Burma campaign

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Burma campaign began in January 1942 with a two-division Japanese force crossing jungle-clad mountain ranges into southern Burma, and it did not end until Japan surrendered more than three years later. No other land campaign fought by the Western Allies in the Pacific Theatre ran continuously from the opening of hostilities to the close of the war. That singular fact raises a question: why did this particular fight last so long, and why did its outcome matter far beyond the borders of Burma itself?

  The answers lie in a combination of geography, disease, politics, and competing ambitions that no single headquarters ever fully controlled. Monsoon rains confined effective fighting to just over half of each year. Mountains and jungle made roads almost meaningless. Britain, the United States, and China each pursued different strategic goals. And woven through every phase was a struggle over the idea of Asian independence, embodied in collaborationist armies fighting under the Japanese banner while an Allied coalition of Indians, Africans, Chinese, and British fought to push them back.

  The campaign moved through four distinct phases: a rapid Japanese conquest in 1942; failed Allied counteroffensives in 1942 and 1943; a massive Japanese invasion of India in 1944 that ended in their greatest defeat to that point in history; and finally the Allied liberation of Burma, completed just hours before the monsoon closed the roads in May 1945. Each phase carries its own lessons, its own catastrophes, and its own moments of improvised brilliance.

• 2. The Japanese Conquest

  ›

  Lieutenant General Shojiro Iida's Fifteenth Army had a precise initial goal: capture Rangoon, the capital and principal seaport, close the overland supply line to China, and shield Japanese gains farther south. Starting with only two infantry divisions, his forces moved through northern Thailand and struck the southern Burmese province of Tenasserim in January 1942.

  The speed of the advance left the defenders permanently off balance. Japanese troops took the port of Moulmein at the mouth of the Salween River despite stiff resistance, then pushed northward, repeatedly outflanking British defensive lines. The most consequential moment came at the Sittaung River, where troops of the 17th Indian Infantry Division were racing to retreat. Japanese parties reached the bridge first. On the 22nd of February, the bridge was demolished to prevent its capture, cutting off two of the division's own brigades. That decision has been disputed ever since.

  With two brigades lost, Rangoon could not be held. General Archibald Wavell ordered the city defended in expectation of reinforcements from the Middle East. Some units arrived; none of it was enough. The new Burma Army commander, General Harold Alexander, ordered Rangoon evacuated on the 7th of March after its port and oil refinery were destroyed. The city fell and the army broke out northward, narrowly avoiding encirclement.

  On the eastern front, the Chinese 200th Division held the Japanese around Toungoo for a time, but the fall of that town opened the road for Japanese motorised troops to shatter the Chinese Sixth Army and capture Lashio, severing the Chinese armies from Yunnan. As the entire defensive line collapsed, the only choices left were an overland retreat to India or a retreat to Yunnan.

  The human cost of the collapse extended far beyond soldiers. Around 600,000 Indians, Anglo-Indians, and Anglo-Burmese fled Burma by the autumn of 1942. Perhaps 80,000 of those in flight died from starvation, exhaustion, and disease. Some of the worst atrocities of this period were carried out not by the Japanese but by Burmese gangs linked to the Burma Independence Army, the force that had spearheaded the initial Japanese attack.

• 3. Failed Offensives, 1942-1943

  ›

  On the 16th of April 1942, 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by the Japanese 33rd Division at Yenangyaung and had to be rescued by the Chinese 38th Division. That rescue foreshadowed a grim pattern: Allied cooperation was occasionally brilliant, but the broader campaign to retake Burma would stall for the better part of two years.

  The retreat of Burma Corps to Imphal in Manipur was conducted in dreadful conditions. Starving refugees, disorganised stragglers, and the sick and wounded clogged the primitive tracks to India. The corps arrived just before the monsoon broke in May 1942, having lost most of its equipment. At least half of the Chinese troops who tried to return to Yunnan through remote mountain forests died on the journey.

  Britain could maintain only three active campaigns simultaneously. The Middle East took priority, being closer to home and in line with the "Germany First" policy agreed in London and Washington. Eastern India added its own complications: violent Quit India protests in Bengal and Bihar required large numbers of British troops to suppress, and a famine in Bengal may have caused 3 million deaths through starvation, disease, and exposure.

  Two operations were mounted in the 1942-1943 dry season, both disappointing. An advance on the Mayu peninsula in Arakan pushed to within a few miles of the peninsula's end at Donbaik before stalling against well-entrenched Japanese bunkers. The Allies lacked both the means and the tactical knowledge to overcome such positions. Japanese reinforcements crossed terrain the Allies had declared impassable, hit an exposed flank, and forced a retreat almost to the Indian frontier.

  The second operation, Operation Longcloth, sent roughly 3,000 men of a long-range penetration force under Brigadier Orde Wingate deep into Japanese-held Burma. They cut the main north-south railway, possibly for two weeks, before suffering heavy casualties and withdrawing. The military results were questioned, but the propaganda value was real: British and Indian soldiers had proved they could fight as effectively as the Japanese in the jungle, and morale among Allied troops improved considerably.

