On this day in 1941, Japanese forces landed on Penang Island in Malaya.

On this day in 1941, Japanese forces landed on Penang Island in Malaya.

On 8 December, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had begun bombing Penang, which was home to major port and huge stocks of British munitions and equipment. The Royal Navy had no real naval presence due to the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, and the allies were unable to stop the Japanese advance on the mainland.

It quickly became clear that Penang Island would have to be evacuated, and this happened on 17 December, with the Japanese fully occupying the island two days later. The British evacuation of Europeans from the island and abandonment of the local populace was done covertly, bringing some historians to conclude that "the moral collapse of British rule in Southeast Asia came not at Singapore, but at Penang."

Penang Island was subsequently renamed Tojo-to, after Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. The period of Japanese occupation was marked by the Imperial Japanese Army's "Sook Ching" massacres of Penang's Chinese populace, in which many hundreds died.

In August and September 1946, Major Yoshinobu Higashigawa of the Kempei Tai (military police) and 34 other Japanese soldiers were tried for war crimes, including the murder of Chinese civilians in Penang, with Higashigawa and over a dozen being found guilty and executed by hanging.