Battle of Kohima - The Stalingrad of East

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Tell Them Of Us and Say

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We Gave Our Today

- Epitaph at Kohima war Cemetery in Nagaland (India)

View of the war cemetery in Kohima

The year was 1944 and world war II was at its peak. In Asia, the Japanese imperial army was going like a blizzard, conquering countries across south east Asia. China, today an economic and military power, had already fallen to the Japanese in 1937 and the important British trading port of Singapore fell in 1942. The Japanese were rapidly pushing across Burma towards their ultimate prize, India. In March of 1944, the Japanese forces arrived at the border between India and Burma.

Before I go deeper into this article, let me remind that as always my intention is not to detail the complete event, as there are numerous articles on the internet for those who wish to read into the details of a battle or event. Here I intend to present some interesting facts and my own understanding of significance of this event in history.

What was the intention of Japanese forces to move into India:

1) India, as we all know was referred to as the jewel in the British crown. In WWII, the Indian forces with 2.5 million soldiers, was the largest volunteer fighting force in the world. The viceroy of India commanded an army greater in numbers than all of the armies of Britain and rest of its colonies combined. 

• The entire allied war effort in Asia (barring the action in Pacific) was being led by the British and conducted majorly through the GHQ (General Headquarters) in Delhi and the forward command in Burma (untill it's capture by the Japanese). A Japanese victory anywhere on the Indian subcontinent would have had a great demoralizing effect on the British forces.
• India was also the largest supplier of food grains to England and the British forces spread across the world. The Bengal famine of 1943 is an infamous example of how the British continued to ship excessive quantities of food grains from Bengal to England for the war effort and to keep their home population well fed which resulted in a severe famine in Bengal and an estimated 2.3 million deaths due to the famine. 

If the Japanese were to be successful in their war in South Asia and elsewhere, they would need to capture India, the most powerful British colony then.

2) Indian National Army (INA) - Probably the other biggest motivator for the Japanese was from the INA which wanted to move quickly towards it's "Chalo Dilli" goal. Formed from Indian Army PoWs captured in Malaysia and Singapore, the INA was determined in its objective to march onto Delhi and free the country from British rule. The Japanese also believed that with INA with them, the rest of the Indian troops would quickly side with the Japanese and fight the British rule.

3) US support to China - The United states had been continuously supplying the Chinese forces of Chiang Kia Shek  across the Himalayas using  C-47 Dakotas taking off from bases across Eastern India. In 1943, upto 3000 tonnes of supplies had been flown by US pilots into China. These had been a major cause of concern for the Japanese who were fighting the Chinese and accelerated their task to capture eastern India. (Note of interest here - The flight over the Himalayas was called "The Hump" and was a pilot's worst nightmare. An estimated 500 US planes crashed during the WW2 period with loss of 1300 men and 300+ missing. I don't recall the year but sometime around 2010, a joint Indian-american team started a project in Arunachal Pradesh to find such crash sites and remains of US servicemen and send the remains back to the US for military burial). 

The Japanese thus started their campaign into India in March 1944. 

The city of Kohima is around 30 miles from the Burma border. Further ahead of Kohima was the important rail junction of Dimapur. This was a important military garrison and supply depot for the British Indian army. It was essential for the Japanese to capture Dimapur so that the British supply line in north east India would be cut. An access to Dimapur would also mean that the Japanese could re-use the rail network for their force movements.

In March 1944, the Japanese army moved to capture the cities of Imphal and Kohima in a traditional flanking offensive. On April 4th, a 15,000 strong division of the Japanese 15th army came out of the jungles near Kohima and surrounded the town. Kohima was then lightly defended by 1500 British and Indian troops. Earlier in the month, another army division of the Japanese had surrounded the city of Imphal. The intent of the Japanese was to capture these 2 important towns and then move collectively towards Dimapur.

The army units in Kohima comprised of elements of the Rajput regiment, the Queens Own royal West Kent regiment, Assam regiment, Naga rifles and the paramilitary force Assam Rifles. These units would play the crucial role in countering the Japanese advance. With shrinking perimeter, the allied forces were left to defend in 2 major points - Garrison Hill and the District Commissioner's bungalow. The fighting was so intense in Kohima, that the tennis court in the DC's bungalow became a match between the 2 forces with each camped on either side. One can only imagine the size of a tennis court and 2 armies trying to cross the net line, but with grenades and bullets here. The British held one side of the court, the Japanese the other, and grenades rolled and bounced across the court throughout each night. One enterprising British officer devised a simple V-shaped wooden barrier the troops could knock together and place in front of their foxholes at night. The obstacle would deflect Japanese grenades in the darkness, and the troops removed them in the morning. This battle in itself came to be known as the 'Battle of the Tennis Court'. Everything from machine guns, bayonets and shovels was used in this combat.

The ruins of the DC's bungalow and the Tennis Court

View of Garrison Hill after the battle

Ultimately by the end of April, the British relief force consisting of the Punjab regiment and Gurkha rifles broke through the Japanese siege and arrived in Kohima. The British Indian Army was able to start their counter offensive and push the invaders beyond the Kohima ridge. The Japanese continued to fight bravely but were pushed back. The last Japanese positions on the ridge to be captured were the tennis court and gardens above the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow.

While the battle of Kohima raged, there was an intense fight to raise the siege on Imphal by the 5th Indian Infantry division. Finally on June 22nd, the leading troops of British 2nd Division from Kohima side met the main body of 5th Indian Infantry Division advancing north from Imphal at Milestone 109, 30 miles (48 km) south of Kohima. The Battle of Kohima had left 4000 Indian and 5000 Japanese troops dead.

