Kuching - The Matrix Games version of Rising Sun

24 December 1941 Kuching, British Borneo: A forgotten battle, begun the day before the sorrowful Christmas of 1941 as the Japanese moved to eliminate the last of the British occupied locations on Northern Borneo. The Japanese Kawaguchi Detachment landed near Miri on the 17th and in an almost bloodless series of advances captured the British oilfields at Miri and Seria; the processing and shipping facility at Lutong and also the British Colonies of Lauban and Sandakan, introducing the British citizens, captured there, to the peculiararities of the "Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere". What British forces were on the Island, amalgamated around a Punjabi Battalion and called SarForce, had concentrated at the city of Kuching in western British Borneo. On this bleak Christmas Eve, the British force attempted to get approval from Headquarters at Singapore to retreat southwest to Singkawang II Airfield, near Pontianak, in western Dutch Borneo and delaying the Japanese at Kuching while setting up a defensive perimeter at Bukit Stabar Airfield, 7 miles to the south.