'Roundwood' was the British reoccupation of Mergui toward the south of Burma’s eastern 'tail' after the Japanese surrender (September 1945).

On 6 September Lieutenant General Sir Montagu Stopford, heading the Allied Land Forces South-East Asia command, ordered General Heitaro Kimura to send Major General Jiro Ichida, chief-of-staff of his Burma Area Army, to Rangoon four days later to receive detailed orders for the surrender of Japanese forces in Burma.

During the second week of September a brigade of Major General W. A. Crowther’s Indian 17^th Division crossed the Sittang river to occupy the Mokpalin area, and detachments were despatched farther to the south, to Mergui and Tavoy, as escorts for civil affairs and RAPWI (Return of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees) teams.

The surrenders of small numbers of Japanese began along the whole front from Bawlake to Mokpalin, and the delegation headed by Ichida arrived by air at Mingaladon airfield outside Rangoon. On 13 September, the day after the surrender of Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi’s Southern Expeditionary Army Group at Singapore, Ichida signed the instrument of surrender of all forces under command of the Burma Area Army.

On 20 September Stopford instructed the Indian 17^th Division to reoccupy the Tenasserim region, which extends from Toungoo on the Sittang river in the north to Victoria Point on the western coast of the Kra isthmus in the south, a distance of 600 miles (965 km). The division was at this time in the area of Pegu and the Sittang river bridge under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Frank Messervy’s Indian IV Corps, and the occupation involved the despatch of several detachments by air, sea and road to occupy key points.

It was important that early control should be gained of the Moulmein area where banditry was increasing, but minefields prevented a direct approach to Moulmein and Amherst by sea. The 1^st Sikh Light Infantry and 45^th Beach Group were therefore ordered on 20 September to move by sea for a landing on the coast south of Amherst. On the following day it was decided to fly the 1/7^th Gurkha Rifles into Moulmein, and to authorise the Japanese to move reinforcements there to restore order pending the Gurkhas' arrival.

The Sikhs and the beach group arrived in the Amherst area between 25 and 29 September, and the headquarters of the Indian 17^th Division reached Moulmein from Pegu on 15 October. The 1/7^th Gurkhas arrived at Moulmein in the first week of October and, far to the north, Brigadier R. F. Johnstone’s 22^nd (East Africa) Brigade began to take over Japanese dumps of arms and equipment on the Mawchi road. Surrendered Japanese troops were set to work to repair the Sittang ferry and work the quarries there for road metal.

Crowther was ordered to send detachments by sea to occupy Tavoy and Victoria Point, and on 4 October the tactical headquarters of Brigadier J. A. R. Robertson’s Indian 48^th Brigade of the Indian 17^th Division moved to Moulmein and the Japanese at Amherst surrendered. On 5 October the concentration of Lieutenant General Yuzo Matsuyama’s 33^rd Army, or rather its remnants, was completed at Thaton for disarmament, and on the following day Major General T. W. Rees’s Indian 19^th Division reported that the road between Toungoo and Mawchi road was open, and that it had reoccupied the Karen Hills area.

On 10 October the advanced headquarters of the Indian 17^th Division arrived in Moulmein, and Kimura and the headquarters of his Burma Area Army came under direct control of the Indian 17^th Division. Five days later the number of surrendered Japanese had risen to 50,000.