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the Thai island of Phuket to capture forward airbases, and then an assault in larger force on two main landing grounds in Malaya, at Morib beach in Selangor and the resort of Port Dickson, some miles to the south. The original codenames signalled martial resolve: Mailfist – the push to the south to Singapore, a replica of the Japanese blitzkrieg of 1941–2 – and Broadsword – a sweep northwards from Kuala Lumpur to secure the rest of the peninsula. Mountbatten had estimated it would take him until the end of the year to fight his way to Singapore, and likely longer if a large garrison was mustered to hold it. However, the operation was now Tiderace: a dash to occupy Singapore. The first landings at Penang were designed to probe the intentions of the Japanese, but no resistance was encountered. After some delay, and a failure to attend an earlier meeting, the Japanese local commander, Rear Admiral Jisaku Uzumi, came aboard HMS Nelson on the evening of 2 September, wearing the DSC he had earned as Britain’s ally in the 1914–18 war, and surrendered the garrison. He fainted and was rushed to hospital; the military policemen who carried him there took his sword as a souvenir.77 The next morning, led by the town band, a detachment of Royal Marines marched to the Eastern & Oriental Hotel. The E&O had been the hub of the pre-war colonial elite, the place where the entire British community had gathered secretly on the night of 16 December 1941 to abandon the island. It had been left to the Ceylonese editor of the local Straits Echo, M. Saravanamuttu, to lower the Union Flag at Fort Cornwallis and surrender Penang to the Japanese. In September 1945, Saravanamuttu once again gathered together the representatives of the Asian communities, this time to pass the administration of their home back to Britain. As the Royal Marines marched they threw Senior Service cigarettes into the crowds. Those who managed to grab them sold them at exorbitant prices to buy food. Across the island, hunger riots were breaking out.78

On the morning of 4 September the armada passed the old Raffles Lighthouse, at the southern entrance to the Straits of Malacca. After 1,297 days as a Japanese city, ‘Syonan’ was to fall to the British without a shot. As they approached the island the soldiers noted that the Japanese defensive dispositions were remarkably similar to those adopted by Percival in 1941. The first, tense encounter between British and Japanese officers was aboard HMS Sussex. There were still rumours that General Itagaki had defied Hirohito’s orders and ordered a die-hard defence of Malaya. The navy feared Japanese attack boats. Itagaki was furious that the humiliating task of surrender had fallen to him. (His superior, Count Terauchi, had suffered a stroke in Vietnam.) Accompanying Itagaki was one of the architects of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Vice Admiral Shigeu Fukudome. Itagaki was received aboard by the senior British officers, Lieutenant General Sir Philip Christison and Major General E. C. R. Mansergh. The contrast between the two delegations was striking. The Japanese were in immaculately starched ceremonial rig, with their swords at their side. The British officers wore crumpled battledress. They had left India at short notice, with no change of clothes; there was no water to wash with on ship, and their skin was stained by the malaria preventative Mepachrin. A Japanese officer was reported to have remarked: ‘You are two hours late,’ only to be met with the reply, ‘We don’t keep Tokyo time here.’ The main issue at the meeting was responsibility for law and order on the island. Then Itagaki was given an agreement to sign. He shut himself with his aides in an anteroom for four hours to translate it. The only concession Itagaki secured, and that only temporary, was the right of his officers to keep their swords. He left the meeting in tears.79

The next morning advance parties of British and Indian troops landed on the southern islands, and at 11 a.m. reached the docks at Tanjong Pagar. One of the first men ashore was O. W. Gilmour, a civil