British Borneo

British Borneo, British colonies situated within Borneo, the world's third largest island. They comprised North Borneo (and Labuan Island), Brunei, and Sarawak (ruled by the British Brooke family since 1841). The rest of the island was Dutch Borneo, part of the Netherlands East Indies.

Borneo was situated strategically across the region's main sea routes, but neither the British nor the Dutch were able adequately to defend their possessions on it when the Japanese launched their offensive against them in December 1941. The British opted only to defend Kuching airfield in Sarawak, but they destroyed the oilfields there, and at Seria in Brunei, before the Japanese landed at both places on 16 December 1941. At Kuching a lone regular battalion of Indian troops was soon forced into Dutch Borneo where those remaining eventually surrendered after further fighting.

In October 1943 the Chinese population, which numbered about 50,000, helped by the indigenous Dyaks, rebelled against the Japanese occupation troops. They seized the coastal town of Jesselton, but were later overwhelmed and many were executed. The same month the first of several Special Operations Australia (SOA) parties was landed for intelligence-gathering purposes and others were dropped into the interior of Sarawak in March and April 1945. These trained and armed local people in advance of landings by the 9th Australian Division at Labuan and Brunei Bay in June which were opposed by elements of the 31,000-strong Japanese garrison in Borneo. The landing forces stayed on the coast and it devolved upon the SOA guerrilla forces to contain Japanese troops inland, some of whom did not surrender until October 1945.