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Naw, it didn't have anything to do with the Brit's owing us anything or the Japs either. It was just the natural progression of history. Colonialism had come and gone.
The impetus for the end of colonialism developed long before WWII, or even WWI. In fact, you can trace the change in public opinion in Britain right back to the Boer War. It was that seemingly endless war for no good reason, and it's cost in treasure and lives, which ultimately led to the end of the Empire. There was always some resistance to Empire, but that war was the final straw for most people.
France, Portugal, Spain, and even the United States, held on a little longer. In fact, we are one of the few countries which still has colonies.
As other posters have noted it was a process that began pre WW 2. One reason, though certainly not the only one, was the fact that the colonial powers could not defend the local populations in SEA aginst Japanese aggression. Once the Japanese were defeated primarily by the US the British, Dutch and French thought they could simply come back and continue to exploit the resources of the region despite their tarnished image.
It didn't just suddenly end. Anti-colonial wars, in which the natives drove out their colonial masters, went on well into the 1960's and 70's.
Even our own part of the Vietnam War was just a continuation of the anti-French war begun much earlier and it didn't officially end until 1975.
WWII merely accelerated a movement which had been building steam since at least the Boer War at the turn of the 20th century.
Right-- not sudden end. It could be said it was a two hundred year process that began with our Revolutionary War, and proceeded in fits and starts , with reversals to the proicess until finally ending mid-to-late 20th century, thus ending about 500 years of colonizing.
Many people will argue that the deathknell for colonialism was the growing acceptance of democratic ideals as the standard, or at least, the goal.
Partly because the population of the colonies demanded it and it was not as economically profitable as it had been...
The latter is probably the main reason----------it was no longer cost effective to hang onto a bunch of useless colonies.
And the irony is all of at least the 'Western' powers (Japan, UK, France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Spain, etc) that lost/cut loose their colonies after WW's I and II are more affluent than ever in their history.
Actually it's a well known fact that FDR constantly annoyed Churchill with demands for independence/more home rule for British colonies. He did the same with the Free French, FDR actually demanded independence for Vietnam in 1945.
The French, British, and Dutch continue to rule small islands here and there (ex. Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Aruba, French Polynesia, St. Martin, Guadalupe, the Falklands, etc) but they are not colonies in the traditional sense and have significant levels of self rule for pretty much everything except defense and foreign affairs.
Ironically, the world's oldest colony is Puerto Rico - ruled by the US
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