‘Flashes of rage, terror, elation, relief and amazement’

On the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan, Charles Harris looks back at the 14th Army’s extraordinary campaign and the remarkable characters who shaped it

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EIGHTY years ago, on August 6, 1945, an American warplane, named Enola Gay after the pilot's mother, dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima. Nine days later, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender. The Second World War was over. Conflict in the Far East has resonated less than that elsewhere, but it tore apart the British Empire more effectively than Germany ever did and the participants generally suffered considerably worse.

The Japanese attacked the American fleet in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Capturing Hong Kong on Christmas Day, they swept south, often on bicycles, towards Singapore: diadem of the British Empire. Their tactics of speed, surprise and encirclement were those that Gen Wavell (commander-in-chief in South-East Asia) had himself adopted against the Italians in North Africa. Churchill demanded Singapore be defended 'to the bitter end' and Wavell instructed Gen Percival, who commanded there, to 'have no thought of surrender.' However, Percival forbade defensive measures suggested to him, saying they would upset local morale, and, on February 15, he surrendered more than 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops to 35,000 Japanese—to suffer appalling, often fatal, treatment as prisoners and slave labourers. 'Our greatest defeat in history,' Churchill is said to have lamented.

Having captured Malaya's tin and rubber, Japan sought Burma's oil. Rangoon was taken on March 7. Then Wavell, in an inspired appointment, plucked Brig William Slim, the 51-year-old former Gurkha officer leading the 10th Indian Division in Iraq, to command in Burma. It was a fearful challenge, to which he rose magnificently. Slim wrote in his 1956 memoir