Timor: Portugal vs. Japan?

[Pinback]

Hi there,

when the Japanese overran the Indonesian archipelago in 1941/42 how did they deal with Portugese Timor? Had there been any portugese armed forces, not to mention aircraft present on the island?
Did Portugal declare war?

regards, P.

[JohnMacG6]

There's a book (if you can find it) -
Timor 1942 by Christopher C H Wray ISBN 1-86330-046-5

But basically, No, Portugal had no real armed forces in Timor in 1941; a sort of colonial armed police/militia, but no real 'army' units. There was a Portuguese Army garrison force on it's way to Timor from one of the African colonies, but it didn't arrive in time before the Japanese invasion.
No naval forces apart from a Governor's launch or that sort of thing
No air forces of any kind.

Allied (Dutch & Australian) forces occupied Portuguese Timor from 13th December 1941 - there was no armed opposition from the Portuguese, only a furious protest from the Governor, who pointed out, quite correctly that -
A) the Allied forces would only provoke the Japanese to invade, and
B) when they did, the Allied forces were far too small to prevent this invasion.

For the rest of the war the Japanese Army occupied both halves of the island, paying no more than lip-service to the residual, purely nominal, Portuguese sovereignty in P.T.

HTH

[Pinback]

... thanks for answering, I had no clue that the Australians went in first!

regards, P.

[rldunn]

See

http://www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/histories/20/chapter/21.pdf

for the Australian version of events.

RLD

[rldunn]

That url was garbled. Try

http://www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/histories/20/chapter/21.pdf

Sorry, hope this one works

[rldunn]

The ... part should be the word "histories" don't know why it doesn't transmit

[Frank Olynyk]

I'll give it a shot:

http://www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/histories/20/chapters/21.pdf

Frank.

[Skyraider3D]

All links work, just they won't show completely ;)

[Ruy Horta]

The forum software cuts the visual test short, however the complete URL is saved behind this text. The original URL had a typo. It reads ...20/chapter/21.pdf instead of the correct ...20/chapters/21.pdf

Nice find, the document actually seems to starts with ...20/chapters/1.pdf, so happy reading!