7 March 1942 was but a few minutes old when Jisaburo Ozawa, alert and awake despite the lateness of the hour, received a sudden, although not altogether unexpected visitor - his Chief of Operations, the eccentric but innovative Kameto Kuroshima.
"Java has fallen, Admiral," said Kuroshima, scarcely able to contain his excitement. "Sugiyama has informed our Staff Headquarters that the Port of Rangoon will go the same way by tomorrow."
"And so comes the time to fulfil our part of the bargain," noted Ozawa in reponse. "Are Homma's men poised to assume their positions?"
"They entered Burma right on the heels of Iida's columns, and will be fully organised for pickup in Rangoon by the end of the month."
Ozawa took a long drag of his cigarette before continuing. "Advise all commands. Heikegani is hereby concluded. Execute Option Daikokuten."
"With pleasure, sir. Bon voyage and good hunting."
"Thank you, my friend. Be seeing you."
At dawn, the Yamato's crew broke into racuous cheering as she hauled anchor and exited Hashirajima, Palembang bound. For his part, Ozawa, on her bridge, permitted himself a small but indulgent smile. The time for complex multipronged coordination was now over. But a singular objective remained, and he could thus finally follow his heart's desire by putting to sea and joining the fray.
***
With the Allies reeling after their defeats in South East Asia, it was important that Japan maintain offensive momentum and not give them any chance to properly regroup or recover. The British Empire was at its weakest point in history - Karl Dönitz's U-boats and Hilfskreuzers, armed with formidable long range pure oxygen torpedoes supplied by Japan, were steadily starving it in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and in the Far East it was practically on the ropes. The time was ripe for Japan to deal it a mighty knockout punch, namely a full scale invasion of India itself.
The ships used in the Southern Offensive - warships and transports alike - would, for the most part, neither remain idle nor return to Japan once the duties Heikegani required of them were completed. Instead, they and their crews would find themselves reused for Daikokuten, the second, Indian phase of Japanese operations, following a suitable period of recuperation in the newly conquered Southern Resource Zone.
Riau, Palembang, Singapore and Port Swettenham thus became buzzing hives of activity as 1st and 2nd Mobile Forces, plus Ozawa's newly arrived Yamato group, spent most of March refuelling and replenishing. Then, accompanied by a flotilla of transport vessels that included much captured Allied shipping along with the craft that landed Hitoshi Imamura's 16th Army in the Indies, the largest IJN armada since Tsushima steamed up the Malacca Strait towards Rangoon, where its transport component embarked a fresh reserve of IJA troops for the assault on India. This was the newly arrived 14th Army, led by the polished Anglophile Masaharu Homma, who had served with distinction in the BEF during the First World War.
Homma was ridiculed by a number of his colleagues for 'going native' during his time as CinC Taiwan Army District, where he treated the indigenous Takasago population, their customs and religion with unprecedented respect. But these qualities of his produced effective results - the Takasago flocked to Japan's banner, these fierce tribesmen becoming widely employed as IJA 'jungle squads' during Heikegani. Hajime Sugiyama eventually saw Homma's 'soft' nature as essential for securing the allegiance of India's populace, along with his understanding of British military matters. Sugiyama resolved not to repeat the blunders of China, although humanitarian motivations were the furthest thing from his mind.
To aid Homma in the 'hearts and minds' department, 14th Army's ranks included the Japanese-trained Indian National Army of Subhas Bose, whom Sugiyama earmarked to govern a new, Axis-aligned state of Free India once the British were ousted. Indeed it was Bose who suggested the Indian operation's name - Daikokuten, the Japanese analogue of Shiva, Hindu god of destruction - and provided vital information, courtesy of Saraswathi Rajamani's fifth columnists on the subcontinent, regarding India's increasingly unstable domestic situation, a state of affairs that would be highly conducive to the invaders.
The seemingly unstoppable Japanese juggernaut had deeply impressed the Indian population, including more than a few personnel within the ranks of the British Indian Army. It increasingly appeared to them that the Japanese advance was irresistible, and that the writing was on the wall for British rule in Asia. Already imbued with nationalist and pro-independence sentiment, they represented a powder keg of inressurection just waiting to be set off - particularly in Bengal, where tensions between the British and the inhabitants of Contai, Midnapore and Dacca were strained to near breaking point.
Moreover, the country was abysmally defended as of April 1942. Only seven divisions were immediately available for use outside the Northwest Frontier. Of these, six were poorly trained and equipped, and a good portion of their personnel were preoccupied with maintaining internal security as detailed above. In light of the chaos in Burma, Field Marshall Wavell, CinC India, saw the immediate threat as coming overland from that direction and deployed the bulk of his forces accordingly, although his London superiors overruled in one respect and redeployed a full division to Ceylon, which they regarded as being equally vulnerable.
Thus was he caught wrong-footed when Daikokuten's storm broke on the sun kissed shores of Orissa.
