Japanese troops land in Huon Gulf in New Guinea and capture Salamaua. A Japanese submarine launches a reconnaissance plane off the coast of New Zealand, which makes a flight over Wellington, setting off air raid sirens, but doing no damage.

In Java, the Dutch surrender. More than 100,000 Dutch, British, Australian, and American troops go in the bag. Many PoWs are taken to "Bicycle Camp," a former HQ for a King's Netherlands Indies Legion bicycle regiment. The fighting is over, but the troubles have just begun. More than 8,500 Dutch soldiers will die in captivity -- 25 percent -- and a further 10,500 Dutch civilian internees are to perish, out of 80,000 interned. Many soldiers and civilians will die while hiding on remote islands, hoping for rescue, or building boats to flee to Australia.

At noon in Rangoon, the 215th Regiment of the 33rd Division enters the city to find it unoccupied and deserted. The top Japanese general is stunned to realize that the British army has neatly fled. The British have also neatly reorganized themselves, creating "Burcorps" of two divisions under Lt. General William Slim, a former Gurkha officer who speaks six Indian languages and has a deserved reputation for toughness.

In Japan, the victor of Singapore, Tomoyuki Yamashita, pays his respects to the Emperor and Prime Minister Tojo, a political rival. Yamashita is brutally mistreated for taking Singapore -- he is shunted off to Manchuria for the next three years, briefing puppet Emperor Henry P'u-Yi on Japan's war effort.

In North Africa, 6 NZ Brigade leaves the Suez Canal for Aleppo in Syria.

The RAF sends 211 bombers to hit Essen, using a new navigation aid called Gee, and a flare-dropping force to lead the raid and a target-marking force using incendiaries to follow up. The intention is to produce a concentrated area of fire in the center of the target which bombers can use to aim their high explosives. Essen, powerfully defended, home of the massive Krupp steel works, and nearly always partly obscured by industrial haze, is the RAF's toughest target. This evening, Gee doesn't help much, little damage is done.

In the Philippines, Gen. Douglas MacArthur issues a communique saying that his opponent, Gen. Masaharu Homma, has committed suicide out of frustration. This story gets heavily embellished and just as heavily repeated. Homma reads the report with some amusement. He is less amused when inspecting officers from the Imperial General Staff in Tokyo arrive to find out why he hasn't taken the Philippines on time. They reprimand Homma for allowing his staff officers to live in plush hotels in Manila while their troops fight in the jungle. Some of Homma's staff are shipped off to Manchuria. However, the staff officers realize that Homma needs reinforcements, and ship in the 65th Brigade of 3,500 men and the 4th Infantry Division from Shanghai. Homma is not happy. The 4th's 11,000 men are the worst equipped division in the whole Japanese army. However, the siege guns from China are most welcome, and they hurl 240mm shells at American islands in Manila Bay, including Fort Drum, the "concrete battleship."

March 9th, 1942...USS Washington, joined by the heavy cruiser USS Wichita, arrives at Casco Bay, Portland, around midmorning, to find the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. In command is Rear Adm. John W. Wilcox, who is commander Battleships, Atlantic Fleet. Wilcox briefs his officers that Washington, Wasp, and two heavy cruisers are headed for "distant service" in the Atlantic. Liberty is granted in Portland, but all ships are on six hours notice for steaming. Washington's crew hoists barge loads of anti-aircraft ammunition aboard and distributes parkas and cold weather gear. SN Mel Beckstrand writes, "Taking on more provisions and waiting for I don't know what. I wish we'd do something!"

27 NZ officers and 1,005 other ranks leave Napier to reinforce Fiji.

As the Japanese advance in Burma, they are harassed by RAF fighters and the famed American Flying Tigers, led by colorful pilots like Robert Scott and Greg "Pappy" Boyington. The Japanese have colorful pilots, too, like Saburo Sakai.

Franklin D. Roosevelt nudges Gen. Douglas MacArthur again by radio, MacArthur agrees he will leave Corregidor by March 15th. The question is how. There are two choices available: submarine or PT boat to Mindanao. Japanese patrols are heavy, Tokyo Rose is broadcasting that MacArthur will be captured within a month, and US Navy officers give MacArthur a one-in-five chance. MacArthur, however, is greatly impressed by Lt. John Bulkeley's Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3, based at Bataan, and its four decrepit PT boats, and decides he and his family will ride them to Mindanao on March 11, and fly to Australia from there. He orders three B-17s from Australia to Mindanao's Del Monte airfield, and spends the next three days planning the great escape.

