Kathiresan Ramachanderam

By the late 1930s it became clear that the Japanese would push-on with their ambitions in Southeast Asia, and it was highly likely that a Japanese attack was underway. There was a lot of activity up north and Commonwealth troops in Malaya, not unaware of the danger that this posed to Commonwealth territories, formulated a plan to stall the Japanese in Thailand. The plan was called operation matador. Operation matador was designed to thwart highly anticipated amphibious landings in Songkhla, Pattani, and Kota Bharu. The person in charge of the operation, and its chief architect was Air Chief Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham, and his findings recommended that large reinforcements be sent immediately to Malaya. His suggestions however were ignored by the higher-ups in the chain of command, partly because the Commonwealth lacked the resources to do so.   There were some troops stationed in Malaya but the size of the Japanese army that eventually crossed the border from Thailand, outn...

The battle of Kota Bharu, was the first battle, in a series of battles, fought during the second world war, between commonwealth forces and the imperial Japanese army for control of the Malayan Peninsula. The attack on Kota Bharu, Kelantan, began on the 8th of December, with air strikes by Air Group III, a naval assault, and an infantry attack, that moved from the heavily forested Pattani province in Thailand into Kelantan, and possibly an amphibious crossing across the Golok River that separates Malaysia and Thailand, by forces under the command of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the man who headed the Japanese 25th Army, and the man who was later dubbed “the tiger of Malaya”. The first target was the 8th Indian Infantry Division stationed in Kota Bharu, under the command of Brigadier B. W. Key. The destruction on the Malayan side of things was total, the defenders capitulated within hours, but it was not because they lacked the will to fight, they fought, bravely, valiantly, and cou...