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There were indications that both these operations, and perhaps others directed at Dutch possessions, would develop into the strongest Japanese tries. Most of these indications were in Indo-China. There the Japs had assembled up to 150,000 troops, great piles of rails (many removed from China), huge stocks of cement for airfields, lumber for barracks.
But the British and Australians had been prepared too, and it was likely that the Japanese would have no pushover in Malaya. Britain's Far Eastern Commander in Chief Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham accomplished some masterly understatement when he said: "We do not forget the years of patience and forbearance with which we have borne with dignity and discipline petty insults inflicted upon us by the Japanese in the Far East."
As for the U.S., it now had more than the Maine to remember.