In the first article on the Enemy of My Enemy expansion, I covered the new Arab Revolt game that uses the Palestine map. In this article, I’ll pivot to the other new game included in the expansion, The British Way: Japanese Occupation. In a first for The British Way, the British faction, Force 136, acts as the insurgent player and their Japanese opponents the counterinsurgent. After the fall of Malaya and Singapore in early 1942, the entire Malayan peninsula was under Japanese occupation with only a fledgling resistance led by stay-behind British officers, such as Spencer Chapman of the famous book The Jungle is Neutral, and members of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). The British officers and MCP worked together to organize armed resistance against Japan. As the name of the expansion itself already suggests, the two opposing factions from The British Way: Malaya are now roughly on the same side in the prequel game. However, as I’ll expand upon below, to capture the uneasy alliance between the British and MCP and the lack of complete British control over the MCP’s units, the MCP operates in the game as a simplified non-player actor who may even win the game!

Resisting Japanese Occupation: Force 136

Force 136 consisted of small teams of British and Chinese personnel infiltrated into the Malayan peninsula, first by submarine and then by parachute, alongside weapons and other supplies to resist the Japanese occupation. Once landed, Force 136 teams met up with local guerrillas to establish alliances. The alliances usually involved the local resistance groups offering up their manpower to Force 136 command in exchange for weapons and supplies brought in with the teams. The largest of the local resistance movements was the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) led by the MCP, the precursor to the insurgency the British faced after the war. Other smaller groups included those led by Nationalist Chinese forces and resistance groups recruited from the Malay majority population. The unique nature of Force 136 as small teams of specialists required new game mechanics not yet seen in any multipack game. The main unit used by the British faction are their Force 136 markers, which are punchboard tokens rather than wooden pieces. Most of the British Operations require the presence of Force 136 and the amount of Operations the British player may take on a turn is dictated by the number of Force 136 markers on the map in Malaya, even if conducting a Limited Operation.

However, small teams of specialists alone cannot accomplish the British goals of limiting the effects of Japanese Occupation. To sabotage Japanese controlled railways (see map setup below), eliminate collaborationist police, contest territorial control, and collect intelligence for future Allied Operations, the British player needs to recruit Guerrilla pieces as any standard COIN series Insurgent Faction does. Yet outside of a few blue Guerrilla pieces representing more cooperative smaller Malay or Nationalist Chinese forces, the main pool of Guerrillas available to the British player are the not perfectly aligned red MPAJA units. The British can do more harm to Japanese rule by training more MPAJA Guerrillas and providing Supply Caches to them, but also do not completely control these units and may even hand the non-player MPAJA the final victory.

Enemy of Britain’s Enemy: MPAJA

Unlike the MCP insurgency during the Malayan Emergency, the MPAJA resistance movement lacked the centralization, weapons, and communication network to effectively coordinate their resistance against Japan. British weapons and Force 136 teams helped to build up pockets of MPAJA resistance throughout the peninsula. Despite the cooperation, tensions arose due to the two actors not having perfectly aligned interests. Although both sought the end of Japanese rule, The MPAJA had its own goals of enhancing their power at the end of the war and also building up their military supplies for the likely post-war struggle with the British. Operationally, the MPAJA also conducted many acts of resistance on their own, particularly the elimination of collaborating civilians and local police.

In Japanese Occupation, the MPAJA is split between partial British control and a simple non-player system that uses icons on the Event cards. During each turn, players first must check if the MPAJA acts on the card and then carry out the normal Sequence of Play used in other multipack games. There are four possible icons on the cards, two that mostly favor the British (Mobilize Population, Kill Traitors) and two that represent weakness within the MPAJA movement that favor the Japanese occupation player (Food Shortage and Seize Supplies). The effects are summarized in the figure below. As Force 136 markers move around the peninsula they make contact with the MPAJA and place Junge Camp markers. The British player may only recruit red MPAJA Guerrillas at Jungle Camps. With one of their Special Activities, the British player may replace Jungle Camp markers with Supply Caches that give British forces greater control over nearby MPAJA Guerrillas. 

The MPAJA non-player does not involve a complex flowchart like those found in other COIN games, only the Card icons and a few steps during each Propaganda Round (MPAJA Guerrillas clash with Non-MPAJA guerrillas and spread to spaces with Opposition). Despite the mechanical simplicity of their ally, British players should not become over-confident in their ability to manipulate the MPAJA. If the British fall just short of their Resistance goal (20 by the Final Propaganda), the MPAJA may win if there are more Jungle Camps on the map than Force 136 markers. Such an outcome represents the MPAJA seizing power from the Japanese prior to the planned Allied invasion of Malaya, Operation Zipper, is prepared to launch. The chances of such an outcome are increased by the Atomic Bombings mandatory event that might end the Third Propaganda round early from the attacks bringing an earlier than expected Japanese surrender (see card above).

