The Japanese occupation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands occurred in 1942 during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. The
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated ...
(8,293 km
2 on 139 islands), are a group of islands situated in the
Bay of Bengal
The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west and northwest by India, on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. Its southern limit is a line bet ...
at about from
Kolkata
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...
, from
Chennai
Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of ...
and from
Cape of Nargis in
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
. Until 1938 the British government used them as a penal colony for
India
India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...
n and
African political prisoners, who were mainly put in the notorious
Cellular Jail
The Cellular Jail, also known as Kālā Pānī (), was a British colonial prison in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The prison was used by the colonial government of India for the purpose of exiling criminals and political prisoners. Many ...
in
Port Blair
Port Blair () is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division ('' tehsil'') of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South A ...
, the biggest town (port) on the islands. Today they form a
Union Territory of
India
India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...
.
The only military objective on the islands was the city of Port Blair. The garrison consisted of a 300-man Sikh militia with 23 British officers, augmented in January 1942 by a
Gurkha
The Gurkhas or Gorkhas (), with endonym Gorkhali ), are soldiers native to the Indian subcontinent, Indian Subcontinent, chiefly residing within Nepal and some parts of Northeast India.
The Gurkha units are composed of Nepalis and Indian Go ...
detachment of 4/
12th Frontier Force Regiment
The 12th Frontier Force Regiment was formed in 1922 as part of the British Indian Army. It consisted of five regular battalions; numbered 1 to 5 and the 10th (Training) Battalion. During the Second World War a further ten battalions were raised. ...
of the
16th Indian Infantry Brigade
The 2nd Indian Infantry Brigade was an infantry brigade formation of the Indian Army during World War II. It was formed in Rawalpindi in September 1939. In October 1940, it was renamed 16th (Independent) Indian Infantry Brigade in November 1941, ...
. Following the fall of
Rangoon
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military governme ...
on March 8, however, the British recognized that Port Blair had become impossible to defend, and on March 10 the Gurkhas were withdrawn to the
Arakan
Arakan ( or ) is a historic coastal region in Southeast Asia. Its borders faced the Bay of Bengal to its west, the Indian subcontinent to its north and Burma proper to its east. The Arakan Mountains isolated the region and made it access ...
peninsula.
Invasion force
The Japanese, seeking to secure their seaward flank, dispatched a force to seize the islands. The force was composed of the following units and ships:
Distant Cover
:*Cruiser (flagship) ''
Chokai''
:Carrier Division 4
:*Carrier ''
Ryūjō'' (although listed, she did not conduct air operations)
:Cruiser Division 7 – Heavy cruisers
:*''
Kumano''
:*
:*''
Mikuma''
:*''
Mogami''
:Destroyer Division 11
:*''
Fubuki''
:*''
Hatsuyuki''
:*''
Shirayuki''
:*''Murakami''
Close Cover
:Destroyer Squadron 3
:*Light cruiser ''
Sendai
is the capital city of Miyagi Prefecture, the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,091,407 in 525,828 households, and is one of Japan's 20 designated cities. The city was founded in 1600 by the ''daimyō'' Date M ...
''
::Destroyer Division 19
::*''
Isonami''
::*''
Uranami''
::*''
Ayanami''
::Destroyer Division 20
::*''
Amagiri''
::*
::*''
Yugiri''
::*''
Shirakumo''
Invasion Force
:*Light cruiser ''
Yura'' – escort unit
:*9 Transports
::*1 Battalion from 18th Infantry Division
::*9th Base Force
:*Training cruiser ''
Kashii''
:*Escort ship ''
Shumushu
russian: Шумшу ja, 占守島
, image_name = Shumshu.jpg
, image_caption = A Landsat 7 image of Shumshu Island. The northern tip of Paramushir Island is at left. The First Kuril Strait lies across the upper portion of the image.
, image_size ...
''
:*Minelayer ''
Hatsutaka''
:*Converted gunboat ''Eiko Maru''
Minesweeper Division 1
:*Minesweepers W1, W3, W4
Special Minesweeper Division 91
:*Minesweepers: ''Choko Maru'',
''Shonan Maru No. 7, ''Shonan Maru'' #5
Air Unit
:*Seaplane tender ''Sagara Maru'' (operated east of the Nicobars)
Japanese occupation
Port Blair was occupied on the 23 March 1942. The garrison offered no resistance to the landings, and were disarmed and interned; many of the Sikh militia later enlisted in the
Indian National Army
The Indian National Army (INA; ''Azad Hind Fauj'' ; 'Free Indian Army') was a Collaboration with the Axis powers, collaborationist armed force formed by Indian collaborators and Imperial Japan on 1 September 1942 in Southeast Asia during Worl ...
.
