Operation U-Go: the Road to Kohima
The battle, or more accurately, the siege and relief of the Burmese hill town of Kohima is a tale of incredible endurance and collective courage. Although usually associated with one British rifle battalion – 4th Royal West Kents (RWK) – elements of many other regiments, corps and departments were involved; in fact, the majority of the combat soldiers in the garrison comprised Ghurkha, Indian, Nepalese and Burmese soldiers whose service has been rather forgotten.
Although the Japanese attack would eventually fail, it is all too easy to overlook the incredible feat of soldiering involved in bringing a whole division with artillery, engineering and medical assets through many miles of crude tracks, steep mountains, thick forests and dense jungle of western Burma and north-east India. The 31st Division of the Imperial Japanese Army made the march from the Chindwin to Kohima with virtually no motor transport, so General (Gen.) Kotoku Sato’s plans largely depended on what his men could carry on their backs, plus trains of mules, ponies, horses and elephants. His force also had no air support, a very limited capacity for dealing with casualties and very poor lines of communication. Despite the assurances of his superior, Gen. Renya Mutaguchi, it proved impossible to achieve a reliable line of supply and, although his force attempted to drive large herds of cattle to provide beef on the hoof, his men were soon challenged by hunger, the terrain and an increasingly competent and confident Commonwealth army.
Map 1 Commonwealth lines of communication in the Arakan. (Butler, James, The War Against Japan, p.5)
Unlike the Allies, 31st Division was unable to receive supplies by airdrop due to the lack of transport aircraft and the fact that the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) had, by this time, achieved air superiority. The further the Japanese penetrated into India, the longer their lines of communication; so much so that the planning actually relied on the anticipated capture of supplies from the Allied forces. Although this was a rather optimistic assessment of the situation, it was not totally irrational. The experience of the campaigns in Malaya and Burma had led Japanese staff planners to believe that Commonwealth troops were, at best, brittle in the face of a determined attack and could be driven backwards at great speed, abandoning huge quantities of equipment and stores as they went.
Even so, the Japanese were aware that the Allies were steadily becoming more proficient at living in the jungle, and were also becoming more capable and confident on the battlefield. It was also abundantly clear that the war in general was not going well.
If the huge Pacific perimeter that had been seized in the opening phases of the war against the Commonwealth and the United States was to be held, and if the war in China was to be brought to a favourable conclusion, it was highly desira dble – in fact vital – to knock Britain out of the Asian war completely. To achieve this, the Japanese Army had to obtain a victory on the scale of the Malaya campaign of 1942 and the first Burma campaign that had followed it. If such a victory could be gained, and if the Commonwealth forces in Burma could be utterly destroyed, it was assumed – perhaps correctly – that British prestige in India would be so totally undermined that it would be impossible to raise enough troops or gather sufficient material to form a new army capable of preventing Japanese expansion into north-east India. They thought it was inconceivable that Britain herself could provide a new army for the re-conquest of Burma, given her extensive commitments in Africa, Italy and the imminent invasion of Europe. Even if such a force could be found, the transport demands of the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres would prevent it from being deployed to Asia or being supplied with the tools for the job.
If such a victory could be brought about, then there would be implications for another theatre of operations: China. By 1944 the stream of war materials to Chiang Kai-shek’s armies had steadily increased, and assistance from Britain and the United States in the training of soldiers had improved the quality of the Chinese formations. Breaking the logistic chain would not necessarily force Chiang Kai-shek to abandon the struggle immediately, but there was a possibility that the internal threat from Mao Zedong’s communists, coupled with the reduction in supplies, might force China to agree to an armistice or, at the very least, reduce their capacity for offensive operations.
In addition to these factors, there was another, more serious issue facing Japan: her chief ally, Germany, was clearly losing her war against the Soviet Union. Although Stalin was committed to the defeat of the Nazis as his prime objective, he was also committed to the defeat of Japan. The brief Russo-Japanese conflict of the summer of 1939 had been an ignominious experience for Emperor Hirohito’s forces, but there was a possibility that forcing the British out of the Asia theatre might encourage Stalin to abandon any thoughts of pursuing the war with Japan once Germany had been defeated.
The campaign in the Pacific was a more pressing matter. Realistically, it is very unlikely that even total success in Burma – which would allow redeployment of resources to the Pacific and reduce strain on the economy – would have given Japan sufficient power to resist the American and Australian forces in the Pacific; however, this may not have been fully grasped in Japanese Government circles. In practice the United States was utterly determined to defeat Japan due to public pressure after Pearl Harbor. The policy of defeating Germany first would undoubtedly have been pursued regardless, but America was not going to give up her plans for recovering her position in Asia and the utter defeat of Japan once Victory in Europe (VE) was achieved. By the summer of 1944 this was clearly on the cards.
Operation U-Go was a tremendous gamble and the odds were even less in favour of a Japanese victory than was apparent to the commanders in Burma – Generals Mutaguchi and Masakazu Kawabe – or to the prime minister, Gen. Hideki Tojo. Equally it is not clear that any other course of action would have been much better. The Japanese Government was aware that the odds were gradually, but steadily, tipping in favour of the Allies in every theatre. If they chose to adopt a defensive policy in Burma then the Allies would eventually gain the initiative and be able to choose the time and place of their offensives, and Japan could not possibly find the men or material to defend the entirety of the Burma-India border in addition to her commitments in China and the Pacific. The chances of victory in Burma were slim, but it was still the only possible route for turning the course of the war in 1944.