蜜芽传媒

In early December 1941, on the outskirts of London, a 14-year-old boy is listening to the radio. He is shocked as he hears about Japan's attacks on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor. But what happens at around the same time is of great concern - Japan invades and bombs key British colonies in South East Asia. In his living room in England, next to his map of Europe, the schoolboy puts up a second map of Asia and the Pacific. Over the next three and a half years he charts - on these two maps - the defeats and later victories against Japan, as well as the Nazis. Today aged 98 - he speaks of how the faraway war on the Asian Front would end up involving members of his own family.

From the creator and host of the multi award-winning Three Million and Partition Voices, the new series - The Second Map - tells the story of Britain's war against Japan. Marking the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, we hear of how defeat turned to victory, from epic battles in jungles, to one that played out on a tennis court and saved the British Empire. We may know about Pearl Harbor and how the war against Japan ended with the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But in popular memory, what happened in between is less well-known. Even at the time, the 14th army - which fought at the pivotal battles of the Burma campaign, and made up of almost a million men, was known as the "forgotten army." Yet it was a war that many thousands of Britons fought in, as well as hundreds of thousands of British colonial subjects.

We hear remarkable testimonies from British, Indian, and Japanese soldiers who were there, as well as former prisoners of war and civilian internees. And we speak to descendants across Britain who are uncovering a family member's story of heroism, imprisonment, and survival.

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