The linkup between the army units on the Kohima-Imphal road

Indian troops at the Burma border during the offensive against Japanese

Apart from poor planning of the Japanese and the courage of the Indian defenders, a number of other factors were responsible for the loss of the Japanese attack.

1. Lack of Supplies - For any army invasion to sustain, the maintenance of a steady and secured supply line is essential. The Japanese supply line in north east India was overextended by running through the tough terrain of Burma.
1. For food source, the Japanese had carried 5000 oxen with them but only 1000 of these made it through the forest and rivers of Burma. Thus only 1/5th of the planned food supplies was available for the Japanese.
2. British guerrilla units called 'Chindits' operated behind enemy lines in Burma. These were specially trained to bomb Japanese convoys on road and rail. This made resupply a nightmare for the Japanese (Those who have watched the movie "Bridge on the river Kwai" will recall the final scenes where a British commando unit took out the bridge and the train carrying the supplies to Japanese troops in Burma).
3. The British Indian units had the aerial advantage in terms of support from the RAF and USAF fighter planes, which continued to constantly bomb resupply convoys of the Japanese. Even though the Japanese air force had initially bombed Calcutta, the role of their air force got reduced due to the lack of fuel supplies and their involvement in the pacific theatre.
4. The Japanese tried to forage food from villages surrounding Kohima, but the Naga people ensured that stocks were either moved far into the hills or burnt to prevent them from falling into Japanese hands. RAF which had extensive information on local food warehouses also ensured that any warehouses captured by Japanese were quickly bombed.       Ultimately the Japanese were finding it difficult to even get medical and ammunition supplies as the battle progressed. The Japanese had to withdraw from many of the captured positions as the troops were staving and ran out of ammunition to counter the Indian advance.
2. Resupply and reinforcements to Indian units - While the Japanese were struggling with resupply issues, the Indian forces had the advantage of a steady supply line. As I mentioned earlier, US air force transport units were operating from eastern India to supply the Chinese forces.  Lord Louis Mountbatten, British supreme commander for the area, had without authority, borrowed a number of C-47 Dakotas from the transport groups flying supplies over the “Hump” to China. Realizing that the critical decision would be reached at Imphal and Kohima, he had flatly refused to return them, in spite of increasingly american pressure on London. With Winston Churchill’s backing, Mountbatten kept the airplanes and the supplies kept coming into Kohima and Imphal. The steady flow of ammunition and other supplies into Imphal and Kohima was the supreme achievement of British and American transport pilots. In terms of troops, the army was already in mobilizing the Punjab and Gurkha regiments towards Imphal and Kohima.

As the British Indian forces continued the push, the Japanese were finally pushed back from the Arakan Peninsula in Burma by July 1945. In August, Japan surrendered after the nuclear bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The Battle of Kohima saw northeast India emerge as a decisive battlefield in the Second World War.  One should realize that while the Japanese conquered much of South Asia, in India they could not progress beyond 30 miles from the border.
Kohima was one of the greatest land defeats ever felt by the Japanese Army. Only 20,000 of the 85,000 Japanese who had come to Burma were alive by the end of the campaign. The battle is forever known as ‘The Stalingrad of the East’ due to the backs-to-the-wall defence, as well as it being an integral turning point in the war in Asia. 5,000 Japanese soldiers were lost at Kohima and the victory galvanized the British, who were able to launch renewed offences as the last of the Japanese troops were cleared from Burma and pushed back to Mandalay.

Today Battle of Kohima forms part of the legacy of the Burma campaign. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the then supreme allied commander in South Asia described Kohima as "probably one of the greatest battles in history... in effect the Battle of Burma... naked unparalleled heroism... the British/Indian Thermopylae".

Why is that such an important battle fought on Indian soil is largely forgotten in India?

In my opinion, the answer to this may lie in the political situation of post-independence India. A country freed from 150 years of British rule wanted to have a legacy of its own, a legacy free from any association of support for the British. Any contributions to allied war effort was thus largely ignored in history books, even though thousands of Indian soldiers died fighting in it.
Even though the INA (Indian National Army led by Subhash Chandra Bose) fought alongside the Japanese during the Burma campaign to free India from the British rule, this too was ignored as Bose was considered a challenge to post-independent ruling disposition. Due to the suspense over Bose's death and rumours of him being alive, it was best considered to quietly write off any reference to this battle. Thus a legendary chapter in India's military history is now largely forgotten.

A Note of Interest - The first territory occupied by the Japanese in India were the islands of Andaman and Nicobar. The Japanese occupied these in 1942 and it was not until 1945 that the islands were liberated.

Update November 30th 2018 – Recently I came across a video of the Assam Regiment where the soldiers sing a unique song which goes like this “Badluram ka badan zameen ke neeche hai, aur humko uska ration milta hai…..”. This translates to saying that a person named Badluram is buried under the ground and we are getting his food ration. This is usually sung during the passing out parade of the regiment recruits or during gatherings. 

The unique lyrics of the song originate from a famous world war 2 incident of the regiment. In military the Quarter Master is the officer who is responsible for food rations for the men. The practice during WW2 required the quartermaster to report the number of men under him and accordingly food ration would be sent for the troops. Every time a soldier died, the quartermaster would strike their name from the register of soldiers. While it is not known when exactly Badluram died (before or during the battle with Japanese), his Quartermaster did not strike out his name. So the company continued to receive an food ration for an additional 1 person. Now the quartermaster ensured that this ration was stored rather than distributing among the men. Later when the company got surrounded by the Japanese troops, their food supply line was also cut. It is at this time that the stored ration which came in Badluram’s name was used by the soldiers to keep themselves fed and alive. The song was coined later as a tribute to Badluram and how though he was dead, his company got his ration and helped them survive the siege.

You can listen to the song at the below link
Badluram Ka Badan - Assam Regiment marching song