[The battlefields in what are now the Indian states of Nagaland
and Manipur — some just a few miles from the border with Myanmar, which was
then Burma — are also well preserved because of the region’s longtime
isolation. Trenches, bunkers and airfields remain as they were left 70 years
ago — worn by time and monsoons but clearly visible in the jungle.]
By Gadiner
Harris
 |
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REMEMBRANCE
AT THE BATTLEFIELD
Ningthoukhangjam Moirangningthou, still living
in a house at
the foot of a hill that was the site of
some of the fiercest fighting, recalled
the battle.
Credit Gardiner Harris/The New York Times
|
Night after night, Japanese troops charged across the court’s
white lines, only to be killed by almost continuous firing from British and
Indian machine guns. The Battle of Kohima and Imphal was the bloodiest of World
War II in India, and it cost Japan much of its best army in Burma.
But the battle has been largely forgotten in India as an emblem
of the country’s colonial past. The Indian troops who fought and died here were
subjects of the British Empire. In this remote, northeastern corner of India,
more recent battles with a mix of local insurgencies among tribal groups that
have long sought autonomy have made remembrances of former glories a luxury.
Now, as India loosens its security grip on this region and a
fragile peace blossoms among the many combatants here, historians are hoping
that this year’s anniversary reminds the world of one of the most extraordinary
fights of the Second World War. The battle was voted
last year as the winner of a contest by Britain’s National Army Museum,
beating out Waterloo and D-Day as Britain’s greatest battle, though it was
overshadowed at the time by the Normandy landings.
“The Japanese regard the battle of Imphal to be their greatest defeat
ever,” said Robert Lyman, author of “Japan’s Last Bid for Victory: The Invasion
of India 1944.” “And it gave Indian soldiers a belief in their own martial
ability and showed that they could fight as well or better than anyone else.”
The battlefields in what are now the Indian states of Nagaland
and Manipur — some just a few miles from the border with Myanmar, which was
then Burma — are also well preserved because of the region’s longtime
isolation. Trenches, bunkers and airfields remain as they were left 70 years
ago — worn by time and monsoons but clearly visible in the jungle.
This mountain city also boasts a graceful, terraced military
cemetery on which the lines of the old tennis court are demarcated in white
stone.
A closing ceremony for a three-month commemoration is planned
for June 28 in Imphal, and representatives from the United States, Australia,
Japan, India and other nations have promised to attend.
“The Battle of Imphal and Kohima is not forgotten by the
Japanese,” said Yasuhisa Kawamura, deputy chief of mission at the Japanese
Embassy in New Delhi, who is planning to attend the ceremony. “Military
historians refer to it as one of the fiercest battles in world history.”
A small but growing tour industry has sprung up around the
battlefields over the past year, led by a Hemant Katoch, a local history buff.
c
“India has fought six wars since independence, and we don’t have
a memorial for a single one,” said Mohan Guruswamy, a fellow at the Observer Research
Foundation, a public policy organization in India. “And at Imphal,
Indian troops died, but they were fighting for a colonial government.”
Rana T. S. Chhina, secretary of the Center for
Armed Forces Historical Research in New Delhi, said that top
Indian officials were participating this year in some of the 100-year
commemorations of crucial battles of World War I.
“I suppose we may need to let Imphal and Kohima simmer for a few
more decades before we embrace it fully,” he said. “But there’s hope.”
The battle began some two years after Japanese forces routed the British in
Burma in 1942, which brought the Japanese Army to India’s eastern border. Lt.
Gen. Renya Mutaguchi persuaded his Japanese superiors to allow him to attack
British forces at Imphal and Kohima in hopes of preventing a British counterattack.
But General Mutaguchi planned to push farther into India to destabilize the
British Raj, which by then was already being convulsed by the independence
movement led by Mahatma Gandhi. General Mutaguchi brought a large number of
Indian troops captured after the fall of Malaya and Singapore who agreed to
join the Japanese in hopes of creating an independent India.
The British were led by Lt. Gen. William Slim, a brilliant
tactician who re-formed and retrained the Eastern Army after its crushing defeat
in Burma. The British and Indian forces were supported by planes commanded by
the United States Army Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell. Once the Allies became certain
that the Japanese planned to attack, General Slim withdrew his forces from
western Burma and had them dig defensive positions in the hills around Imphal
Valley, hoping to draw the Japanese into a battle far from their supply lines.
But none of the British commanders believed that the Japanese
could cross the nearly impenetrable jungles around Kohima in force, so when a
full division of nearly 15,000 Japanese troops came swarming out of the
vegetation on April 4, the town was only lightly defended by some 1,500 British
and Indian troops.
The Japanese
encirclement meant that those troops were largely cut off from
reinforcements and supplies, and a bitter battle eventually led the British and
Indians to withdraw into a small enclosure next to a tennis court.
The Japanese, without air support or supplies, eventually became
exhausted, and the Allied forces soon pushed
them out of Kohima and the hills around Imphal. On June 22,
British and Indian forces finally cleared the last of the Japanese from the
crucial road linking Imphal and Kohima, ending the siege.
The Japanese 15th Army, 85,000 strong for the invasion of India,
was essentially destroyed, with 53,000 dead
and missing. Injuries and illnesses took many of the rest. There were 16,500
British casualties.
Ningthoukhangjam Moirangningthou, 83, still lives in a house at
the foot of a hill that became the site of one of the fiercest battles near
Imphal. Mr. Ningthoukhangjam watched as three British tanks slowly destroyed
every bunker constructed by the Japanese. “We called them ‘iron
elephants,’ ” he said of the tanks. “We’d never seen anything like that
before.”
Andrew S. Arthur was away at a Christian high school when the
battle started. By the time he made his way home to the village of Shangshak,
where one of the first battles was fought, it had been destroyed and his family
was living in the jungle, he said.
He recalled encountering a wounded Japanese soldier who could
barely stand. Mr. Arthur said he took the soldier to the British, who treated
him.
“Most of my life, nobody ever spoke about the war,” he said.
“It’s good that people are finally talking about it again.”
