The World at War (72 page)

CAPTAIN HOGAN

The Japanese were animals but great soldiers; their battle drill was fantastic. You couldn't help but admire them. If they were ambushed they were at you in twenty to thirty seconds. Then pounding you with their mortars and in frontal attacks – nobody could beat them, I think, they would just come on and on and on.

PRIVATE HOWARD

Fighting the Japanese was totally committed war. There was no question of heroics or chivalry in the sense that one read about prior to the war in the Biggies books. We were totally committed to killing as many Japanese as possible, prompted by the fact that we knew from experience that there had been atrocities and we were always fearful of that fact and didn't want to take, or be taken, prisoner. And so we were fully committed to war, probably more so than in any other theatre.

PRIVATE HAMMERS LEY

Many a time we've seen the remains of a tortured prisoner and it wasn't a very nice sight to be seen. They used to torture them so much. They used to pull their fingernails out, they'd castrate them, things like that. We had an English nurse, I should say she must have been raped five or six times before they let her go and she was dead when we found her. They'd torture you until you gave them the position of your own troops. We could hear the prisoners screaming. Whether that was done for our benefit I couldn't say but you could hear the prisoners of war screaming.

MAJOR CALVERT

The first Wingate operation took place in 1943. It was initially to accompany a general advance into Burma but the general advance was cancelled. However, Wavell wanted the expedition to go forward so it was rather like a testing operation. We went in seven columns across the Chindwin and we averaged 1,500 miles march. My own column of Gurkhas plus British commandos – a few of them – we got on to the main Japanese line of communication, their railway, and we blew the bridges in five places and I blew the rail in about seventy different places. We got back fairly intact but many of the other columns got caught and about one third of the force was lost. This was a raid and its tactical-strategical effect was not great. Its main effect was on the morale of the British and Indian troops. Our forces were not picked men, they were ordinary British and Gurkha battalions and the rest of the Army said, 'By God, if these people can do it, we can.'

CAPTAIN HOGAN

Even if you went downhill you knew you had to go uphill again and we were carrying sixty to seventy pounds on our backs, especially after an air-supply drop, five days' rations plus arms and ammunition. It was – really I cannot explain – you think would it ever end? It just went on and on and on and the rain and of course the fear that you would be ambushed or attacked, and hungry – I was young then and I was always hungry. The thought that you would get wounded and have to be left behind was always in our minds. I saw chaps having to be left behind with a hand grenade, pistol, flask of water and rations, just propped up against a tree. It was a terrible thing to have to leave somebody but many came back after the war who had been left behind. The villagers looked after them, the Naga tribesmen, absolutely marvellous. Took them in and looked after them. I know of chaps who were left in the first Wingate expedition; we picked them up in the second.

PRIVATE HAMMERSLEY

We were in the jungle all the time. We had this Naga man, who knew the jungle better than we did, as a guide and they can take you through the jungle and you wouldn't know where you were going and the Jap wouldn't even know you were there because the Naga, they were born in the jungle, grew everything in the jungle and lived up in the hills. They knew the jungle just like reading a book and the Japanese wouldn't know we were in the jungle because the Naga would be out in front of us and he could spot the Jap before we'd ever know he was there. The Japanese took Naha hill men as prisoners because you see there's two clans, the Nagas and the Chins, and the Chins were for the Japs and the Naga were for the British.

MAJOR CALVERT

I had wounded crossing the Chindwin. I left them at a village and I wrote a note to the Japanese commander saying these were men who have fought for their king and country just as you are fighting. They have done well and I know with your great sense of honour you will look after them. Those men I've met again and they were looked after by the Japanese, who respected them.

PRIVATE DENIS GUDGEON

Captured, at Chindit

I was taken down to a camp in Rangoon and there I was interrogated. They threatened to give me the 'water cure', that is pouring buckets of water into you. They obviously already knew quite a bit about Wingate and they respected him very much. In fact I remember the day in 1944 when the Japanese guards came rushing in saying, 'Wingate chinto, Wingate chinto,' which meant Wingate was dead. And it could have been General MacArthur himself or Viscount Slim had been killed – they obviously held him in very great regard.

