Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 – The Epic Story of the Last Great Stand of Empire. Fergal Keane

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      The British build-up in the Arakan, and Slim’s wider preparations in India, had been observed. Japanese spies in India reported the arrival of thousands of new troops and the assembling of forces in the north-eastern border areas; they reported the increase in the number and quality of allied aircraft in the region, and the road-building programme near the frontier. Three Chinese divisions under the American General Joseph Stilwell were threatening the north of Burma.

      If Burma were to be lost, followed by the collapse of Malaya and Singapore, the humiliation could fatally undermine the grip of the militarists on the direction of the war. It would also remove from Japanese control supplies of Burmese oil, rubber, timber and metals, and, if the British kept marching, it could ultimately threaten the vital oil reserves in the conquered Dutch East Indies. Defeat in Burma might also free hundreds of thousands of allied and Chinese troops for action elsewhere, including China, where the Americans wanted to advance to airbases closer to the Japanese mainland. If the war had been launched in the name of expanding Japanese power into Asia and securing essential resources, how could this reverse be explained to the people of Japan? Even to a man as dismissive of the public will as prime minister Hideki Tojo it would have been a tall order.

      The idea of attacking the Indian frontier was not new. In fact, the British had been expecting such an assault since they were driven out of Burma in 1942. Then the Japanese had considered a plan to march into Assam and east Bengal, with the twin aims of defeating the British land forces and severing the air link that kept Chiang Kai-shek’s troops supplied in China. The so-called Plan 21 led to the issuing of an order ‘to attack and secure important strategic areas in north-east Assam state and the Chittagong area and to facilitate the air operation … to cut the air supply route to Chiang Kai-shek’.

      Plan 21 was allowed to slip into abeyance, however, not least because Mutaguchi, among others, believed it was impossible to send anything larger than patrol-sized groups across the mountains into India. But in February 1943 imperial headquarters, fearful of a British offensive, came up with a new proposal. Using the careful phraseology ‘When the general situation permits’, the plan called for a thrust into east Bengal or Assam.

In the same month Brigadier Orde Wingate led a force of more than 3,000 men, seven columns divided into two groups, with mules to carry supplies, deep behind Japanese lines, where they remained until April, carrying out ambushes and attacks on rail lines.^* The Chindits, named after a lion-like creature of Burmese mythology, unsettled the imperial command, which believed that ‘these operations were … a reconnaissance in force prior to a large scale counter-offensive’.

      But if imperial headquarters regarded the Chindit incursion with dismay, Mutaguchi saw it as a piece of vital intelligence. Wingate had proved that the impossible – in this case the crossing of the mountains between India and Burma – could be achieved. If Wingate could do it coming east, then what was to stop Mutaguchi going west? But the Chindits had survived for as long as they had because the allies were able to drop supplies at key points on their route, and they had done this with limited opposition from Japanese aircraft. In the jungle hills of the north-east the army that could be supplied was the army that would win. As he contemplated invasion, Mutaguchi relegated this vital element of his plans.

      In early May 1943 fishermen along the banks of the Chindwin encountered a Japanese patrol mounted on elephants and led by a friendly and inquisitive officer. This Japanese had none of the arrogance that was typical of his rank. He spoke to the local Burmese in a respectful tone, asking them about the movement of British troops in the area. Lieutenant Colonel Iwaichi Fujiwara was a rising star who specialised in fomenting trouble for the British by recruiting nationalist groups. Mutaguchi had dispatched him along the Chindwin in the wake of the Chindit incursion with instructions to find out what the British were up to. Were they were merely conducting a reconnaissance, or were they the advance guard of a major offensive? Along the way Fujiwara claimed to have captured more than three hundred British prisoners, most of them men who were either lost or too sick to continue and had, according to the Chindit rule, been left behind. Many Japanese officers would have tortured and executed them. But Fujiwara needed intelligence and apparently the men were well treated. Certainly no war crimes charges were later laid against him.

      From the prisoners Fujiwara learned of the existence of Orde Wingate and of his epic trek across mountains and rivers. A less gifted intelligence officer might have concluded that the ragged prisoners he had interrogated were symbols of another British failure. But on the long trek back to Maymyo by elephant, mule and foot, Fujiwara reached a different conclusion. When he went to see Mutaguchi at 15th Army headquarters he told his boss that he detected a new spirit in the British army – a reading that Mutaguchi, fatefully, chose to ignore.

      The following month Fujiwara was back in the field, this time accompanied by fourteen spy-school graduates with whom he reconnoitred likely crossing points for a Japanese invasion of northeastern India. He came back with the news that a crossing was possible in the dry season and that enough food was available on the Japanese side of the Chindwin to sustain an invasion force. What he could not say was what conditions were like on the other side of the river. How much food was available? What was the attitude of the local tribes? Most crucially of all, he could not vouch for conditions in the mountains once the monsoon descended. Fujiwara nonetheless remained enthusiastic about a dry-season offensive. Even if he had entertained serious doubts he would have been given short shrift by Mutaguchi.

      There was no room for troublemakers at Mutaguchi’s headquarters. When his chief of staff, Major General Obata, made clear his view that the invasion could not succeed because of problems of supply, disease and topography, he was sacked and replaced by the sycophantic Major General Kunomura, the man whose jealous rage over a geisha girl would lead him to assault a fellow officer. Mutaguchi surrounded himself with men whose agreement he could count on. With no dissenting voices left on his own staff, he turned his attention to bullying those further up the chain of command into agreement.

      In late June 1943 Mutaguchi addressed a conference of senior officers in Rangoon. But instead of allowing the debate on an offensive to take its course, he tried to bounce those present into swift agreement by presenting his own ready-made plan for the invasion of north-east India. It included, most controversially, proposals to move beyond establishing a new defensive line and to break through into the plains of Assam. The ever-obliging Kunomura was given the job of presenting the plan, but was quickly savaged and put in his place by a furious officer who accused him of trying to pre-empt the conference.

      Mutaguchi also ran into opposition from sceptical senior officers, including a brother of the emperor, Prince Takeda, who did not believe the 15th Army could be supplied in India and reported this view to imperial headquarters when he returned to Tokyo. Mutaguchi planned for his men to survive by capturing British supplies, an idea described by another officer as trying to ‘skin the racoon before you caught him’. However, Mutaguchi had the benefit of influential supporters and propitious circumstances. A nation facing defeat always runs the risk of becoming captive to desperate adventures. Japan needed a victory and Mutaguchi’s strike against British India offered the best hope. His superior, Lieutenant General Mazakazu Kawabe, was an old colleague from China days and ensured that his subordinate’s plans for India were not swept aside. The sceptics were told to have faith. Kawabe would keep an eye on Mutaguchi and any final decision would be his.

      Kawabe is a man one might have expected to exercise restraint. He was in many respects the antithesis of his junior: cautious and famously abstemious, he was a moral puritan where Mutaguchi was a glutton. In appearance Kawabe was bespectacled, short and thin, with a twirling moustache. Perhaps he saw in Mutaguchi a virility and hunger for success that he knew to be conspicuously lacking in himself, confiding to his diary at the end of June 1943: ‘I love that man’s enthusiasm. You can’t help admiring his almost religious СКАЧАТЬ