Repression and Extraction: Japanese Occupation

The Japanese occupation player wants to prevent the British (and MPAJA) from achieving enough Resistance (replacing Political Will) to seriously challenge the occupation before the end of the war. As the head of the occupation forces, the “counterinsurgent” player wants to keep a lid on local resistance, hunt down external Force 136 teams, and ensure that the resources from Malaya can be sent elsewhere to assist Japan’s broader conflict with the Allies. More specifically, the Japanese player lowers Resistance by keeping most of the Population at Neutral, using their Extract Special Activity to export resources with unSabotaged railways, and building up the local collaborationist Police. Astute players of The British Way: Malaya may be wondering about the “railways” given their absence on the original map. The British Way: Japanese Occupation adds railway markers to the map that connect the key resources of Malaya (rubber and tin) to the major railways in Thailand and ports leading out of the peninsula. British Sabotage Operations flip these markers and block routes of extraction, weakening the use of the Japanese Extract Special Activity and spreading Opposition at the Propaganda Round. Railways can be repaired with the Japanese Construct Operation that also allows the construction of New Villages that improve the Extract action. The Japanese used New Villages mostly as food colonies to help address food shortages by forcibly relocating Chinese communities from urban to rural areas. Despite sharing a similar name to the British New Villages during the Malayan Emergency, only a select number of the Japanese sites appear to have been built for the military purpose of forcibly separating the population from the MPAJA insurgency. The military function of the relocation sites is represented with a Japanese Capability Event.

Of course, as a faction seeking to prevent the other player from accumulating acts of resistance, much of the Japanese player’s strategy revolves around stopping the British from achieving their goals. By building up local collaborationist police from Malay communities sympathetic to Japan’s Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere, the resistance movement can be more easily denied territorial control in rural spaces. More importantly, a key British objective is to collect intelligence to aid further Allied Operations and the eventual invasion to retake Malaya. They do so by revealing facedown Intel Chits that are placed randomly around the board at the start of each Campaign (see map setup above).

To prevent the collection of Intel Chits and eliminate Force 136 agents, the Japanese rely on their feared secret police: the Kempeitai. The Kempeitai carried out much of the counterintelligence operations, brutal interrogations, and atrocities in areas under occupation. The inclusion of the Kempeitai is essential for ensuring all three of the main sources of brutality by Japanese occupation forces are properly represented: repression by the Kempeitai, widespread collective reprisals by Japanese troops, and the extraction of resources. Those acts are modeled into the three Japanese Special Activities: Eliminate, Reprisal, and Extract. Eliminate allows the Japanese player to use previously positioned Kempeitai markers to either flip a revealed Intel Chit or roll to eliminate a Force 136 or Jungle Camp. To represent the collection of local intelligence, each Police in the selected space improves their chances of successful elimination. Kempeitai markers also improve the effectiveness of the Japanese Sweep and Assault Operations.

However, given the need to establish an intelligence network, the Kempeitai markers are harder to reposition than Japanese troops. They may only be moved with the Deploy Operation and the operation cannot be paired with Eliminate. Effective use of the Kempeitai requires planning and guessing the spaces most critical for the British player for each Campaign. Kempeitai are also not invulnerable. Ambushes by the British player against exposed markers can send them back to Kuala Lumpur, upsetting well laid traps, while also increasing Resistance.

Like all occupations, the Japanese occupation of Malaya is a serious topic requiring serious research and mechanical treatment. I did not shy from the brutalities of occupation because the primary goal, as with all my COIN games, is to provide an educational introduction to the topic. Despite my best efforts, in reality, the depiction of the conflict in the game barely does justice to the complexity and horrors of occupation. As always, I strongly encourage those interested to see the COIN game as a first step to learning more. Although Chapman’s The Jungle is Neutral is the classic, there are excellent accessible sources from each of the three main actor’s perspectives. For the MPAJA, I would recommend Red Star Over Malaya by Cheah Boon Kheng. It’s also a good book if you’re looking for the best one volume overview of the period. Margaret Shennan’s Our Man in Malaya provides a good overview of the British Force 136 side. I’d recommend Rebecca Kenneison’s recent academic works on Force 136 but they are very hard to acquire for those without university access. Finally, for the Japanese occupation, Paul Kratoska’s The Japanese Occupation of Malaya 1941-1945 offers a nice account of the different aspects of occupation policy whether repression, attraction, or collaboration. In the final InsideGMT article for the expansion, I’ll highlight the new variants for each of the conflicts in the original multipack.

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