Next year will be the 60th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War (1941-1945), a traumatic series of armed conflicts and conventional warfare between Japan on one hand and the United States, Britain, France, Holland, Australia and New Zealand on the other.

Beginning with the Japanese strikes at Kota Baru in Kelantan and Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, the hundreds of battles and other engagements were fought between the two sides from Imphal and Kohima on the India-Burma border to Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Sabah, Sarawak, Sumatra, Java, Timor, the costal areas of Kalimantan, the Philippines, New Guinea as well as the

Pacific islands of Hawaii, Midway, Wake, Guam, Guadalcanal, Savo, Makin, Lae, Salamaua and Solomons.

They were fought not only on land and in jungles, but also on and below the seas and in the air. There were also irregular warfare and special operations, both professional as well as voluntary, in occupied areas such as the Kinta Valley in Perak where the legendary towns of underground resistance like Ipoh, Chemor, Kampar, Papan, Pusing, Batu Gajah, Tanjung Tualang, Gopeng, Tapah, Bidor and Malim Nawar have become parts and parcels of the collective memory of those of survivors and their offspring.