The Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands occurred in 1942 during World War II. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands (8,293 km² on 139 islands), are a group of islands situated in the Bay of Bengal at about 780 miles from Kolkata, 740 miles from Chennai and 120 miles from Cape Nargis in Burma. Until 1938 the British government used them as a penal colony for Indian and African political prisoners, who were mainly put in the notorious Cellular Jail in Port Blair, the biggest town (port) on the islands. Today they form a Union Territory of India.

The only military objective on the islands was the city of Port Blair. The garrison consisted of a 300 man Sikh militia with 23 British officers, augmented in January 1942 by a Gurkha detachment of 4/12th Frontier Force Regiment of the 16th Indian Infantry Brigade. Following the fall of Rangoon on March 8, however, the British recognized that Port Blair had become impossible to defend, and on March 10 the Gurkhas were withdrawn to the Arakan peninsula.

The Andaman Islands are a group of Indian Ocean archipelagic islands in the Bay of Bengal, between India to the west and Burma to the north and east. Most of the islands are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory of India, while a small number in the north of the archipelago belong to Burma.

The name "Andaman" first appears in the work of Arab geographers of the ninth century (Soleyman in 851),^{[citation needed]}, though it is uncertain whether ancient geographers like Ptolemy also knew of the Andamans but referred to them by a different name. They were also described as being inhabited by fierce cannibalistic tribes by the Persian navigator Buzurg ibn Shahriyar of Ramhormuz in his tenth century book Ajaib al-Hind (The wonders of India), in which he also mentioned an island he called Andaman al-Kabir (Great Andaman). During the Chola Dynasty period in South India (800-1200AD), which ruled an empire encompassing southeastern peninsular India, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Maldives, and large parts of current day Sri Lanka and Malaysia, the island group was referred to as Timaittivu (or impure islands).Marco Polo briefly mentions the Andamans (calling them by the name "Angamanain"), though it is uncertain whether he visited the islands, or whether he met the natives if he did, as he describes them as having heads like dogs. His remark about their features may be the second-hand account of a local resident or fellow traveler, which is a frequent cause for certain exaggerated descriptions in Marco Polo's travels. Another Italian traveler, Niccolò de' Conti (c. 1440), mentioned the islands and said that the name means "Island of Gold". A theory that became prevalent in the late nineteenth century, and has since gained momentum, is that the name of the islands derives from the Sanskrit language, by way of Malay, and refers to the deity, Hanuman. In the Age of Exploration, travelers often noted the "ferocious hostility" of the Andamanese.

Japanese Occupation may refer to: