Author: Leslie Edwards Publisher: The History Press ISBN: 0750952601 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 926
Book Description
By the end of 1943 the Japanese had occupied most of South-East Asia. On 6 March 1944, the first units of the Japanese 15 Army crossed the inhospitable border of what was then Burma, and invaded India. At the township of Kohima they were met by a small, hastily assembled force of Indian and British troops, later reinforced by 2 Division of Slim's 14 Army, who fought valiantly and forced the Japanese to retreat. Described by Mountbatten as 'the British/Indian Thermopylae', Kohima was a turning point in Japanese fortunes, heralding their continued defeat in battle until their formal surrender on 2 September 1945. Using extensive research in primary sources and many previously unpublished first-hand accounts, Leslie Edwards presents a definitive analysis of this pivotal battle.
Author: Robert Lyman Publisher: Osprey Publishing ISBN: 9781846039393 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Osprey's Campaign title for the Battle of Kohima during World War II (1939-1945), which saved India from Japanese attacks. In March 1944 the Japanese Army launched Operation U-Go, an attack on Assam in India intended to inspire a rising by the Indian populace against British rule. The Japanese plan would rely on mobility, infiltration and captured supplies to maintain the momentum of the attack. A month earlier the Japanese had launched Operation Ha-Go, which was intended as a feint to draw British attention away from the Imphal area where the brunt of the U-Go attacks would take place. But British forces employed new defensive techniques to counter the Japanese infiltration tactics; forming defensive boxes, supplied by air, they held out against determined Japanese assaults until the Japanese were forced to withdraw, short of supplies. These tactics were again employed on a larger scale when Imphal and Kohima were surrounded during Operation U-Go. Kohima (the 'Stalingrad of the East') was the crucial key point to the successful defence of Imphal, and took place in two stages. From 3 to 16 April the Japanese attempted to capture Kohima Ridge, which dominated the road along which the British and Indian troops centred on the Imphal plain were supplied. As the small garrison held out against fierce and repeatedly desperate attempts by the Japanese 31st Division to destroy them, so the British 2nd Division fought to break through and relieve them. Then for over two months from 18 April, British and Indian troops counter-attacked in an effort to drive the Japanese from the positions they had already captured that blocked the road to Imphal. The battle ended on June 22 when British and Indian troops from Kohima and Imphal met at Milestone 109, thus ending the siege.
Author: Chris Brown Publisher: The History Press ISBN: 0752493949 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 130
Book Description
Kohima was the turning point in the Japanese invasion of India, witnessing the end of their attempt to overthrow the British Raj. It was a bitter battle fought in three stages, spanning three months and ending with the siege of Imphal. Losses on both sides were heavy, with the Japanese suffering their greatest land defeat thus far in the war. Against the odds and an enemy who nearly refused to give in, the British Army resisted the Japanese and their victory paved the way for the reconquest of Burma. Battle Story: Kohima explores the historical context of this critical point in the war in Asia, the personalities of the opposing armies and offers a blow-by-blow account of the battle.
Author: John Colvin Publisher: Casemate Publishers ISBN: 1781594309 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
Having driven the British and Indian Forces out of Burma in 1942, General Mutaguchi, Commanding the 15th Japanese Army, was obsessed by the conquest of India. In 1944 the British 14th Army, under its commander General Slim, drew back to the Imphal Plain, before Mutaguchis impending offensive. To the north, however, the entire Japanese 31 Division had crossed the Chindwin and, on April 5, arrived at the hill-station and road junction of Kohima, cutting off Imphal except by air, from the supply point at Dimpapur.Kohima was initially manned by only 266 men of the Assam Regiment and a few hundred convalescents and administrative troops. They were joined, on April 5, by 440 men of the Fourth Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment, straight from the Battle of Arakan.In pouring rain, under continual bombardment, this tiny garrison held the assaults of thirteen thousand Japanese troops in hand-to-hand combat for sixteen days, an action described by Mountbatten as probably one of the greatest battles in history ... in effect the Battle of Burma, naked, unparalleled heroism, the British/Indian Thermopylae.
Author: Raymond Street Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1473863856 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 183
Book Description
The Japanese advance through Thailand, Malaya and Burma appeared unstoppable and the fate of India looked utterly precarious.The garrison of the Kohima outpost numbering some 1500 British and Indian Army soldiers faced over 13,000 fanatical and previously victorious Japanese troops. The following sixteen days marked the turning point of the war in the Far East thanks to men like Raymond Street who fought with legendary courage and tireless persistence.Raymond was a member of the 4th Battalion The Queen's West Kent and as a company runner he was uniquely placed to witness the dreadful and dramatic events as they unfolded. Not only did he miraculously survive but he made a superb record of the battle as fortunes ebbed and flowed. His memories have been transcribed into this first-hand account of one of the most decisive and hardest fought battles of the Second World War. We Fought at Kohima will surely be judged as a fighting man's memoir of the highest quality to rank alongside such legendary works as Men at Arnhem and Quartered Safe Out Here.