The British militia officers were sent to Singapore as POWs,
whilst Chief Commissioner Waterfall, Deputy Commissioner Major A.G. Bird and the other British administrative officers were imprisoned. The Japanese released the prisoners held in the jail,
one of whom, Pushkar Bakshi, became their principal collaborator. The islands were put under the authority of Colonel Bucho of the INA, whilst a number of junior Indian officials in the administration were elevated to more responsible posts. The defence of the islands was assigned to the newly formed fighter squadron of the Kanoya Kōkūtai based at
Tavoy
Dawei (, ; mnw, ဓဝဲါ, ; th, ทวาย, RTGS: ''Thawai'', ; formerly known as Tavoy) is a city in south-eastern Myanmar and is the capital of the Tanintharyi Region, formerly known as the Tenasserim Division, on the northern bank of ...
in southern
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
. This fighter squadron was the former "Yamada Unit" under the control of the 22nd Koku Sentai, then based at
Penang
Penang ( ms, Pulau Pinang, is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Malacca Strait. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Ma ...
.
Six flying boats from the Toko Kōkūtai were dispatched on March 26, with twelve more arriving shortly thereafter. Within the islands, a Japanese garrison of approximately 600 men, together with the police force, now under Japanese control, were responsible for maintaining order.
Japanese Army personnel in Andaman and Nicobar
*Yoshisuke Inoue: Commanding Officer 35th Independent Mixed Brigade, Andaman Islands
*Toshio Itsuki: Commanding Officer 36th Independent Mixed Brigade, Nicobar Islands
*
Hideo Iwakuro: Japanese Liaison Officer to Indian National Army
*Major-General Saburo Isoda: Japanese Liaison Officer to Indian National Army
Japanese atrocities
The events of the next three years are not easy to establish, as the Japanese destroyed all records when they left. The principal sources are an unpublished report by local resident Rama Krishna: ''The Andaman Islands under Japanese Occupation 1942–5'', another unpublished account by a British officer, D. McCarthy: ''The Andaman Interlude'' (he was sent on a secret mission to the islands in 1944), together with the memories of the older inhabitants interviewed by historians. All these and the published works that draw upon them are in agreement that the occupation saw numerous atrocities committed by the Japanese against the local population.
The first victim of the occupation came on the fourth day after the Japanese landings. Angered by soldiers who had pursued some chickens into his house, a young man called Zulfiqar Ali fired an airgun at them. No-one was hurt, but he was forced into hiding. After twenty-four hours he was captured and marched to the ''maidan'' in front of the Browning Club. Here his arms were twisted until they broke, and he was then shot. A cement memorial now stands on the spot. In the early days of the occupation local intellectuals (mostly officials and doctors) were encouraged to join
Rash Behari Bose
Rash Behari Bose (; 25 May 1886 – 21 January 1945) was an Indian revolutionary leader against the British Raj. He was one of the key organisers of the Ghadar Mutiny and founded the First Indian National Army during World War 2. The Indian ...
's
Indian Independence League
The Indian Independence League (also known as IIL) was a political organisation operated from the 1920s to the 1940s to organise those living outside India into seeking the removal of British colonial rule over India. Founded by Indian nationa ...
, and a 'Peace Committee' was formed from its members, headed by Dr.
Diwan Singh. Over the next few months they did what they could to mitigate the suffering of the population at the hands of the Japanese, but to little avail: indeed, many of them would later fall victim themselves. In any case, there was little any of them could have done to save Major A.G. Bird, who had not been sent to
Rangoon
Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military governme ...
or
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
like the other British captives, and of whom the Japanese were determined to make an example. Pushkar Bakshi persuaded a fellow convict, Sarup Ram, to bear witness at Bird's 'trial' that he had been spying (wireless parts had been planted in the house where he was imprisoned). According to eyewitnesses, a popular man known as "Chirrie" ('Bird' in
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of North India, northern, Central India, centr ...
) had his arms and legs twisted and broken, and was then beheaded by Colonel Bucho with his sword.
Korean and Malay women were brought in to act as "
comfort women
Comfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese '' ia ...
" for the Japanese garrison. Forced labour was used to build a new airport, and in October 1942 mass arrests of 'spies' took place, with 300 people being confined in the Cellular Jail, where some were tortured. Of these seven were shot, including Narayan Rao, who had been Superintendent of Police under Japanese auspices, Itter Singh, the Deputy Superintendent, Subedar Sube Singh of the Military Police and Dr. Surinder Nag. Realising that the Japanese were targeting influential members of the population, the members of the Indian Independence League grew increasingly nervous, and ceased to engage in much nationalist activity. In 1943 a second reign of terror was unleashed by the new commander of the garrison, Colonel Jochi Renusakai, and chief of police Mitsubashi, both of whom had served at
Nanking
Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. ...
. 600 people were arrested and tortured, including Dr. Diwan Singh, who died as a result of his injuries. At this stage, the Japanese decided that Bakshi was no longer useful, and he was imprisoned.