LIEUTENANT OWENS

As a Staff Officer I didn't have full practical experience of jungle fighting at close quarters very often, but one was very conscious that there's no front line in jungle warfare, that in fact the enemy can and do get behind your lines, particularly at night. So you are never quite sure whether the sounds you heard were your own patrols coming back or someone else's coming in. From time to time small units of signallers a quarter of a mile away from you would be scuppered in the middle of the night and eight or ten chaps would just disappear completely.

COLONEL SUGITA

We went through Singapore to Burma: it was 20th April 1944 when we left Japan and we arrived at Singapore about 25th April. At that time the headquarters was optimistic about the operation, the headquarters of Burma also optimistic. But I found it was a very pessimistic future because they told us the operation would be a success but I told them we had not air superiority, we had a hard supply and already the operation was carried out about forty days. In the past we had Malaya in operations sixty-five days. If we had a hard experience and we unable to succeed in forty or fifty days, if we are unable to achieve that result, I told them that the operation would be unsuccessful. I went to middle of Burma and I found out that it was very hard for Japanese to get success in operations. At that time the soldiers and officers I met spoke of adverse conditions especially due to short supply on the spot and they believed that they are unable to succeed.

PRIVATE LEONARD BROWN

The Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment

The
siege of Kohima was a battle that I don't think could ever be fought in any other conditions throughout the world. The terrain there was mountains on three-quarters of the area of Kohima and one road running through Imphal to Dimapur; this was the main road to India and we were told by our colonel, Danny Laverty, that this was our objective and this was where the Kents was going to stay. We got in some trenches and before we knew where we were, the Japanese was there. They had big guns, they had everything; we had machine guns, rifles and a couple of old 1914–18 war guns. They attacked us at the tennis court and it was just like playing tennis – the area from one side of the tennis court to the other was the positions between the Japanese and the platoon I was with. The fighting I saw was literally hundreds at a time coming towards us. Their manpower strength just pushed us back from one trench to another, which was roughly ten feet behind us. They kept over-running us due to their manpower and the lads I was with, we gradually pulled back until we were in one small perimeter, I would say less than half a mile, and in this perimeter we stopped the Japanese Army. After the first seven or eight days the ammunition and the food was running out and the water was almost nonexistent. Every day Danny Laverty said, 'Hang on, if you let go India's falling.' Eventually, I believe on the thirteenth day, we were told the 2nd British Division was on the outskirts of the perimeter and on the fifteenth day they broke through to get us out.

CAPTAIN TERUO OKADA

Intelligence Officer, Japanese Army in Burma

Imphal being such an important junction spot we thought it would be very difficult, but Kohima was something we never expected. The British and their allies put up a very strong fight there. I think that surprised everyone. In Burma we were fighting various people. The Chinese don't count much, you know, if it's five to one it's a fair fight, less than five to one they always run away. The Burmese levies in the British Army were not much use, I think, but of course it was the Fourteenth Army we were fighting all the time and although they put up some good battles in the initial stages we were pushing all the time. Kohima being a small place we did not expect the resistance they put up. We just hoped to cut them off but the resistance was such that we could never completely isolate them. The main thing that stuck out was they had better supply, supply drops, which we had not imagined in the beginning.

PRIVATE HAMMERS LEY

Sometimes the Japs would be about five or six yards in front of us and it would be hand grenades and rifles, but sometimes they used to come – they could speak English as well as we could – and they'd call out, 'Over here, Taffy,' or, 'Over here, Bill'. You'd get up and bang, the Japs had you.

LIEUTENANT OWENS

The Japanese were very tough, devoted fighters and they were beaten, I think, not because of lack of courage, of which they had plenty, but they didn't have the same ability that we did for regrouping after they were defeated. If they lost their officers and had no instructions they were really lost, whereas the good old British sergeant or the Indian havildar was deemed quite capable of carrying on and doing something, even if there were great losses and he'd lost all his officers, and seemed quite capable of getting back to base on many occasions. The Japanese were very tough indeed, in fact when we first made contact with them near Kohima our soldiers turned round and said to us, 'What the hell did you tell us about these little bastards,' because in fact these Japs were over six feet high. This was because we met the Japanese Guards Division first of all. It was about six months before we could take a prisoner, and during that time of course we picked up a number of Japanese who'd been badly shot up and it was quite necessary in our little field hospitals to tie their hands down, because if you didn't do that they tore at their bandages, opened their wounds and literally tried to commit suicide that way.

