The British plan, such as it was, was to occupy Batavia and Surabaya, establish working relationships with all who mattered and evacuate the POWs. However, while their orders were to avoid getting actively involved in supporting the Dutch, a civil affairs agreement drafted two years previously in fact committed them to handing over control to the Dutch as soon as possible. In the event, the British managed this contradiction with common sense and restraint, but it caused them great trouble.

The British did not appear in force for more than a month after the Japanese surrender, although RAPWI teams and some officers from Force 136 — special forces used in the post-war period in a quasi-political role — were parachuted into Java earlier. 

On September 15, a naval flotilla under Rear-Admiral Julian Patterson steamed into Jakarta harbour. Van der Post went aboard immediately, warning that violence was widespread and would get worse.

Events rapidly deteriorated, with widespread attacks on "anyone with a white face", as one veteran later recalled. The plight of civilians was particularly desperate. Often their only protection came from the very Japanese troops who had until recently been their jailers. The British realised they were in trouble. Mountbatten put Lieutenant-General Sir Philip Christison in charge, and ordered the 1st Battalion Seaforth Highlanders to Batavia. The rest of 23rd Division was to follow, but would not arrive in force for weeks. The Seaforths were immediately in action, suffering the first British casualties of the campaign, but bringing limited order to central Batavia.

Batavia and other cities were festooned with liberation slogans written in English. This fact was not lost on a foreign press corps which initially at least outnumbered uniformed Britons in the city.

Christison persuaded one Dutch official to rebroadcast Queen Wilhelmina's 1942 proclamation, which was greeted enthusiastically by Sukarno, but repudiated by the nominal Dutch Governor-General, Hubertus van Mook. He did not assist matters by arriving in Batavia with a uniformed staff bearing side arms. Several Dutch former PoWs had attempted to return to military duties in Batavia, despite often poor physical state. They were regarded by the British as undisciplined and trigger-happy.

Matters got worse as October progressed. Christison's prime concern remained RAPWI, and the conditions at some of the main camps were deteriorating. At Ambarawang, in central Java, militia had shelled the camp, provoking the Japanese troops in the area to retaliate. Outnumbered Gurkhas sent from Batavia fought desperate battles to rescue civilians, and were glad of Japanese assistance. Further west, at Bandung, Japanese units under Force 136 direction temporarily cleared the city of armed nationalists.

But it was in the east at Surabaya that the situation was most acute. The Pemuda had acquired large stocks of Japanese guns and ammunition and taken over the city. There were several thousand Dutch and Eurasian civilian internees as well as more than a thousand PoWs in the area. The problems in central Java meant that more internees were also directed to Surabaya.