264 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
powers—the British in Burma and Malaya, the French in Indochina,
the Dutch in the East Indies, and the Americans in the Philippines. In
Indochina, the Japanese found it expedient to work with the Vichy
French; too late, in 1945, they shifted to supporting some Vietnamese
nationalists. This enabled the communists in the Viet Minh to adopt
the nationalist mantle. Elsewhere, the Japanese supported Asian na-
tionalists, to a greater or lesser degree. The Indians, the Burmese, the
Indonesians, and some Malays and Filipinos took advantage of Japan’s
undermining of Western colonial authority to advance their own in de-
pen dence movements. In Indonesia, Japan had released Mohammad
Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta from long years in Dutch prisons.
From 1942 to 1945, they accepted Japanese help to build their civilian
administration and train their military. Though the Indonesian procla-
mation of in de pen dence did not come until August 1945, wartime de-
velopments would make a Dutch reconquest of Indonesia as dif fi cult as
the reassertion of British colonial rule in Burma. That Japan had un-
dermined the British and other Western colonial powers in Southeast
Asia was what mattered to Bose, despite the deplorable Japanese ag-
gression toward the Chinese and other Asians.
Bose’s Provisional Government extended its protective umbrella over
Indians living in all these lands. It obtained de jure control over a piece
of Indian territory when the Japanese handed over the Andaman and
Nicobar islands in late December 1943, though de facto military con-
trol was not relinquished by the Japanese admiralty. Bose redeemed his
rash promise of setting foot on Indian soil before the year’s end by ar-
riving in Port Blair on December 29 for a three- day visit to these is-
lands. As usual, his visit was steeped in symbolism. The British had
imprisoned some of India’s greatest revolutionaries in the notorious
Cellular Jail on Andaman Island, where many had spent harsh life sen-
tences and not a few had been sent to the gallows. Netaji paid tribute to
the revolutionaries who had suf fered there, and likened the opening of
the gates of Cellular Jail to the liberation of the Bastille. He hoisted the
Indian tricolor at the Gymkhana grounds in Port Blair while a chorus
sang the national anthem. Before his departure, he renamed Andaman
as Shaheed (“Martyrs”) Island, and Nicobar as Swaraj (“Freedom”) Is-