March 10th, 1942...American carriers USS Lexington and USS Yorktown hurl 104 planes against invading transports off Huon Gulf in New Guinea, and sink three transports for a one-plane loss. USS Enterprise returns to Pearl Harbor, where Vice Adm. William Halsey receives the Distinguished Service Medal for the attack on Marcus Island. That evening, while the crew is watching the nightly movie in the hangar deck, he interrupts Gary Cooper to address his men. "This medal belongs to you," he tells the crew. "I am honored to wear it for you. I am so damned proud of you I could cry."

Japanese troops land at Finschafen in Papua New Guinea and on Buka in the Solomons.

In China, Gen. Joseph Stilwell is appointed Chief of Staff of the Chinese Army, and spends most of the war arguing with Chiang Kai-Shek.

In Berlin, a strange part of the propaganda war takes place when Jane Anderson, a Georgia socialite makes one of her "Georgia Peach" broadcasts to the US on Deutsche Rundfunk shortwave. Anderson, married to a Spanish grandee, and a fanatical anti-Communist, has been broadcasting English-language propaganda aimed at the US, denouncing Jews and US media, and praising Hitler, in an increasingly hysterical and incoherent manner. Today, to embitter her American listeners with news concerning the delicacies to be found in Germany's fine restaurants, she reports on how Berlin nightclubs and teashops offer Turkish cakes laden with marzipan, chocolate, and champagne. "Sweets and cookies and champagne, not bad!" The US Office of War Information rebroadcasts the descriptions of Berlin high life back into the Reich to anger the average German, who is eating ersatz chocolate and drinking ersatz coffee, and enduring "one-meal Sundays." The counter-broadcasts in turn outrage the Rundfunk, and Anderson is bounced off the air, a fine turnabout for Nazi propaganda.

Off the coast of Norway, the carrier HMS Victorious attacks the German battleship Tirpitz with Swordfish strike planes. British valor is not enough for the ship's 15-inch Krupp armor, and no hits are scored.

Lt. John D. "Buck" Bulkeley, "that bold buckaroo with the cold green eyes," faces his voyage to Mindanao with four PT boats that lack decent compasses and good charts. PT boats, 77 feet long and 20 feet wide, are armed with four torpedo tubes and four .50 caliber machineguns. No armor. These boats are now clogged with carbon and rust from lack of maintenance and overhaul. The General will go on PT 41, Adm. Rockwell on PT 34. PT 41 will be the lead ship, and the vessels are to leave at dusk on March 11th. Gen. Douglas MacArthur issues food rationing orders to assure Bataan and Corregidor's survival until July 1st, when he expects to be back with the counterattack force. MacArthur has orders to keep his evacuation party slim, but adds his son's Cantonese nanny Ah Cheu, 13 officers, two naval officers, and a technical sergeant to the list. Chief of Staff George Marshall is later amazed that Ah Cheu is included, and not one of the American nurses on Corregidor.

March 11th, 1942...HMNZS Achilles anchors at Brisbane, and the crew is granted liberty. They find the city full of American troops and the newspapers full of stories about Japanese advances.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur summons the top Bataan officer, Maj. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright to Corregidor, and gives him command of all troops on Luzon. Wainwright, always rawboned, is now cadaverous from three-eights rations. MacArthur gives Wainwright a box of cigars and two jars of shaving cream, and says, "I want you to understand my position very plainly. I'm leaving for Australia on the orders of the President. Things have reached such a point that I must comply with these orders or get out of the Army. I want you to make it known throughout all elements of your command that I'm leaving over my repeated protests." MacArthur tells Wainwright to hold on. Wainwright says, "You'll get through." MacArthur snaps, "-- and back. When I get back, if you're still alive, I'll make you a lieutenant general." Wainwright says, "I'll be on Bataan if I'm alive."

The MacArthurs gather what food they can -- Bulkeley can provide none -- and pack it into four duffel bags, one per boat. Bulkeley carries the MacArthurs' luggage aboard PT 41 himself. As the sun sets over Manila Bay, PT 41 idles by Corregidor's shores, its three-shaft, 4,050-horsepower Packard motors humming. MacArthur's family clamber aboard from the shell-blasted island. MacArthur boards last, as American guns, firing diversionary shells, open up. Amid haze and gunpowder, MacArthur steps on PT 41's deck and says, "You may cast off, Buck, when you are ready." Bulkeley glided off to the bay's turning buoy, hooks up with the other three PT boats, and heads south through the US minefield. All hands are nervous...American air reconnaissance has reported the Japanese heavy cruiser Ashigara nosing about. For an hour, the PT boats pick their way through mines, then, at 9:15 p.m., clear the mines and crack on full ahead. The textbook says PT boats can do 45 knots. These, lacking proper maintenance, can only do 23. Japanese destroyers can do 38. The PTs race ahead through 15- and 20-foot high waves, drenching everyone topside. MacArthur suffers the agonies of seasickness, suffering the mental torment of defeat and retreat with the physical agony of the voyage. The PT boats struggle through heavy seas (avoiding Japanese coastwatchers) and lose their formation.

