Sri Lanka was never at war with Japan during World War II. Japan was at war with the allied forces and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) happened to be a base operation for the British Eastern Command. Four months after the Pearl Harbour surprise attack by the Japanese in the Pacific theatre which altered US Foreign Policy, another similar attack took place in the Indian Ocean. On Easter Sunday morning of 5 April 1942, Sri Lanka came under attack. The geostrategic locations of Hawaii and Sri Lanka were identified and rightly assessed by the Japanese-German strategic officers — such as Vice Admiral Nomura and Admiral Kurt Fricke, Chief of Staff of the German Maritime Warfare Command (Seekriegsleitung) — as the perfect launchpad to springboard their sphere of influences.