Borneo campaign (1945)

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A map showing the progress of the Borneo Campaign

Borneo campaign (1945)
Tarakan – Brunei – Labuan – North Borneo – Balikpapan

South West Pacific campaign
Philippines 1941-42 – Dutch East Indies 1941-42 – Portuguese Timor – Australia – New Guinea – Philippines 1944-45 – Borneo 1945

The Borneo campaign of 1945 was the last major Allied campaign in the South West Pacific Area, during World War II. In a series of amphibious assaults between May 1 and July 21, the Australian I Corps, under General Leslie Morshead, attacked Japanese forces occupying the island.

They were resisted by Imperial Japanese Navy and Army forces in southern and eastern Borneo, under Vice-Admiral Michiaki Kamada, and in the north west by the Japanese 37th Army, led by Lieutenant-General Baba Masao.

Although the campaign was criticised in Australia at the time, and in subsequent years, as pointless or a "waste" of the lives of soldiers, it did achieve a number of objectives, such as increasing the isolation of significant Japanese forces occupying the main part of the Dutch East Indies, capturing major oil supplies and freeing Allied prisoners of war, who were being held in increasingly worse conditions (see, for example, the Sandakan Death Marches article).

Allied naval and air forces, centred on the U.S. 7th Fleet under Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, the Australian First Tactical Air Force and the U.S. Thirteenth Air Force also played important roles in the campaign.

The campaign opened with a landing on the small island of Tarakan, off the north east coast on May 1. This was followed on June 1 by simultaneous assaults in the north west, on the island of Labuan and the coast of Brunei. A week later the Australians attacked Japanese positions in North Borneo. The attention of the Allies then switched back to the central east coast, with the last major amphibious assault of World War II, at Balikpapan on July 1.