The capture of Tarakan Island, January 1942

  The map of the Dutch East Indies 1941-1942
The map is courtesy of Graham Donaldson

On 25 December 1941 the first air attack on Tarakan Island is made by 4 engined flying boat. On 28 December 1941 occured a dog fight over Tarakan Island between 5 Dutch Brewster Buffalo fighters and 8 Japanese Zero fighters. Two or three Buffalo's and (possibly) two Zeros are shot down. One Dutch pilot is reported dead and one missing. The air attack on the airfield caused one plane loss and little damage.

On 9 January 1942 minelayer Prins van Oranje (Lt.Cdr. A.C. van Versendaal) is slightly damaged by Japanese air attack. Possibly 1 Japanese plane shot down.

On 10 January a Dutch Dornier Do-24K flying boat spotted a Japanese invasion fleet. The Dutch Commander ordered the destruction of all oil fields on the island. Dutch submarine K-X (Lt.Cdr. P.G. de Back) escaped although attacked by a Japanese floatplane while she was sailing through a Dutch minefield. On the same day minelayer Prins van Oranje layed the last part of the minefield. The lightship of Tarakan is bombed and damaged. Japanese destroyers came to pick the crew up.

Oil fields on Tarakan Island	Dutch minelayer Prins van Oranje

After mopup operations around the city of Davao, Phillipines, the Sakaguchi Detachment was to leave the securing of the city to the Miura Detachment and concentrate its strength in the vicinity of Talomo, Mintol and Daliao in preparation for the invasion of Borneo.

Through interrogation of several Indonesian POWs, the general disposition of the enemy was obtained and the unit proceeded through the jungle to the area north of the Tarakan oilfield which they reached at approximately 1100 on the January 11th. As the Right Wing Unit advanced inland to the area north of the oilfield, they seized one important hill, but the Dutch machine-gun and rifle fire was so severe that any further advance was literally impossible. However, in spite of the Dutch counter-attack that night, the unit launched night raids. They managed to get through barbed wire, to destroy all machine-gun nests and killed almost all Dutch commanding officers with knives. They soon captured the first and second row of barracks. At daybreak the Dutch garrison commander, Lieutenant Colonel S. de Waal, discovered that his front line is weak and that all further resistance would be useless. He dispatched a messenger, under a flag of truce, with an offer to surrender. Colonel Kyohei Yamamoto, commander of the Right Wing Unit, immediately wired the commander of the Sakaguchi Detachment, informing him of the enemy's surrender. After the Dutch troops finally surrendered, the 2nd Kure Special Naval Landing Force advanced rapidly to the Tarakan airfield and occupied it by the morning of January 12th. During this advance the unit was bombed by Dutch bombers from Samarinda II airfield and 18 Japanese soldiers were killed. At 1200 hours one infantry company dispatched from the Right Wing Unit also occupied the village of Djoewata which had a Dutch coastal battery located there at the north end of the island.

During this first engagement the Japanese managed to capture a group of about 30 KNIL soldiers. When this group refused to tell them how to get to the main city of the island, they were all stabbed to death by bayonets of Japanese rifles. Only one man survived this massacre. He managed to drag himself to a hospital where he recovered.

The Japanese soldier on guard on Tarakan Island, 1942. The photo was taken shortly after the Japanese occupied the island.	The Japanese warships in front of Tarakan Island, January 1942. The smoke rising above the island comes from the oil fields, which were set on fire by the Dutch.

On the 12th, the following message was received by the Naval Forces: "Although the enemy has offered to surrender, it is feared that the coastal battery located at the south end of the island is not aware of this and it would be dangerous to proceed to the Tarakan pier, therefore held up your sailing". In spite of this message, the warning was ignored and the movement went on as planned. When the six minesweepers entered the bay, they were fired on by the Dutch coastal battery and two minsweepers W 13 and W 14 were hit by 4.7 inch shell and sank with most of their crew. These were the only Japanese naval losses in this action. The naval commander later promised amnesty for the guncrews and based on this promise the Dutch Island Commander managed to persuade the guncrews to surrender. The Japanese Army Commander on the other hand was brutal and had the prisoners turned over to him. He ordered the prisoners to be tied in groups of three. Some time later they were thrown into the water where all 219 Dutch soldiers drowned.

The commander of the Sakaguchi Detachment, Major-General Shizuo Sakaguchi, left his ship at about noon on the 12th and landed at the mouth of the Amal River, arriving at the office of the British Petroleum Manufacturer at sunset. On the morning of 13th, he received the enemy commander and formally accepted his surrender. Mopping-up the island was completed on the 13th. On the 14th, the entire Sakaguchi Detachment boarded the ships and left the island. Their new objective was Balikpapan.

During the night from 11 January to 12 January 1942 the minelayer Prins van Oranje tried to escape the confines of Tarakan Island but was sunk by a Japanese destroyer Yamakaze (Lt.Cdr. Shuichi Hamanaka) and patrol boat P 38 with heavy loss of life.

The casualties of the Imperial Japanese Army (Sakaguchi Detachment) numbered only 7 men killed on the land and 1 men on the water, while the naval units suffered 47 killed on the land and 200 at sea. Of those 47 killed on land, 18 were killed by the air attack on or near the airfield immediately after the surrender. The Japanese managed to capture 871 Dutch POWs.

Damage after self-destruction, Tarakan Island, January 1942

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Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942
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