Author: David Rooney Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson ISBN: 9780304354573 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
It was in Burma, in the landmark battles of Imphal and Kohima, that the Japanese forces suffered their greatest defeats in history. What really happened in these complex confrontations, fought over confusing terrain? This engrossing narrative sets the record straight, offering a new analysis of the role of airpower in the struggle, and highlighting the thinking of top British, American, Japanese, and Chinese commanders. It ensures that a story of bravery and suffering remains alive forever.
Author: Mukul Chaturvedi Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1040003745 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 266
Book Description
This book focuses on varied forms of self-referential storytelling or life writing and its emergence as a democratic and inclusive genre, both globally and in India, and its intersections with history, fiction, memory, truth and identity. The book examines the practice of life writing and its scope for accommodating diverse voices, distinct identities, collaborations and non-hierarchical connections as it gives voice to oral, silenced and marginalized communities. It explores forms like auto/biographical fiction, digital storytelling, graphic memoirs, and testimonies of migration and exile, among others. The eclectic collection of essays in this volume draws attention towards the transformative possibilities of life writing as it engages with issues of resistance, recuperation, re-inscribing individual and collective memories, histories, and promotes an understanding of multicultural others. Focusing on the multiple ways in which the production, circulation, and consumption of life writing has helped to reimagine and redefine individual and collective identities in different cultural and geopolitical contexts, the collection breaks new ground by initiating a cross-cultural perspective in life writing studies. The book aims to encourage critical engagement with a vastly growing body of literature that has seen a publishing and translation boom in contemporary times, both globally and in India. With life writing emerging as a robust area of research, this edited collection provides a much-needed impetus to critically engage with issues of self-representation, memory and identity in recent times. This volume will serve as a significant and rich resource for university students, researchers, and academics of literature, comparative studies, cultural studies, history, indigenous studies and digital and media studies.
Author: Raymond A. Callahan Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 0700624279 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
In the spring of 1944, on the eastern front of India near the Burmese border, the seemingly unstoppable Imperial Japanese Army suffered the worst defeat in its history at the hands of Lieutenant General William Slim's British XIV Army, most of whose units were drawn from the little-esteemed Indian Army. Triumph at Imphal-Kohima tells the largely unknown story of how an army that Winston Churchill had once dismissed as “a welter of lassitude and inefficiency” came to achieve such an unlikely, unprecedented, and critical victory for the Allied forces in World War II. Long the British Empire's strategic reserve, the Indian Army had been comprehensively defeated in Malaya and Burma in 1941–1943. Military historian Raymond Callahan chronicles the remarkable exercise in institutional transformation that remade the British Indian forces to reverse those losses. With the invaluable help of the American DC-3 on the Burma front, Slim overhauled the British XIV Army with the Imperial Japanese Army's strategic weaknesses in mind; namely, an utter disregard for logistics and an unrelenting addiction to the attack. Callahan shows how, on an enormous battlefield—over five hundred miles from north to south—the XIV Army surmounted the challenges of terrain, disease, wretched communication, and climate to draw the Imperial forces under Lieutenant General Mutaguchi Renya ever deeper into ever stronger British defensive arrays until the Japanese Army's vaunted offensive aggression finally exhausted itself. Following this epic battle from build-up to aftermath, this book brings overdue detailed attention to Lieutenant General William Slim's handling of perhaps the most complex battle any Allied commander fought during World War II—and to the long-belittled British Indian Army that became the magnificent fighting force that triumphed at Imphal-Kohima and went on to reconquer Burma.
Author: Kaushik Roy Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004306781 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 457
Book Description
Sepoys against the Rising Sun, based on the archival materials collected from India and United Kingdom, evaluates the combat/military/battlefield effectiveness of the Indian Army in South-East Asia against the IJA during World War II.
Author: Robert Lyman Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 147284713X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 597
Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RUSI DUKE OF WELLINGTON MEDAL FOR MILITARY HISTORY 2022 'This is a superb book.' - James Holland In 1941 and 1942 the British and Indian Armies were brutally defeated and Japan reigned supreme in its newly conquered territories throughout Asia. But change was coming. New commanders were appointed, significant training together with restructuring took place, and new tactics were developed. A War of Empires by acclaimed historian Robert Lyman expertly records these coordinated efforts and describes how a new volunteer Indian Army, rising from the ashes of defeat, would ferociously fight to turn the tide of war. But victory did not come immediately. It wasn't until March 1944, when the Japanese staged their famed 'March on Delhi', that the years of rebuilding paid off and, after bitter fighting, the Japanese were finally defeated at Kohima and Imphal. This was followed by a series of extraordinary victories culminating in Mandalay in May 1945 and the collapse of all Japanese forces in Burma. Until now, the Indian Army's contribution has been consistently forgotten and ignored by many Western historians but Robert Lyman proves how vital this hard-fought campaign was in securing Allied victory in the east. Detailing the defeat of Japanese militarism, he recounts how the map of the region was ultimately redrawn, guaranteeing the rise of an independent India free from the shackles of empire.
Author: Leslie Edwards
Author: Robert Lyman
Author: Chris Brown
Author: John Colvin
Author: Raymond Street
Author: David Rooney
Author: Mukul Chaturvedi
Author: Raymond A. Callahan
Author: Kaushik Roy
Author: Robert Lyman