Word: straitly
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Like Hong Kong and Manila before it, Singapore awaited its fate. Its tree-covered oval island, 27 miles long and 14 miles wide, is separated from the giraffe-like neck of the Malay Peninsula and the oncoming Jap by the mile-wide Strait of Johore. Around the big island on the sea side are scores of tiny islands, on most of which lie camouflaged coastal artillery positions...
...protected by the strongly fortified islands of Brani, Blakang Mati, East St. John. Heavy and light guns perch atop the island's 1,000 hills. Location of the biggest guns of all, the 18-inchers, is a secret, but they are probably at the Changi entrance to Johore Strait. Around the entire island on all the beaches there are barbed-wire entanglements with concrete pillboxes at intervals...
...attack and siege by land, Singapore is not so well prepared. Most of its big guns are concentrated on the seaward side, not opposite the Malay Peninsula. Its main reservoir of water is across the Strait in Johore and although there are emergency reservoirs on the island itself, the Jap might be able to thirst out the city's 600,000 inhabitants. This week the enemy was within 40 miles of the main water supply...
...great naval base itself, which took 17 years to build and cost $170,000,000, lies along the northern shore of Singapore Island on the far side of the island from the city but on the near side for the Japs- just across the Strait from Johore. By last week, it was already growing worthless as a base to British and American ships in the Far East. But if it is valueless to them, the British want it to remain valueless...
...their deepest air raid yet made into the Indies, Japanese planes attacked Koepang and shipping south of there in the strait between Timor and the small Island of Semaoe. There was said to have been no damage or casualties...