'Popcorn' was the British reoccupation of the Andaman and Nicobar islands groups in the Bay of Bengal following the surrender of Japan (7 October/December 1945).

On 7 October Brigadier J. A. Salomons’s Indian 116^th Brigade, entrusted with the task by General Sir William Slim’s Allied Land Forces South-East Asia command, landed from India at Port Blair without incident and took the formal surrender of the Japanese garrison, Major General Yoshisuke Inoue’s 35^th Independent Mixed Brigade, two days later. Allied prisoners and internees were immediately shipped to India for rehabilitation.

The only difficulties encountered were mine clearance (undertaken with extemporised equipment and captured Japanese ships), a storm that prevented the despatch of troops to the nearby Nicobar islands group until 17 October, and the need to reinstate hospital and other essential services. The Indian sloop Narbada and a 'mercy ship' had arrived at Port Blair on 26 September with emergency supplies and medical stores.

By the end of October the disarmament of the Japanese in the Andaman and Nicobar islands groups had been completed: 18,846 Japanese were awaiting evacuation and 186 (later reduced to 112) suspected war criminals had been arrested. Evacuation in small captured Japanese ships to Rempang island, in the Riau archipelago just to the south of Singapore in the Dutch East Indies, began on 24 November and had been completed by the end of December.