The British Empire's War Against Japan: A Reflection

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.

A broader perspective on the British Empire’s war against Japan would embrace the history of Australia’s war, the Kokoda Trail and the attacks on Darwin -so entrenched in that nation’s war historiography. It would inlcude New Zealand’s deployments to Fanning Island, Fiji, the Indian Ocean, and the Middle East; the enormous defensive preparations in places such as Fiji and Kenya, and the disruption to people’s lives and environmental change and degradation caused by war in places such as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands Protectorate, all territories under the Union Flag. It would also embrace the political upheaval and social-economic distress caused to indigenous populations throughout the eastern Empire, the launch of the ‘Quit India’ movement at a moment of profound crisis caused by Japanese conquests, and the activities of Burmese and Indian forces working for and against the Empire and the resistance to Japanese occupation of outfits like the ethnically-Chinese Malaya People’s Anti-Japanese Army.

The Empire’s war against Japan also involved the conquest of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and subsequent raids and naval bombardments on the islands, Japanese attacks on British and Allied shipping as far west as the Mozambique Channel (including the torpedoing of the battleship Ramillies), numerous atrocities at sea, and the April 1942 raids on Ceylon. These were conducted by the same fleet that had attacked Pearl Harbour, and if Admiral Sir James Somerville’s Eastern Fleet, scouring the waters south of Ceylon, had located it, the largest naval engagement since Jutland would have ensued.

The history of the Empire’s war against Japan, if it were to lose its fixation with Burma – as the epicentre of activity - might better comprehend the allied nature of the war in this region too, and the very real threat posed by the prospect of all three Axis powers linking hands across the Indian Ocean.

The Americans refer to the ‘China-Burma-India’ theatre, a better geographical capture than that allowed by the standard ‘Burma campaign’ appellation common in British historiography. In the latter phases of the war, as the Fourteenth Army closed on Mandalay and Rangoon, Allied air and sea power pummelled Japanese targets on land and sea on a daily basis, including battleship and carrier strikes on Japanese targets in Java and Sumatra.

A broader view of the war against Japan that embraced the Indian Ocean as well as the Pacific and the land-based Burma campaign also allows us to consider the idea that perhaps Britain and the Empire’s greatest contribution to ‘Victory over Japan’ was not in Burma. Strategically, Japan was never going to be beaten there, nor the British Empire defeated once the Japanese tide had culminated in 1942. But in defending the Indian Ocean region from East Africa to the Malay barrier, keeping its sea lanes secure for vital Allied transit (for example, USSR Lend-Lease traversing the Indian Ocean to be delivered to Iraqi and Iranian ports for onward movement, and supplying the fighting in the Middle East via the Red Sea), enormous imperial deployments won a defensive victory that, though ultimately based on American power in the Pacific, was a key contribution to victory in a world war, and to the successful operation of the vast Allied logistical and supply networks on which it depended.

A broader conception of the British Empire’s war against Japan would also embrace the politics, strategies, and military operations involved in the creation and work of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten’s South East Asia Command, headquartered first in Delhi and then in Kandy in Ceylon’s central highlands. It was the subject of incessant battles between Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff regarding British strategy in the eastern war. On the one hand, there was the urge to ‘liberate’ British territories lost to the Japanese using imperial forces, rather than have them returned to British rule as a result of American or Chinese victories.

This urge was given further impetus by the fear that if the British didn’t get there first, they might not be returned at all, Roosevelt having made great play of the suggestion that Hong Kong be gifted to China, or that the French be prevented from returning to Indo-China. It became a core task for Mountbatten to not only get forces into Malaya and Singapore as soon as possible after Burma had been reconquered, but also to the Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China, neither of those prostrate powers being in any position, as the war ended, to generate the wherewithal to reoccupy them themselves.