• 4. The Political Landscape

  ›

  Japan pursued the Pan-Asianist policy it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and in Burma that policy took concrete form. The State of Burma was established as a nominally independent government under Ba Maw after the conquest. The Burma Independence Army, which had fought alongside the Japanese from the start, was reorganised as the Burma National Army under General Aung San.

  The Provisional Government of Free India, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, drew its Indian National Army largely from Indian soldiers captured in Malaya and Singapore, as well as Tamil Indians living in Malaya. At Bose's instigation, a substantial INA contingent joined the 1944 offensive with the war cry Jai Hind and the call to Dilli Chalo, "March on Delhi". The INA had earlier collaborated with Nazi Germany before aligning with Japan.

  On the Allied side, politics were equally tangled. The American-trained Chinese X Force operated under General Joseph Stilwell, whose clashing strategies with Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek eventually led to Stilwell's removal from his command. By contrast, cooperation over the Burma Road was genuinely productive. The road was built to supply the Chinese Y Force and the broader Chinese war effort, and the airlift over the Himalayas on the route nicknamed "The Hump" connected India to Chongqing despite extreme danger to aircrew.

  The dominating attitude of Japan's militarist commanders ultimately corroded the co-prosperity sphere. Real independence for Burma remained a fiction, hopes faded, and in 1945 the Burma National Army reversed course and revolted against the Japanese. Force 136, a British liaison organisation, had spent years preparing for exactly this moment, and its work paid off when a national uprising assisted the Allied advance in the war's final months.

• 5. Imphal, Kohima, and the Turning Point

  ›

  Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi's plan for Operation U-Go, the 1944 Japanese invasion of India, aimed first to destroy the forward divisions of IV Corps and capture Imphal, then to seize the strategic city of Dimapur. If Dimapur fell, the supply lines to Stilwell's forces and the Hump airlift bases would be cut. The INA was expected to cross into the Gangetic plain as a guerrilla army, living off captured British supplies.

  Japanese troops crossed the Chindwin River on the 8th of March with three infantry divisions, a brigade-sized Yamamoto Force, and the 1st division of the Indian National Army. IV Corps commander Lieutenant General Geoffry Scoones was slow to order his forward troops to withdraw, and the 17th Indian Infantry Division was cut off at Tiddim before fighting its way back to Imphal. North of Imphal, 50th Indian Parachute Brigade was defeated at Sangshak.

  The result was the greatest defeat in Japanese history to that point. Japanese casualties totalled between 50,000 and 60,000 dead, with 100,000 or more total casualties. Most died not from combat but from disease, malnutrition, and exhaustion. Allied casualties were 12,500, including 2,269 killed. Mutaguchi had already relieved all three of his divisional commanders before being relieved himself. The INA was left shattered: entire units deserted or disbanded, initial hopes of reaching the Brahmaputra valley were finished, and the force was reduced largely to auxiliary duties for the remainder of the war.

• 6. The Liberation of Burma

  ›

  General Hyotaro Kimura, who replaced Kawabe at Burma Area Army, immediately threw Allied plans into disarray by refusing to fight at the Chindwin River. He withdrew his weakened formations behind the Irrawaddy, forcing the Allies to extend their lines of communication significantly. The Allies adjusted. IV Corps was secretly switched from the right flank to the left, aimed at crossing the Irrawaddy near Pakokku and seizing Meiktila, the Japanese line-of-communication centre, while XXXIII Corps continued toward Mandalay.

  IV Corps' 17th Indian Division and 255th Indian Tank Brigade crossed the Irrawaddy and fell on Meiktila on the 1st of March 1945. The town was captured in four days despite resistance described as fighting to the last man. Mandalay fell to the 19th Indian Division on the 20th of March, though Japanese forces held Fort Dufferin for another week. Much of the historically and culturally significant parts of Mandalay burned to the ground during the fighting.

  The race to Rangoon before the monsoon was the campaign's final crisis. The monsoon was expected at the start of May. On the 1st of May, a Gurkha parachute battalion was dropped on Elephant Point and cleared Japanese rearguards from the mouth of the Yangon River. The 26th Indian Infantry Division landed by ship the next day and found that Kimura had ordered Rangoon evacuated on the 22nd of April. A small 6,000-strong INA garrison under A.D. Loganathan had maintained law and order in the city and surrendered without significant resistance. On the afternoon of the 2nd of May 1945, the monsoon rains began in full force. The Allied drive had succeeded with only hours to spare.

  The Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army, retreating from Arakan into the Pegu Yomas hill range, attempted a breakout across the swollen Sittang River on the 17th of July. The British had placed ambushes and artillery concentrations on the routes the Japanese planned to use. Hundreds of men drowned trying to cross on improvised bamboo floats and rafts. Burmese guerrillas killed stragglers east of the river. The breakout cost the Japanese nearly 10,000 men, roughly half the Twenty-Eighth Army's remaining strength. British and Indian casualties were minimal.

  American historian Raymond Callahan concluded that General Slim's great victory helped the British, unlike the French, Dutch, or later the Americans, to leave Asia with some dignity. Within three years of the campaign's end, both Burma and India were independent.