The Empire’s war against Japan witnessed constant military activity and the deployment east of Suez of hundreds of thousands of imperial service personnel on land, sea and air, from Australasia, from Britain, from East and West Africa, and from a rebuilt and vastly expanded Indian Army. It also involved thousands of men and women in units such as the Pacific coastwatchers, the Canadian regiments garrisoning Hong Kong, the Malay Regiment, the Ceylon Light Infantry, and the Mauritius Defence Force. Scores of RAF squadrons operated across the vastness of the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific, as did the enormous Eastern Fleet and, from 1944, the British Pacific Fleet.
It is a curiosity of historical memory, therefore, that it often appears in popular accounts of the war as if ‘Britain’s’ war against Japan petered out following the surrender at Singapore in February 1942, confined to little more than the Burma campaign thereafter. But very much on the contrary, imperial military activity continued, in Borneo, in the Dutch East Indies, in Ceylon, – a vital strategic point that became a surrogate Singapore following that island’s capitulation, and in places such as New Guinea and British Pacific islands conquered by the Japanese. Imperial forces were also constantly active at sea and in the air, even when the Empire’s fortunes were at their nadir in 1942. The Japanese raids on Ceylon, the conquest of Madagascar, SOE/Force 136 activities in occupied Malaya, Thailand, and beyond, Australia’s long Pacific war, and Royal Navy deployments in defence of vital sea lanes connecting Britain to the Middle East via the Red Sea as well as to Gulf oil, were all part of a picture far broader than that painted by the emphasis on Burma.
