A poster claimed - "Diverging a little now, but the matter of WWII has been raised by other, so a few comments about that are appropriate. The fact is, during the early stages of the war against Japan, none of the Western allies fought particularly well. (Jungle warfare was something that had previously been hardly thought of, and only the Japanese were in any way prepared for it). The debacle at the British "fortress" of Singapore is well known, and the ease with which the Japanese over ran all European territories in South East Asia quickly led to them gaining the reputation of being supermen."
Generally true, but in connection with the highlighted claim, there was one notable exception, and that was the British colony of Burma. Wingate's* campaign held the Japanese Army back, and likely saved India. The other area where the Japanese were held was China. The ROK army, despite many weaknesses and failures, did slow the Japanese advance.
The Western Alliance, can be said to have failed to learn the lessons of history, In the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese Navy destroyed two Russian fleets, the second one by simply lying in wait and ambushing the Russian fleet, a tactic they also used in the Pearl Harbour attack. But, interestingly, its's arguable that the Japanese had seen the French use the "surprise attack' that began (in a way) the Sino-French 'war' in the 1880's.
The newly purchased southern fleet of Imperial China's navy was at anchor off Mawei (near Fuzhou). A French fleet sailed into the same harbour and anchored (as they had the right to do, according to the terms of various treaty's the Chinese had been forced to sign). At an agreed signal, the French fleet opened fire on the Chinese fleet, sinking 9 ships within an hour. No doubt, the Japanese government learned the lesson of that attack. i.e. that It's OK to make surprise attacks without first declaring war.
*Major General Orde Charles Wingate, DSO & Two Bars (26 February 1903 – 24 March 1944) was a senior British Army officer known for his creation of the Chindit deep-penetration missions in Japanese-held territory during the Burma Campaign of the Second World War.
Wingate was an exponent of unconventional military thinking and the value of surprise tactics. Assigned to Mandatory Palestine, he became a supporter of Zionism, and set up a joint British-Jewish counter-insurgency unit. Under the patronage of the area commander Archibald Wavell, Wingate was given increasing latitude to put his ideas into practice during the Second World War. He created units in Abyssinia and Burma. - Wikipedia
