he liked, they had no time and had to catch the Blue Mountain express  bound for the Nilgiris. He adds - No street lighting was allowed, and no electric lights were allowed even inside houses, ’and finally and the worst of it all, I was asked to have all the lions, tigers, panthers, Polar bears and such dangerous animals in the zoo to be shot in a few minutes. Everybody seemed to have lost his head.’

Interestingly, the zoo tried to offer the animals to other zoo’s but none were interested. Then they tried to move them to Erode, but the railways had no space to transport them. The Police Commissioner, insisted that the animals might break loose if Japanese bombs fell, refused to wait and sent a platoon of the Malabar Special Police to the zoo ’who to my great horror ruthlessly did their job in a few minutes’. Three lions, six lionesses, four tigers, eight leopards, four bears and a black panther were shot while the lone elephant was spared as nobody could figure out the logistics in the burial of its corpse (V Ramakrishnan -DT next).

About three weeks after the government had issued the communique advising people to leave the city, Governor of Madras H. E. Sir Arthur Hope spoke to the residents in a broadcast on All India Radio: “During the past few weeks much has happened to cause anxiety in this country and especially in the Madras Presidency. That anxiety is natural, but I want this evening to try to put things in their right perspective. When the Government issued their communiqué on April 11th, they had good reason to believe that there was a direct threat of invasion to the Madras coast and Madras City. Happily, this threat did not materialize. There is, however, as the Commander-in-chief said in his broadcast the other day, always the danger of an attempt at invasion, until the Japanese are driven from the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. This danger will lessen from week to week, as our reinforcements of all sorts pour in.”

It appears that propaganda radio also played its part with a radio channel and its female announcer ‘Tokyo Rose’ repeatedly told her audience about Japan’s plans to bomb India. Perhaps it was the Japanese American Iva Toguri from Los Angles who was stranded in Japan and forced to work for the Japanese. Perhaps it was others, we don’t know.

After an agonizing period, with the Japanese showing no sign of arriving, much of the beleaguered population slowly began to return. Most people returned to live through a period of air-raid warnings, while bomb shelters were built at many locations, including key locations such as Nungambakkam, Mylapore and George Town. Film production, which was a key job and money spinner had crashed with the film supply from Agfa affected. Even though Kodak took up the slack, that was also disrupted as commercial shipping declined. Some studios moved to remote places. War film newsreels were shown in theaters. The beach area was out of bounds and a hefty fine of Rs 3/- was levied on transgressors. Time gun firing at Ft St George was stopped, one could buy only a maximum of Rs 5/- worth of provisions and fishing in the harbor was prohibited. First line beach was deserted, waiting for the Japanese. Locks were in short supply.

By the end of 1942 and early in 1943, things were back to normal in Madras, with hotels and movie halls busy as usual and when speculators made big money reselling houses they had purchased at throwaway prices when the previous occupants fled Madras after selling them. Cricket matches resumed, with the Europeans beating the Indians at Chepauk in Dec 42, in spite of Gopalan’s well hit 87 runs.

And then, it finally happened on a dark and stormy night on 10^th (or 11^th) Oct 1943. The banks of Cooum and Adayar had overflowed, and Madras was flooding, with even the Longmans and Oxford press buildings affected. Air raid sirens went off as people clambered on roofs to escape floods while several others drowned. A Japanese plane flew by and ditched or dropped one or a few bombs on a drenched Madras, killing two people and some cattle. The newspapers did not report it and Madras folk knew about all of it only after a week.

After the war, it became clear that these 1942 Japanese incursions were just a cover as convoys steamed to Rangoon. In fact, it was the last time the Japanese fleet and its supporting air arm ventured East for they were not too keen of deploying their limited naval or air resources into the Indian Ocean regions since they had to worry about a regrouping American fleet. John Clancy affirms it - The Japanese High Command were concerned at the possibility of their Task Force in the Indian Ocean being cut off from the remainder of their naval forces in the South China Seas as the result of increasing American naval activity in the South Pacific, and had ordered a retreat.

Later, the Japanese established a submarine supply and fueling station at Swettenham Pier - Penang and German, Italian and Japanese subs roamed underwater, wreaking havoc on Allied merchant ships through 1944. Though the Japanese failed to arrive, an even bigger crisis hit the East coast, it was the 1943 Bengal famine, and the actions taken by the British at that juncture are the most abhorrent, a topic I will write about another day.

Rajaji had warned against “exaggeration of the danger of a Japanese invasion” and well, one could always say in hindsight that he was correct, but the fact is that the fear of a ruthless enemy who had successes at Singapore, Malaya and Burma, panicked the British. It soon became amply clear to the masses that these foreigners were simply incapable of taking care of the people they governed. When that reality hit them, the British lost the jewel in their crown.

References

Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India - Stanley Wolpert

Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War - Raghu Karnad

The shiver of 1942 - Indivar Kamtekar (Studies in History 2002 18: 81)

Military Economics, Culture and Logistics in the Burma Campaign, 1942-1945 - Graham Dunlop

Madras Miscellany - Muthiah S

Autumn leaves – Pulla Reddi

Hindu reports – A Srivathsan 

 The Most Dangerous Moment of the War -  Clancy, John