The
Sri Lankan Crisis
The
Sri Lanka Crisis was by far the largest and most extended series of naval
battles since the campaign in the Merdeka War. Designated Operation HIGASHI,
the five month war included the world's most significant amphibious operations
since the Java landings in 1959 and a logistics pipeline of over 4000 miles.
The
continued Japanese penetration of the new Asiatic markets went unhindered until
August 1979, when the Indian government, in order to gain a foothold in its
isolated Sri Lankan neighbor, commanded the Sri Lankan government to cede its
Trincomalee naval base. When they refused, the Sri Lankan civil war, until then
mostly clashes between mobs, suddenly increased its violence level, when Tamil
irregular, funded and trained by India, initiated a ruthless campaign of
bombings and rural guerrilla war against the Sri Lankan government.
The
consequent international protest didn’t change the Indian government’s mind. On
the contrary, the Indian government recognized the “Free Tamil Republic”
declared by Sri Lankan Tamil separatist in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The
Sri Lankan government asked for help to its Asian neighbors, but only Japan and
Taiwan responded, both with important investments in the island’s tea and rice
business.
Initially
their intervention was limited to weapons, military advisors and loans. The
Indian protests were responded with an offer of mediation in the Sri Lankan
conflict; such proposal was ignored, and the war continued with no clear
winner. The Indian government declared a ban over Japanese and Taiwanese
products, and started to extort illegal taxes to both countries companies. Such
measures represented an important damage to the economic strategy followed by
Japan in South Asia.
By
January 1981, non-Tamil fighters was noticed among the Tamil guerillas. When
asked, the Indian government responded that they were voluntaries over whom the
government had no power. By now, almost the entire northern half of the island
was controlled or menaced by the Tamil guerrillas. When in April the Sri Lankan
government accused India of sending Indian Army regulars to the island, the
India’s government flatly declared that such forces were there only to 'protect
Indian lives and property'. The notice of a virtual Indian invasion of Sri
Lanka was badly received by the Japanese public (still very fond of the Fukusawa Doctrine), and when Prime
Mininster Satomi refused to take action, the Shimpoto party was defeated by a
landslide.
The
first act of the immensely popular Seiyukuai Government was to settle once and
for all the recurrent economic and politic problems with India. The Diet issued
a unanimous declaration that the Island of Sri Lanka should be 'wrested from
the remnants of the defunct British Raj' and 'returned to the fold of the free
Asian nations'. With the intention of 'restoring a legitimate government to a
land succumbed to the ravages of anarchy', Prime Minister Hiraoka Kimitake
declared a 200-mile Maritime Exclusion Zone around the island, with the intent
of weakening Indian supply and reinforcement efforts. Three IJN nuclear attack
submarines enforced it until the arrival of the surface task force three weeks
later. As the submarines continued interim blockade operations, 65 IJN ships
were enroute: 20 warships, 8 amphibious ships, and 40 logistics ships from the
Imperial Japanese Fleet Auxiliary and the Merchant Navy. The IJN task force
carried 15,000 men, including a landing force of about 7000 Imperial Japanese
Naval Infantry and IJA soldiers. The logistics ships carried provisions for
about three months of combat..
Two
ships of the Indian Navy docked in Tricomalee harbor were attacked and sunk by
the Imperial Japanese Navy after one of the ships fired a miss shot across the
bow of the HIJMS Yamato. The docks were similarly cleared of Indian troops in
the course of a six hour bombardment by the carrier’s planes. When Japanese
naval infantry finally debarked onto Sri Lankan soil, it was discovered that
the Indian and Tamil troops had already dispersed. Japanese troops were ferried
to other major cities along the island's coast. By September perhaps an eighty
percent of the island was again under Colombo’s rule. Not wishing to lost its
considerable political capital after some Japanese casualties, the Seiyukuai
party then abandoned further plans to intervene in Sri Lanka and instead
concentrated on help the local government to setting up a functional civil
administration, the first aim of which was to ensure that this year's tea
harvest would go through without any interruption. The rebels in the hills,
have taken to calling themselves 'The Tamil Liberation Front', and since then
the IJN maintain a naval detachment and some IJNI regiments in Trincomalee
as a deter for further Indian intervention in Sri Lankan internal affairs, but
these forces rarely engage in battle against the Tamil irregulars.
