Burma, 1942 and the Anglo-Indian and Anglo-Burmese Community

Abstract

1942 in Burma constituted a time when many Anglo-Indians demonstrated the bravery in time of crisis that has been a repeated theme of their longer history. In the dark opening weeks of 1942, the Allies attempted to hold the port of Rangoon at all costs, in the hope that Australian reinforcements might arrive from the Middle East, or that Stillwell’s Chinese forces could yet regroup; through the 1930s, the port had been the destination of American lend-lease supplies to the Chinese which were docked there, then transported up-country and across into east-central china by way of Burma’s railways and what became the Burma Road. For a total of seven weeks, this Battle of Rangoon produced extreme apprehension for the Japanese Army had already entered Ternasserim and an Allied military withdrawal seemed inevitable. For reasons that will be plain by the concluding pages, British announcements that all was not lost rang hollow, along with those suggesting that the Allied forces would remain with civilians in the event of a Japanese takeover of the rest of Burma.