Word: ceylonization
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...eastern coast. Getting supplies to the British and Chinese troops in Burma will be even more difficult and risky than it became after the Japs took lower Burma. With the conquered coast of Burma, the Andamans can become bases for the invasion of India itself, or of Ceylon...
...south is Ceylon, only 50 miles from the Indian mainland, across a string of partially submerged sandspits called "Adam's Bridge." Once in Ceylon, holding its naval base at Trincomalee and the great commercial port of Colombo, the Japs need not cross Adam's Bridge. For they would then have the Bay of Bengal. If they dominate its routes to Calcutta and Madras, the Japs will be very near to having India...
...Holding Ceylon, Wavell holds the sea entrances to India's eastern ports (Madras and Calcutta) which are also inlets for China's supplies. On Ceylon is Trincomalee, Britain's secondary naval base, immensely important now that Singapore is gone. Trincomalee is now the Allies' only useful naval base north of Capetown and east of Suez. Whoever holds Trincomalee and Ceylon's airdromes holds the key to the Indian Ocean and all its vital sea routes between Africa, Australia, India and the Middle East. Without Trincomalee and Ceylon, the Japanese can make Allied transport...
Last week, when the Japs bombed the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, they were softening up a way station on the invasion road to Ceylon. And Ceylon, just 60 miles off southern India, is a way to invasion of India itself. It could even be a substitute for invasion. With eastern India bottled up, with ships and planes in position on Ceylon to raid even the Indian routes to the vital ports of Bombay and Karachi on the Arabian Sea, Japan could well let India soften and crumble under blockade...
Admiral Hart's successor was the little Dutch Navy's Vice Admiral Conrad Emil Lambert Helfrich (TIME, March 9). This week Admiral Helfrich was also probably far from Indies waters. Perhaps to Australia, perhaps to Ceylon (see p. 19], he had withdrawn what the overwhelming Japanese Fleet had left of his battered squadrons. Dutchmen in the Indies and the U.S., Allied naval authorities in Washington and London, agreed that Admiral Helfrich had been no sacrificial goat when his command was shifted. To all effects, he had no fleet left to command...