 Not only did the British Army abandon the Batu Maung Fort on the island, they also surreptitiously evacuated Penang's European population, leaving the colony's Asian populace to the mercy of the impending Japanese occupation.To this day, it has been agreed that the withdrawal and the covert evacuation of Europeans led to the loss of the British sense of invincibility, and that ""the moral collapse of British rule in Southeast Asia came not in Singapore, but in Penang"".Penang fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on 19 December 1941, marking the start of a period of Japanese occupation.