PRIVATE BROWN

I hated the Japanese then and I do now. As soldiers I think they are very good but to torture prisoners – that's not soldiering, that's butchery. There was a clean fight that we fought at
Imphal against the Imperial Guards of Japan. I've known stories, and I know they're true, that when the white flag went up from our side the Imperial Guards let the boys go and pick the wounded up, and in return when the Imperial Guards put the flag up then their boys went out. After that there was no give on either side – they didn't give us a chance and we didn't give them a chance.

LIEUTENANT UKIKURO HONDA

Japanese Army in Burma

The Fifteenth Army had three divisions: the 334th Division, known as the Umi Division, was to attack Imphal from the south first, the 31st division was to take Kohima and the Matuli, or 15th Division, was to attack Imphal from the east. The Umi and Matuli divisions were to surround Imphal and cause its fall. Our unit was the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment of the Matuli Division, with two companies, three antitank guns and machine guns. Our role was to cut off the Imphal–Kohima road, used by the Indo-British Army as a transport route, at Mishan. When we arrived at Mishan we took them by surprise. With the death of only one soldier we destroyed two strongholds. After that we were ordered to join the attack on Imphal and advanced to Kanglatongbi. The Indo-British forces were greatly reinforced from the air and there was a great increase in enemy tanks and infantry to our front. Our battalion was told to hold Kanglatongbi at all costs and we clashed almost daily with enemy tanks. Thanks to the bravery of my men, the anti-tank guns and the topographical advantage we were able to hold off the Indo-British forces and we destroyed close to twenty tanks.
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ADMIRAL MOUNTBATTEN

It was about the fiercest fighting of the war. I sent the 2nd British Division down to support the fighting at Kohima, and they went into Kohima. The front line was on either side of the District Commissioner's tennis court. They stood shoulder to shoulder. Where they were lulled, they were buried. Out of three British infantry brigades, two brigadiers killed, two of the brigadier replacements seriously wounded. That's what the fighting was like in Kohima. My Chief of Staff, Sir Henry Pownall, asked me one day, 'Supremo, are you sleeping all right?' I said, 'Yes, very well, aren't you?' He said, 'No, I can't sleep.' I said 'Why not?' 'Do you realise we've got an entire Army Corps cut off, every exit in the Imphal plain – we've got a Japanese division on all three exits. We're running out of munitions, we're running out of supplies, we can only put in a certain amount by air – if we can't open communications by the end of June, they'll have to surrender. It'll be the greatest disgrace to British arms.' I said, 'Who's responsible, you or me?' He said, 'You are.' 'Have we done everything that we possibly can?' He said, 'Yes, we have.' I said, 'Then let me do the worrying and you do the sleeping.'

LIEUTENANT HONDA

The Japanese Army's target date for taking Imphal was 29th April, the Emperor's birthday, but when 29th April came there was still no decision on the battlefield. I think it was around 10th May that I began to become pessimistic. We received orders to retreat towards Bukuru when the Imphal road was lost. It was raining very hard, we had many sick and injured men, we were out of food too. The roads and the passes that could be used leading to Bukuru were mostly occupied by Indo-British forces, therefore going by the map we marched along river and valleys. We ate tree buds and searched for rice, for food. After a week or ten days we finally arrived at Bukuru. It took about another month to the Chindwin river, therefore from Mishan to the banks of the Chindwin river I think it must have taken about forty-five days. There were six hundred and fifty in my battalion when we started the retreat – two hundred and forty had died in battle. About two hundred and fifty died of sickness and wounds between Mishan and the Chindwin river, about a hundred who crossed the river also died. I came down with a very severe case of malaria. I was unconscious for about ten days and had no appetite for about fifteen days. All my hair fell off too.