It seems to me that VJ-Day has always been a load of tommy-rot. It should be no surprise that Boris Johnson sought the limelight this year, before crawling off
before a sea of troubles, to rough it on a camping holiday amongst the midges of the Scottish Highlands.
British forces, (when they were fighting) in Asia were not doing so for the liberation of Asian people but for the continuation of their own murderous thieving Empire.
The British were responsible for the murder by famine of up to three million Indians in Bengal in 1942 -43, people supposedly living under the protection of”their” King-Emperor in London. The British had not been invited by the natives to India, or Burma, Shanghai, or Hong Kong, and the British were not “pro-democracy
activists. The French were no less murderous and grasping in their overseas “possessions”, nor were the Dutch. It is gratifying to hear that King Willem of the
Netherlands has recently “fessed up” to the crimes committed by the Dutch in Indonesia both before and AFTER the Second World War. Even the current King of the Belgians has fessed up to Belgian crimes in the Congo.
The British were smugly and snugly sat on their arses in Singapore, where they had done little to recommend themselves to the natives, when they surrendered
without much of a fight to a much less numerous force of Japanese. The British were led by General Percival, who as a Major in the Essex Regiment had been
responsible for the torture and murder of unarmed Irishmen in West Cork in 1921 and 1922. His regiment was no more courageous when faced with armed
Irishmen then, than he showed himself when faced with armed Japanese in 1942.
Percival was present at the surrender of the Japanese in Tokyo Bay in August 1945. As was Admiral Lord Mountbatten, now recognised as a Great Gatsby,
who crashed into high society by marrying a millionairess in 1922 and apparently leap-frogged through the ranks with talents less nautical than naughty.
His protege, the then young Prince Philip, was there to share the glory. Presiding over the surrender was Douglas MacArthur, who left his men in the lurch in the Philippines in 1942, scuttled off to Australia, and arrived for photo-shoots with his corn-cob pipe to claim the credit for the suffering of better Americans.
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