WHAT IF. . .
In early 1944 the war in south-Asia reached a critical moment, as Japanese offensives, including Indian nationalists, threatened British and Allied control of north-eastern India and beyond
By the end of 1942, Britain was reeling from a series of devastating defeats at the hands of a rampant Japanese offensive, most significantly losing the fortress city of Singapore and retreating from Burma. However, in 1943 Brigadier Orde Wingate launched the first of several special forces raids into Burma from neighbouring India, targeting Japanese positions and infrastructure. Japanese high command set in place a plan, Operation U-Go, to invade Manipur, north-east India. Capturing key strategic positions in the region would cripple any hope of the Allies recapturing Burma, and could even galvanise a significant Indian Nationalist movement, keen to see the back of British rule.
What were Japan’s aims in Operation U-Go?
When in early 1944 Tokyo authorised Operation U-Go and its associated feint towards Chittagong (Operation Ha-Go), the avowed purpose was to deny the princely state of Manipur to the Allies for any future operations into Burma. It was from Imphal, the capital of Manipur, that the then-Brigadier Orde Wingate had led… the first Chindit operation in February 1943.
The strategic rationale for Operation U-Go was merely to extend the Japanese outer defensive perimeter across the Chindwin River and into Manipur, the home of [the] 4th Indian Corps, which constituted the main land threat to Japanese control in Burma. Operation U-Go was not to constitute an ‘invasion’ of India. The air cover, supplies and troops necessary for such an under taking did not exist in Burma in 1943 and General Kawabe Masakazu, commander of the Burma Area Army in Rangoon, did not want to commit himself to an operation for which he had inadequate resources.
Lieutenant General Mutaguchi, commander of the Japanese 18th Division… harboured a desire to press on into Assam. His evaluation of the British position in nor theast India showed him that the three key strategic targets in Assam were Imphal, the headquar ters of 4th Indian Corps; the mountain town of Kohima, which straddled the only road into Manipur from the Brahmaputra Valley; and the huge supply base at Dimapur, 46 miles (74km) north-west of Kohima, which held stores sufficient to sustain an army on the offensive for several months.
Kohima… in the mountains north of Imphal, guarded the route to Dimapur. If it were captured, Imphal would be cut off from the rest of India by land. From the outset Mutaguchi believed that
