The recent Indo-Japanese bonhomie belies a lesser-known history of Imperial Japan that had once occupied a part of India, the penal colony (‘Kalapaani’) of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. While the occupation lasted about three and a half years (1942-45), the same is a controversial period that elicits mixed response from the locals, since ‘Netaji’ Subhash Chandra Bose was given the nominal charge of the administration by the Japanese. He had set up the Arzi-e-Hukumat-e-Azad Hind (Provisional Government of Free India), and later on a visit to the Islands, renamed them Shaheed (Martyr) and Swaraj (Self-rule), but essentially the control had remained firmly in the hands of the Japanese occupiers. Technically, Andaman and Nicobar Islands became the first territory to be liberated from the British, by flying the Indian Tricolour. The powerful Japanese armada that had landed on the Islands on March 23, 1942, met with no opposition from the depleted garrison of the British Indian Army that had approximately 300 Sikh soldiers and 23 British officers. Most of the British officers were sent as POW’s to Singapore or jailed locally, while the Indian soldiers opted to join the Indian National Army. But, soon the Japanese let loose a reign of unprecedented terror.

While the more publicised atrocities of the Japanese occupation are documented in the Chinese heartland and the Korean peninsula, with events that are compositely infamous as the ‘Asian Holocaust’. The Showa Era (of Emperor Hirohito) is estimated to have caused up to 14 million deaths that are directly attributed to the Japanese acts of torture, massacre, experimentation, and starvation. From conducting biological and chemical attacks, ‘comfort women’ to forced labour – the gory details of the Japanese occupation has led to multiple Japanese apologies for its war crimes, over the years. The Nanking Massacre (killing 300000 civilians and POW’s), Manila Massacre (killing 100000 Filipinos), Sook Ching Massacre (in Singapore that randomly killed ‘suspects’), Kalagong Massacre – follow a pattern of Scorched Earth policy that directed the Japanese victors to “Kill all, burn all, loot all”, and has haunted the conscience of the modern nation of Japan to reconcile with its disturbing history.