TASK FORCE GREMLIN

At the end of WWII the Japanese Imperial Army Air Force was conscripted into the Royal Air Force in Southeast Asia

- WORDS STUART HADAWAY

In August 1945, the war in the Far East came to a sudden and unexpected end.

The atomic bombs had been closely guarded secrets, and the Allied forces and commanders on the ground were taken as much by surprise as the Japanese. Across the Pacific and Southeast Asia, forces were still engaged in heavy fighting in China, the Philippines and on Okinawa while preparing for the liberation of Malaya and Singapore and the invasion of Japan itself. Invasion forces had to be retasked, split up and thrown piecemeal into ad hoc operations to secure Japanese garrisons spread across the entire region.

At the insistence of the Supreme Commander in the theatre, General Douglas McArthur, no forces were to accept local Japanese surrenders before the main, carefully choreographed surrender in Tokyo Bay on 2 September. While the weeks between the atomic bombs and the official surrender proved useful for planning and reorientating the available forces, it also allowed chaos to break out in several regions as the enemy withdrew to their barracks and allowed local puppet forces and nationalist movements to fight for dominance. One of the worst places affected by this was French Indo-China, now Vietnam.