Burmese Connection. Ashish Basu
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“There are three reasons, my son: the harsh terrain, long and intense rains for half of the year, and diseases. The Shans, Kachins, and the Lisu are adapted to this land by the forces of nature; they know how to live on and off this harsh landscape—the invaders do not. A few have attempted over the centuries, but those three reasons always got in the way. Eventually, the risks did not match the rewards. If the outsiders did not come by water or air, they were less likely to establish a foothold in Burma. One of my teachers in India used to call it ‘Burma’s natural protection’ from invaders.”
In later years, as the war raged between the Allies and the Japanese Army in different parts of Burma, Aung thought his granpho’s words were prophetic. Granpho was not there to see how it played out in WWII. Burma was naturally protected from the rest of the world with tall mountain ranges on the western flank, northern, and eastern borders. Before the war, it was a British colony with a degree of autonomy that was not very common within the British colonial empire. During the war, three countries—Britain, the United States, and China—fought the Japanese in Aung’s homeland in Northern Burma.
Each one of those countries fought with a different set of goals, though. The British Army was in the lead mainly because of the Allied command structure and Burma’s proximity to India. When the Japanese Army invaded and annexed large swaths of Southeast Asia, British and Indian troops under British command were sent to defend Burma. The majority of the fighting men in those British Army divisions were of Indian origin. The British goal was to create a buffer around India’s far Eastern flank. India was the jewel of the British empire and a major source of wartime revenue for the British crown. Under no circumstances could the British allow the Japanese to invade from the East and occupy India. That was the worst nightmare for the British.
The United States also tried to help Burma as a direct result of pressure from the Japanese Army, but the real American interest was different from those of the British. The United States looked to maintain Burma outside of Japanese control so that supply lines into China could remain open. The supplies traveled into China on land using the motorable road, the road that connected Kunming in China with Lashio in Burma. Supply lines to China were critical at that point because Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s forces were already struggling in multiple fronts, and Washington was worried about Mao’s successes.
At this point in time during WWII, United States had its Northern Combat Area Command, or NCAC, as a subcommand of the Southeast Asia Command, or SEAC. It controlled Allied operations in Aung’s homeland in North Burma, a bit unusual, but that was the command structure. For most of its existence, the NCAC was commanded by General Joseph Stilwell. From 1945, Lieutenant General Daniel Sultan assumed command of the NCAC after General Stilwell left. For the NCAC, Burma was a priority, and General Stilwell said so in every briefing.
Chinese National Army soldiers formed a major part of the combat units within the NCAC. That was part of the reason why Aung had seen a large number of Chinese soldiers with the Galahad forces in Northern Burma. They had the spirit but needed training to face the war hardened Japanese Army. Albeit different, those British and American worries about Burma were not unfounded—its strategic location was of great interest to the Japanese. By 1944, those fears about Japan’s annexation aspirations were coming out in the open for all parties to see. Japan had annexed a large swath of territory very quickly.
The Japanese war ministry was worried about America’s industrial production capacity: they knew Japan could never match it. To counter that deficiency, they had decided to go on the offensive and win as much territory as they could. That was war ministry’s doctrine of quick decisive victories. They also thought inflicting substantial damage to the Allied forces would discourage America from participating in the war fully. Both were dangerous miscalculations: Japan and the Japanese people paid dearly for those miscalculations and suffered a lot.
On the Japanese side, the Imperial Army wanted to incorporate Burma into its extended borders for its strategic location, oil, and other natural resources. Burma had been exporting crude oil since 1853. During WWII, Burma used to supply much of the crude oil that was consumed all across British India. The importance of that valuable resource during the war was known to the Japanese planners in Tokyo. The Japanese mainland was far away, and the availability of inexpensive crude meant greater mobility for Japanese heavy armor on land. In addition to cutting off supply lines to China, a Japanese controlled Burma could provide security to the expanded Japanese empire. With those goals in mind, Japanese command in Burma was hurriedly reorganized under General Masakazu Kawabe in 1943. Burma was seen like a launch pad.
Right after that reorganization, the Japanese war ministry decided to consider various options for invading India from Burma. As part of that vision of the war ministry, General Renya Mutaguchi was brought in to command the Japanese 15th Army. The war was already going badly for Japan by 1944. Despite that, the leaders in the Japanese war ministry supported Mutaguchi’s ambitious idea of starting up a new invasion of India from the Burma command. The India invasion from Burma was considered to be pretty easy by the war ministry in Tokyo.
General Mutaguchi was a respected warrior, but he did not know much about the realities on the ground in Burma. Even his own staff officers were doubtful about his battle plans. He believed that British and Indian troops were inferior to the Japanese troops. Because of that mindset, the India invasion was not planned properly. General Mutaguchi assumed that the superiority of the Japanese troops on the ground would compensate for other deficiencies like the lack of air support by Japanese bombers. They paid very little attention to building and sustaining supply lines. In addition, Japanese planners had inadequate knowledge of the harsh geography; the planning reflected those gaps.
The fact that they lacked support from the bombers of the Japanese air force was widely known. By this time, the air over Burma and India’s Far Eastern flank was owned by the Allied bombers; there were regular flights over the “hump.” After the debacle in the Malay Peninsula, the Allied command structure was completely revamped, and the Allied troops were fighting with a new sense of urgency. At this stage, they knew losing was not an option. Aung had learned later that the optimism of the Japanese planners about the India invasion was mostly due to the influence of the Indian National Army (INA) on General Hideki Tojo.
Ultimately, from March until July 1944, the Japanese Army fought hard but got bogged down and failed in its goal of getting a foothold on Indian soil. Not just that—most of the Japanese divisions were driven back to Burma with heavy losses of men and equipment. The losses were staggering. The Japanese Army also suffered a significant loss of morale among its ranks. For the Japanese Army, the incorrect assumptions added to the already huge cost in lives and resources. The Japanese had assumed that the “inferior” Indian troops under British command would switch sides overnight and join the INA en masse.
They had widely publicized that the INA was fighting a legitimate battle for India’s independence from the British. They invited all patriotic Indian soldiers to join the INA at the earliest. They expected an uprising against the British as soon as the word was out. The regular radio broadcasts from the Azad Hind (Free India) force and the Japanese Army became folklore in India’s eastern city of Calcutta. Much to the dismay of the British, people in the streets and bazaars of Calcutta started imagining the arrival of Japanese ships in their port on the river Hooghly. The imminent British defeat in the hands of the mighty Japanese was the subject of evening chatter in the streets of Calcutta.
Ironically, that widely anticipated switching of sides by the Indian troops to the INA never happened. The widely expected uprising against the British never got started. On the contrary, the Indian troops under British command fought valiantly and won some of the bloodiest engagements of WWII. The Indians that Mutaguchi used to disparage defeated some of the best fighting formations of the Japanese Army hands down. They proved that they were not “inferior” at all, and ultimately, soldiers of the INA surrendered to the British Indian troops. Weeks later, when small bits of news of the failed Japanese invasion of India would reach Aung and his scouts, they would be overjoyed.
The disastrous India invasion was the turning point of the Japanese Burma campaign in WWII. Japan never recovered. The Japanese defeat at Kohima and Imphal were the largest up until that time, and those defeats effectively doomed the Japanese Burma command. So comprehensive