Ceylon in World War II
Admiral Somerville took over the house of the King's Harbour Master adjoining the Victoria Arcade Navy officer's mess.
[1] The fixed land defences consisted of four coastal batteries at Colombo and five at Trincomalee; these were established prior to the war.
Air defences were expanded starting in 1941 with the RAF occupying the civil airfield at Ratmalana near Colombo with its station headquarters set up at Kandawala.
They were supplemented by personnel of the Ceylon Defence Force who requested transfer to front line units of the British Army.
Cutting its teeth on the Port Commission Tugs Samson and Goliath, it later manned and operated trawlers and Antarctic whalers converted as Minesweepers and fitted out with guns, submarine detection equipment and anti-submarine weaponry.
In the course of these operations, the ships came under enemy fire, recovered essential information from Japanese aircraft shot down, sailed to Akyab after the Burma front was opened in two FMVs for harbour duties, and was called upon to accept the surrender of the Italian colonial ship Eritrea and escort her to port with a prize crew on board.
[3] Following the mutiny the use of Ceylonese combat troops was discontinued by the British, although a number of supply and transport units were used in the rear areas in the Middle East.
[4] There was some opposition to the war in Ceylon, particularly among the workers and the nationalists (such as the Ceylon National Congress), encouraged by the Trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (or "Samasamajists"), which supported the independence movement and led the anti-war movement, made it clear that it did not side with either the Axis powers or the Allies and considered the war an internationalist one.
Two young members of the Governing Party, Junius Jayawardene (who later became President) and Dudley Senanayake (later the third Prime Minister), held discussions with the Japanese with a view to collaboration to oust the British.
The local Ministers brought motions gifting the Ceylonese taxpayers' money to the British war effort, which were opposed by the pro-independence members of the State Council.
Starting in November 1939 and during the first half of 1940 there was a wave of spontaneous strikes on the British-owned plantations, basically aimed at winning the right of organisation.
After Dunkirk, the British colonial authorities reacted in panic (as revealed in secret files released decades later) and the LSSP State Council members N. M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena and others were arrested on 18 June.
Sir Oliver Ernest Goonetilleke, the Civil Defence Commissioner complained that the British commander of Ceylon, Admiral Layton called him a 'black bastard'.
Ceylonese in Japanese occupied Singapore and Malaya formed the 'Lanka Regiment' of the so called Indian National Army which had been established by Nazi Germany, directly under Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
