section_path: History/Japanese occupation/Lead-up to occupation
section_name: Lead-up to occupation
paragraph_text: Lead-up to occupation
  
  In July 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill appointed Duff Cooper, a former Minister of Information, to investigate how to coordinate defence policy planning in Asia against the threat of Japanese invasion. Cooper arrived in Singapore in September 1941 and reported that the various civil, governmental, and military elements did not communicate or coordinate well. Seabridge, as chief editor, was highly critical of the lack of planning and efficiency of government officials. Seabridge and F. D. Bisseker, the chairman of the Eastern Smelting Company, strongly urged Cooper to build up the civil defense; Seabridge also back Cooper's proposal to institute martial law. Japanese attacks in the northern Malay states began on 8 December 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Five days later, the commander ordered the evacuation of all European women and children and all military personnel from the island of Penang. Similar evacuations of only Europeans were ordered throughout the month of December, seriously undermining the morale of the much larger Asian population of Singapore and the surrounding British areas. However, Governor Shenton Thomas insisted that the British community of Singapore not flee in the face of the Japanese, that no racial discrimination was to take place in the evacuation of civilians, and that British civil officers stay behind to "look after their Asian charges". The government also obstructed information of the severity of the situation on the frontlines. On 5 January 1941, The Straits Times published the following lead article summarizing the situation.
  
  Malaya has now been in the front line for a month. The Northern Settlement is in enemy hands, and fighting is taking place within 200 miles of Singapore. This island has been bombed on several occasions with 'slight damage to civilian property' and 'a few civilian casualties'. That is a reasonably accurate summary of all the people of this country have been told of the fighting that is going around them. Vague 'lines' have been mentioned and there have been sundry 'strategic withdrawals'. Such generalities provide a very flimsy basis indeed for detailed comment – so flimsy that we do not propose to attempt a task which is very nearly impossible of achievement … The view we propose to put forward here is the view of the middle-class Asiatic who has been asked to help in maintaining morale but finds himself quite unable to do so... If the newspapers and the newspaper reading public are to be any help in combatting rumour, they must be supplied with the only things which are of the slightest value in carrying out the task. And those things are facts.