On the other hand, the Chiefs of Staff argued that Britain’s main weight should be directed to sending forces into the Pacific to take part in the assault on the Japanese home islands. This would not only make good the pledge to pivot east once victory had been secured in Europe, demonstrating forcefully to the Americans that the British Empire stood by its pledge and reassuring imperial citizens throughout the region, but it would also garner favour with the nation that would obviously be the leading external power throughout the east, and ensure that Britain remained a Pacific power. It thus came to pass that when VJ Day was declared, British fleet carriers were engaging Japanese targets and being struck by kamikazes in the Pacific. Japan’s unexpected surrender after the atomic bombs abruptly ended British planning to contribute further to the theatre as part of Operational Downfall, the prospective invasion of Japan. If it had gone ahead, it would have witnessed hundreds of thousands of British Empire and Commonwealth service personnel engaged, as part of the British Pacific Fleet, the bomber squadrons of ‘Tiger Force’, fighter squadrons of the Royal Australian Air Force, and the land forces of a Commonwealth Corps including Australian, British, and Canadian troops.

The Americans refer to the ‘China-Burma-India’ theatre, a better geographical capture than that allowed by the standard ‘Burma campaign’ appellation common in British historiography. In the latter phases of the war, as the Fourteenth Army closed on Mandalay and Rangoon, Allied air and sea power pummelled Japanese targets on land and sea on a daily basis, including battleship and carrier strikes on Japanese targets in Java and Sumatra.

A broader view of the war against Japan that embraced the Indian Ocean as well as the Pacific and the land-based Burma campaign also allows us to consider the idea that perhaps Britain and the Empire’s greatest contribution to ‘Victory over Japan’ was not in Burma. Strategically, Japan was never going to be beaten there, nor the British Empire defeated once the Japanese tide had culminated in 1942. But in defending the Indian Ocean region from East Africa to the Malay barrier, keeping its sea lanes secure for vital Allied transit (for example, USSR Lend-Lease traversing the Indian Ocean to be delivered to Iraqi and Iranian ports for onward movement, and supplying the fighting in the Middle East via the Red Sea), enormous imperial deployments won a defensive victory that, though ultimately based on American power in the Pacific, was a key contribution to victory in a world war, and to the successful operation of the vast Allied logistical and supply networks on which it depended.

A broader conception of the British Empire’s war against Japan would also embrace the politics, strategies, and military operations involved in the creation and work of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten’s South East Asia Command, headquartered first in Delhi and then in Kandy in Ceylon’s central highlands. It was the subject of incessant battles between Churchill and the Chiefs of Staff regarding British strategy in the eastern war. On the one hand, there was the urge to ‘liberate’ British territories lost to the Japanese using imperial forces, rather than have them returned to British rule as a result of American or Chinese victories.

This urge was given further impetus by the fear that if the British didn’t get there first, they might not be returned at all, Roosevelt having made great play of the suggestion that Hong Kong be gifted to China, or that the French be prevented from returning to Indo-China. It became a core task for Mountbatten to not only get forces into Malaya and Singapore as soon as possible after Burma had been reconquered, but also to the Dutch East Indies and French Indo-China, neither of those prostrate powers being in any position, as the war ended, to generate the wherewithal to reoccupy them themselves.

On the other hand, the Chiefs of Staff argued that Britain’s main weight should be directed to sending forces into the Pacific to take part in the assault on the Japanese home islands. This would not only make good the pledge to pivot east once victory had been secured in Europe, demonstrating forcefully to the Americans that the British Empire stood by its pledge and reassuring imperial citizens throughout the region, but it would also garner favour with the nation that would obviously be the leading external power throughout the east, and ensure that Britain remained a Pacific power. It thus came to pass that when VJ Day was declared, British fleet carriers were engaging Japanese targets and being struck by kamikazes in the Pacific. Japan’s unexpected surrender after the atomic bombs abruptly ended British planning to contribute further to the theatre as part of Operational Downfall, the prospective invasion of Japan. If it had gone ahead, it would have witnessed hundreds of thousands of British Empire and Commonwealth service personnel engaged, as part of the British Pacific Fleet, the bomber squadrons of ‘Tiger Force’, fighter squadrons of the Royal Australian Air Force, and the land forces of a Commonwealth Corps including Australian, British, and Canadian troops.