FAR FROM ENDED

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 63, 12 September 1945, Page 7

FAR FROM ENDED

THETASKOFSEAC

LONDON, September 11

Admiral Mountbatten, Supreme Commander at SEAC, has now arrived at Singapore ready for the surrender ceremony of the Japanese forces in South-East Asia tomorrow. He spoke to correspondents of the plans completed to attack the Japanese if they had not surrendered.

I But for their surrender, he said, we would have held our D Day in SouthEast Asia on September 9, when seven divisions were due to invade .Japanese occupied territory. "I saw these Japanese defences this morning, and we would have gone through them just as fast as if we had advanced without opposition," he said. "Between 80,000 and 100,000 troops would now be on shore in the Penang ; .-ea," he added, and some tanks 30 miles inland. Admiral Mountbatten emphasised that the territory covered by the surrender tomorrow involved one and a half million square miles and 128 million people. It was known, he said, that the territory had held. 100,000 prisoners of war and something like j 144,000 civilian internees. The SEAC1 job was far from over.