Pom Pax (#20),
...He went East in the summer of '42. initialy to Ceylon. Later to Chittagong and eventually down the Chinwin and Irrawaddy via Mandalay to Rangoon. Now he was on demob leave by VJ Day and probably had been for several weeks already. So he must have got a very early boat back even if they now came via Suez...
I am a bit puzzled about this, too, but hazard a guess as follows:
As he went out in summer '42, he may have got lucky and been repatriated before Japan surrendered in August. The normal rule was "THERE'S NO DISCHARGE IN THE WAR". But as he had nothing to fight in the UK, and as an "old soldier" would be in an early Release Group Number, maybe the authorities had decided to "jump the gun"'.
Another possibility: was he on
disembarkation leave on VJ Day ?
...what factors determined priority...
Your Demobilisation (Release group) Number depended on how many "points" you could amass. You got so many for age, so many for being married, for number of children, for overseas service, and for everything else you could think of.
The more points you had, the lower your Release Group number, and people were called for in order of that number. Or that was the idea, anyway. Worked fairly well.
Danny.