Kathleen Reid-Smith is a military and intelligence historian focusing on covert operations in World War Two Southeast Asia. Based in Canberra, Australia and having worked and travelled extensively across the region over a few decades, her research and writing focus on uncovering, investigating and bringing previously unknown actions and operations directly relating to the Southeast Asian wartime diaspora out from the shadows, and into the historical light. One of her key goals is to address some of the many gaps in conventionally accepted historical literature, especially in how the often diverse and usually unrecognised plights surrounding regional wartime experiences have often been overlooked or subsumed beneath the historically bigger strategic picture. Operation Cleeves and its focus on Southern Thailand’s experiences as it bore the initial brunt of Japan’s December 1941 assault is one of them.