The Provisional Government of Free India
On December 29, 1943, political control of the islands was passed to the
Azad Hind government of
Subhas Chandra Bose
Subhas Chandra Bose ( ; 23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*) was an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and Imperi ...
. Bose visited
Port Blair
Port Blair () is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division ('' tehsil'') of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South A ...
to raise the tricolour flag of the Indian National Army. During this, his only visit to the Andamans, he was kept carefully screened from the local population by the Japanese authorities. Various attempts were made to inform him of the sufferings of the people of the Andamans, and the fact that many local Indian Nationalists were at that time being tortured in the
Cellular Jail
The Cellular Jail, also known as Kālā Pānī (), was a British colonial prison in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The prison was used by the colonial government of India for the purpose of exiling criminals and political prisoners. Many ...
. Bose does not seem to have been aware of this, and the judgment of some is that he "failed his people". After Bose's departure the Japanese remained in effective control of the Andamans, and the sovereignty of the Provisional Government of Free India was largely fictional. The islands themselves were renamed "Shaheed" and "Swaraj", meaning "martyr" and "self-rule" respectively. Bose appointed General
A. D. Loganathan as the governor of the islands, and had limited involvement with the administration of the territory. During his interrogation after the war Loganathan admitted that he had only had full control over the islands' vestigial education department, as the Japanese had retained control over the police force, and in protest he had refused to accept responsibility for any other areas of Government. He was powerless to prevent the worst Japanese atrocity of the occupation, the
Homfreyganj massacre on 30 January 1944, where 44 Indian civilians were shot by the Japanese on suspicion of spying. Many of them were members of the
Indian Independence League
The Indian Independence League (also known as IIL) was a political organisation operated from the 1920s to the 1940s to organise those living outside India into seeking the removal of British colonial rule over India. Founded by Indian nationa ...
. Notionally this government continued to administer the islands, which were almost the only territory it ever acquired, until the British retook them in 1945, but in practice little had changed.
The last year
As food became more scarce in 1945, the Japanese resorted to ever more desperate measures. Between 250 and 700 people (estimates vary) from the Aberdeen area of South Andaman were deported to an uninhabited island to grow food. According to a survivor, a released convict called Saudagar Ali, at least half drowned or were eaten by sharks as they were pushed out of boats in the dark, whilst the remainder either died of starvation or were killed by Burmese pirates. A rescue mission sent to the island after the end of the occupation found just twelve survivors and over a hundred skeletons on the beach.
In all, approximately 2,000 people in the Andamans are thought to have died as a result of the occupation, and at least 501 were tortured by the Japanese. The former figure represents 10% of the pre-war population of Port Blair. Casualties on the more sparsely-populated Nicobar islands were fewer, as the Japanese did not have a garrison there, although in 1943 they created a brief reign of terror on Car Nicobar as they rounded up forced labour amongst the Nicobarese. The occupation left a legacy of lasting bitterness towards the Japanese, and to some extent towards their collaborators in the Provisional Government of Free India, amongst the generation which experienced it.
[Dasgupta ''Red Sun over Black Water'' pp. 101, 131, 133; Mathur ''Kala Pani'' pp. 254–55]
Japanese Vice Admiral Teizo Hara, and Major-General Tamenori Sato surrendered the islands to Lt Col Nathu Singh Commandant 1/7 Rajputs on 15 August 1945 on board the Royal Navy warship HMS Sandbar, the signing ceremonies were to take place later. The only place where a large scale surrender of the Japanese to Indian Forces took place was the Andamans where a Japanese admiral and a general surrendered to Lt Col later Lt Gen Nathu Singh Commandant 1/7 Rajputs bringing to an end the Second World War. A memorial in Port Blair commemorating the Japanese surrender was built thereafter.
Brigadier J.A. Salomons, commander of the
116th Indian Infantry Brigade, and Chief Administrator Mr. Noel K. Patterson, Indian Civil Service, on 7 October 1945, in a ceremony performed on the Gymkhana Ground, Port Blair.
See also
*
Battle of the Malacca Strait
*
Cocos Islands mutiny
*
India in World War II
During the Second World War (1939–1945), India was a part of the British Empire. India officially declared war on Nazi Germany in September 1939. India, as a part of the Allied Nations, sent over two and a half million soldiers to f ...
Notes
References
*
*
External links
Commons images of The Allied Reoccupation of the Andaman Islands
{{DEFAULTSORT:Japanese Occupation Of The Andaman Islands
Conflicts in 1942
History of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Andaman
Andaman
Azad Hind
Andaman
Andaman
Andaman Islands
The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between th ...
World War II occupied territories
India–Japan military relations
Military history of the British Empire and Commonwealth in World War II
Battles and operations of World War II involving the United Kingdom
Amphibious operations of World War II