Japanese Army occupied Port Blair on March 23, 1942. The Port Blair garrison consisted of 300 Sikh militia, who were later enrolled in Indian National Army.
Some unpublished accounts by British officers shed some light into the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army on the local inhabitants from 1942-45. Hundreds of locals were brutally tortured and killed on the suspicion of being spies while thousands of civilians were tortured and murdered for no specific reason.
In 1945, between 250-700 people were forcefully deported on boats to an uninhabited island to grow food. A rescue mission sent to save them after Japanese occupation found only 12 survivors and the beach was littered with skeletons.
