Malaya was a colony of the British Empire in Far East Asia. (After independence, it was renamed Malaysia.)
In December 1941, shortly after the attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Empire, British and Indian forces were moved into Malaya in response of Japanese troop build-up in French Indochina.
Shortly after, the Japanese invaded Malaya and fiercely pushed the British down through Mayala into Singapore, which subsequently capitulated. Prem Barsar was in Mayala at the time of the invasion and wrote about the fighting he had been involved in in a letter dated 30 January 1942. (PROSE: Letters from the Front)
Mike Smith had served in Malaya for eighteen months not long before the Shoreditch Incident. He'd seen people killed in action. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)