The forgotten battle that changed the course of WWII

The Captain Robin Rowland He was 22 when his regiment was deployed to the town of Kohima, in the North East India. It was in May 1944, and a small group of Anglo-Indian soldiers was under assault from a whole division of Japanese forces.

Rowland, now 99, vividly remembers approaching town, after a trail of devastation to the front line. “We saw abandoned trenches and destroyed villages, and as we advanced the smell of death was everywhere,” He said.

The young captain was a member of the Punjab Regiment of the British Indian Army and was on his way to help relieve 1500 of his fellow soldiers that weeks had passed resisting ten times their number in the Japanese forces.

Isolated by the Japanese, the Allied forces depended solely on supplies arriving by air, and very few thought they could withstand the relentless onslaught. Japanese soldiers had marched to Kohima through what was then Burma (now Myanmar), and their objective was to invade India.

The Japanese had already defeated the British in Burma, but no one expected them to successfully navigate the mosquito-infested jungle hills and river rapids en route to Kohima, the capital of Nagaland; and Imfal, the capital of the state of Manipur in India. When they did so, the Anglo-Indian troops tasked with defending the two towns were surrounded by more than 15,000 Japanese soldiers.

They fought for weeks to prevent the Japanese from advancing and seizing the strategic city of Dimapur, which could have opened the roads to the plains of Assam. Few thought the defenders could win.

Japanese soldiers have arrived “Wave after wave, night after night”remembers Captain Rowland. The fighting was brutal and Anglo-Indian forces were confined to Garrison Hill, from where Kohima could be seen. At one point, the fight turned into a Close combat, with only a tennis court separating the two sides.

The besieged Anglo-Indian soldiers held out until reinforcements arrived. After three months, in June 1944, with more than 7,000 wounded and almost no food, the Japanese division withdrew and returned to Burma, Despite orders from above to stay and fight.

“It was a formidable resistance of 1500 Indo-British soldiers”, Said Captain Rowland. “If the Japanese had taken Garrison Hill, they would have gone to Dimapur.”

Anglo-Indian forces were ordered to pursue the retreating Japanese, and Robin Rowland was among the pursuers. Some of the Japanese soldiers died of cholera, typhoid and malaria, but from afar most died of hunger Well, they ran out of supplies.

According to military historian Robert Lyman, the battle “changed the course of World War II in Asia”.

“The Japanese invasion of India, of which the Battle of Kohima was an important part, was [su] first major defeat in the Far East, ”he told the BBC. But while it was a turning point, the battle in northeast India never captured the public imagination as it did on D-Day, in Waterloo or in other battles in Europe and North Africa. It has often been described as “The Forgotten War”.

People in the UK were just too far away to register it, according to Bob Cook, director of the Kohima Museum in the City of York. “The Germans were only 35 kilometers from the UK,” he said. “What worried the people of this country the most was the imminent threat of a German invasion.”

But there have been a few attempts to teach people about the battle of Kohima and Imphal. In 2013, was voted Britain’s greatest battle after a debate at the National Army Museum in London, a surprise triumph over the famous D-Day and Waterloo.

Robert Lyman defended Kohima. “Great things were at stake in a war with the toughest enemy a British army has ever had to fight,” he said in his speech.

But in the subcontinent, there have been few attempts to emphasize the importance of the battle, in which Thousands of Indian and Commonwealth soldiers, including men from present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, lost their lives.

“One of the reasons I think was that the Indian leadership was too busy dealing with the effects of transition and partition initially,” said Charles Chasie, a historian based in Kohima, Nagaland. “The British had decided to leave in a hurry before things got too complicated and out of control on the subcontinent.”

The Battle of Kohima was seen more as a colonial war, while the post-war discourse focused more on the struggle for Indian independence led by Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi.

In addition to the regular British and Indian Army, thousands of people Naga ethnic community they fought alongside the British and provided valuable information about the conflict. His in-depth knowledge of the mountainous territory was of great help to the British.

Today, only a dozen naga who survived the Battle of Kohima are still alive. Sosangtemba Ao is one of them. He was among those recruited by the British army to cut the Burmese highway.

“Japanese bombers flew everyday dropping explosives,” Ao recalls. “The sound was deafening and there was smoke after each attack. It was heartbreaking. “

He worked alongside the British for two months for the payment of one rupee a day. He still has great admiration for the combat ability of Japanese soldiers, he noted. “The Japanese army was very motivated. His soldiers were not afraid of death. For them, to fight for the emperor was divine. When asked to surrender, they would become suicide bombers. “

To coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Japanese surrender, a documentary on the battle, Memories of a forgotten war (“Memories of a Forgotten War,” in English), was uploaded recently. Producer Subimal Bhattacharjee and his team traveled to Japan a few years ago for a commemoration.

“When Kohima’s Japanese and British veterans met, they hugged and started crying,” counted. “They had shot at each other, but still showed a special bond. It was spontaneous and we did not expect it ”.

For the Japanese, it was a humiliating defeat, and Japanese veterans rarely speak of their experience in Kohima. “There was nothing left of the Japanese food,” said one of them, Wajima Koichiro, who was interviewed for the documentary. “It was a lost game and then we gave up.”

The native Nagas, who aided the British and suffered huge losses, also continued to suffer. They hoped the British would recognize them as a separate Naga nation during the handover, and not as part of India. But they were “Deeply disappointed”historian Charles Chasie said, and many blamed them for the thousands of naga who died in subsequent conflicts with the Indian government and military.

Over the years, the families of those killed in Kohima and Imphal, especially from the UK and Japan, have visited both war cemeteries to pay homage to their ancestors. Captain Rowland returned to Kohima with his son in 2002 at the invitation of the Punjab Indian Regiment. He was standing in front of Garrison Hill, where he and his comrades had weathered waves of Japanese fighters 58 years earlier.

“It brought back many memories”, Captain Rowland said, recalling how a group of 1,500 men faced the might of the entire Japanese 31st Division. “It was a great military achievement”.

Before leaving Kohima, Captain Rowland and his son stopped to lay a wreath at the base of the rough stone war memorial at Garrison Hill. As he did so, he remembered eight comrades he had known who had been lost.

I knew the battle was not part of the public imagination like other more famous ones, but those who were there they would never forget it.

BBC Mundo

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