March 12th, 1942...At 3:30 a.m., John Bulkeley's PT boats, bearing Gen. Douglas MacArthur, are scattered by heavy seas. PT 32, behind schedule, sees an enemy destroyer, and jettisons its gasoline to escape. But it lacks enough fuel to reach Mindanao. The four battered PTs stagger into the Cuyo Island hideout. PT 32 has to be abandoned, its gas and engines finished. PT 35 is also a write-off with fouled gasoline strainers. The passengers are divided between PTs 32 and 41, MacArthur and his son soaked and seasick, Jean MacArthur smiling bravely. The plan calls for another night move to Mindanao, but MacArthur is behind schedule. He orders Bulkeley to sail at 2:30 p.m., risking a daylight encounter with the Japanese Navy. The PT boats put to sea at 3:30, and spot the Japanese heavy cruiser Ashigara at 3:45. Ashigara, packing eight-inch guns and Long Lance torpedoes is cracking along at 35 knots. PT 41 is doing 18. Bulkeley takes evasive action and is never seen by the Japanese. Later that evening, the PTs near Negros Island. Japanese artillerymen hear engine noises, and figure it's American planes. They light up the sky with flak tracer shell, and MacArthur's party again escapes. The general lies deathly ill in PT 41's lower cockpit, gritting his teeth while his wife rubs his hands.

50 new Sailors from Great Lakes Recruit Training Center arrive at Casco Bay to join USS Washington. SA Hunter Cronin, among them, goes to the ship via 50-foot motor launch. "All we could see was this big steel wall going up and up, which turned out to be the side of the ship. We went up the accommodation ladder, carrying our seabags with our hammocks tied around it."

British troops withdraw from the Andaman Islands.

10 Soviet parachutists land near Birzai in Lithuania to commit sabotage. They are seen, chased and shot, and all their equipment, including a radio transmitter, seized by Nazi forces.

March 13th, 1942...Having made the sirens go over Wellington on March 8th, Japanese submarines do it again over Auckland.

At 6:30 am, PT 34 sights Cagayan Point in Mindanao. After 35 consecutive hours at the conn, having passed through 560 miles of Japanese waters, John D. Bulkeley arrives at Del Monte precisely on time. Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrives standing on the prow of his PT boat. He shakes the salt water from his braided cap, flips it back on at a jaunty angle, and helps his wife ashore. Then he turns back to the boat. "Bulkeley, I'm giving every officer and man here the Silver Star for gallantry. You've taken me out of the jaws of death, and I won't forget it." Then he concisely asks Col. William Morse where he can relieve himself.

Bulkeley's fame grows as the story of his exploit becomes the book and movie "They Were Expendable." He takes command of PT boats in the Mediterranean, rises to the rank of admiral, and outlives nearly everyone, dying in 1996. He is buried in Arlington with full honors.

MacArthur's arrival in Mindanao makes the Japanese launch an attack to seize Del Monte Airfield and bag the general. Only one B-17 reaches Australia and it wheezes in to a wobbly landing. MacArthur, furious, will allow no one to board the "dangerously decrepit" aircraft, and demands the "three best planes in the US or Hawaii," manned by "completely adequate, experienced" airmen. Maj. Gen. George Brett, commanding the US air forces in Australia, has neither.

The Nazis open their second extermination camp at Belzec, in Poland. The first 6,000 Jews deported there, from the southern Polish town of Mielec, have all been told they are needed for agricultural work further east. Instead they are all gassed.

The RAF tries again to hit Essen, home of the gigantic Krupp steelworks. The company's Konzernherr, Alfried Krupp, is the greatest slavemaster in history, with more than half a million slave workers starving and suffering in his factories. However, the RAF's efforts to put Krupp out of business this night fail, as the whole force hits the wrong town, Hamborn, eight miles from Essen, after a bomber which had been hit jettisons its direction- indicating incendiaries.

March 14th, 1942...the first US combat troops arrive in Australia.

British intelligence determines Hitler's next move...a big offensive against the Soviets in the southern front, possibly into the Caucasus.