Question: The Long Pursuit is a 1967 novel about the escape of survivors from what battle where the Empire of Japan invaded the British stronghold of Singapore?
Context: The Battle of Singapore, also known as the Fall of Singapore, was fought in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II when the Empire of Japan invaded the British stronghold of Singapore—nicknamed the "Gibraltar of the East".  Singapore was the major British military base in South-East Asia and was the keystone of British imperial interwar defence planning for South-East Asia as well as the South-West Pacific.  The fighting in Singapore lasted from 8 to 15 February 1942 although this was preceded by two months of British resistance as Japanese forces advanced down the Malaya peninsula. A series of events led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  War between Japan and the United States had been a possibility that each nation's military forces planned for in the 1920s, though real tension did not begin until the 1931 invasion of Manchuria by Japan.  Over the next decade, Japan expanded slowly into China, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1937.  In 1940 Japan invaded French Indochina in an effort to embargo all imports into China, including war supplies purchased from the U.S.  This move prompted the United States to embargo all oil exports, leading the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) to estimate it had less than two years of bunker oil remaining and to support the existing plans to seize oil resources in the Dutch East Indies.  Planning had been underway for some time on an attack on the "Southern Resource Area" to add it to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Japan envisioned in the Pacific. After the Empire of Japan invaded and occupied the Northeast in 1931, the Chinese Communist Party organized small anti-Japanese guerrilla units, and formed their own Northeastern People's Revolutionary Army, dedicated to social revolution, but these were dwarfed by the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies which had been raised by their anti-Japanese, patriotic appeal. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on 18 September 1931, when the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria immediately following the Mukden Incident.  The Japanese established the puppet state of Manchukuo, and their occupation lasted until Soviet Union and Mongolia launched the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation in 1945. Britain had a functioning consular service in Japan from 1859 after the signing of the 1858 Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce between James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin and the Tokugawa Shogunate until 1941 when Japan invaded British colonial empire and declared war on the United Kingdom. Dương Văn Dương (1900 – February 20, 1946) was a Vietnamese military leader of Bình Xuyên.  His nickname was Ba Dương (three oceans).  He was born in 1900 to a family of poor peasants in Bến Tre Province.  During the 1920s, Ba Dương became the leader of the Binh Xuyen, then a coalition of river pirates who extorted protection money from the sampans that traveled the canals on their way to the Cholon docks.  Known for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, the Bình Xuyên became popular heroes among the inhabitants in the jungle.  In 1936, Dương started his criminal activities by providing protection services to the Tây Ninh-Phnom Penh bus station in Saigon.  By 1940, he had become a kingpin of South Vietnam.  When the Empire of Japan invaded Vietnam in 1940, Ba Dương organized a dare-to-die group of youth to organize resistance to their occupation.  When the Japanese surrendered in 1945, he cooperated with the Viet Minh against the Anglo-French reoccupation of the country.  He was killed in action.  In modern Vietnam, he was made an honorary member of the People's Army of Vietnam with the rank of major general.  Duong is honored with several places named after him in Ho Chi Minh City. The Long Pursuit is a 1967 novel written by Australian author Jon Cleary about the escape of a group of survivors from the Battle of Singapore in World War II. The New Guinea campaign of the Pacific War lasted from January 1942 until the end of the war in August 1945.  During the initial phase in early 1942, the Empire of Japan invaded the Australian-administered territories of the New Guinea Mandate (23 January) and Papua (8 March) and overran western New Guinea (beginning 29/30 March), which was a part of the Netherlands East Indies.  During the second phase, lasting from late 1942 until the Japanese surrender, the Allies—consisting primarily of Australian and US forces—cleared the Japanese first from Papua, then the Mandate and finally from the Dutch colony. The South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was the name given to the campaigns of the Pacific War in Burma, Ceylon, India, Thailand, Philippines, Indochina, Malaya and Singapore.  Objectives for conquering these countries included the seizure of natural resources such as rubber and petroleum from European colonies in the region.  Conflict in this theatre began when the Empire of Japan invaded French Indochina in September 1940 and rose to a new level following the Raid on Pearl Harbor, and simultaneous attacks on Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Malaya on 7/8 December 1941.  The main landing at Singora (now Songkhla) on the east side of the Isthmus of Kra preceded the bombing of Pearl Harbor by several hours.  Action in the theatre officially ended on 9 September 1945. The Michael Billmeyer House, aka the Bensell-Billmeyer House, is a historic twin house in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  It was built around 1730 by John George Bensell.  Michael Billmeyer, the noted printer of Germantown, purchased it in 1789.  It is said that from this point, General George Washington directed the Continental forces in the Battle of Germantown against the British stronghold at Cliveden.
Answer: The Battle of Singapore