The Burma campaign was a series of battles fought between Japanese-led Axis forces and British and Chinese-led Allied forces for control of British Burma and India in Southeast Asia during World War II. Fought in mountainous and jungle climates and amid poor weather, disease, and rough terrain, the Burma campaign left between 250,000 and 1 million Burmese civilians dead in addition to 207,244 Allied and 210,000 Axis casualties. The weakening of British control over Burma and the mass participation of British Indian Army soldiers in the campaign greatly impacted the independence struggles of both Burma and India after the war.
History[]
A province of the British Empire since 1886 and its own crown colony since 1937, British Burma experienced political and ethnic turmoil on the eve of World War II. The importation of Indian laborers by the British resulted in Bamar unrest, and British rule quickly became unpopular. By the start of the war, Burma was defended solely by the Indian 17th Infantry Division and the 1st Burma Division.
On Japan's entry into the world war, the Imperial Japanese Army planned to capture the Burmese capital of Rangoon to close the overland supply line to China and provide a strategic bulwark to defend Japanese gains in British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese invasion of Burma saw two divisions of the IJA 15th Army under Lieutenant General Shojiro Iida move into northern Thailand and launch an offensive into southern Burma in January 1942. 600,000 Indians and Burmese fled the country by the autumn of 1942, 80,000 of them dying of starvation, exhaustion, and disease. The Japanese took Moulmein at the mouth of the Salween River after overcoming stiff resistance, and the loss of two brigades of the British Indian Army's 17th Division meant that Rangoon could not be defended. General Archibald Wavell intended to defend the city with reinforcements from the Middle East, but General Harold Alexander, the new commander of the Burma Army, ordered Rangoon's evacuation on 7 March 1942 after its port and oil refinery were destroyed. Meanwhile, the Chinese National Revolutionary Army's 200th Division held the Japanese at Toungoo at the Battle of Yunnan-Burma Road until the IJA 56th Division took the city and shattered the Chinese 6th Army in the Karenni States and cut off the Chinese armies from Yunnan. A Chinese Expeditionary Force came to the aid of the Allies in Upper Burma, but the Japanese were reinforced by two divisions from Singapore and defeated the new Burma Corps and the Chinese. As Burmese nationalists rallied to the Japanese cause and overthrew local administrations, the Allies were forced to evacuate Burma and retreat to Imphal in India's Manipur region just before monsoon season in May 1942. The Chinese were also forced to retreat to India after they were abandoned by the British, and US Army General Joseph Stilwell took command of these forces and re-equipped and re-trained them. Half of the Chinese soldiers who attempted to retreat to Yunnan died during their perilous journey. The Thai Phayap Army took advantage of the fall of Burma to annex the Karenni State and Shan States, while Japan controlled the rest of Burma and installed Ba Maw in control of a puppet regime.
Stalemate set in as Britain focused on the Western Front in Europe and the Quit India Movement resulted in violent protests in Bengal and Bihar. The Bengal Famine of 1943, caused by wartime inflation (which, in turn, caused rising food prices and a drop in real wages) and the loss of Burma's rice import system, killed between 800,000 and 3.8 million Bengalis, disrupting local industries. The British launched a costly Arakan Offensive that was repelled by reinforced Japanese troops in Central Burma, and 3,000 British Chindits under Brigadier Orde Wingate waged guerrilla war against the Japanese in Burma while suffering heavy losses.
From December 1943 to November 1944, the stalemate in Burma began to break as Admiral Louis Mountbatten took command of the Southeast Asian theater and Lieutenant General William Slim took command of the British 14th Army. Stilwell's American and Chinese forces repelled a Thai invasion of Xishuangbanna, and the American Merrill's Marauders unit outflanked the IJA 18th Division along the Ledo Road and worked with the Chindits to fight the Japanese in the mountains. When the Chinese Y Force attacked the Japanese in April 1944, the Japanese were forced to fight on two fronts in Upper Burma. On 17 May 1944, Stilwell took command of the Chindits and moved them from behind Japanese lines to the front, where they once again suffered heavy casualties. In May 1944, the Americans and Chinese were able to capture the Myitkyina Airfield, and the Chinese offensive in Yunnan annihilated the garrison of Tengchong before being halted by strong Japanese reinforcements.
Just as the British were planning a counteroffensive in Burma in conjunction with a Chinese advance from Yunnan, Japanese general Masakazu Kawabe and his Burma Area Army decided on an offensive against British India, Operation U-Go, at the behest of Indian fascist collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose. In February 1944, the Allies stood firm against the Japanese offensive at the Battle of the Admin Box, suffering equal casualties to the Japanese but preventing them from capturing Allied supplies and thus forcing them into starvation. The Japanese invasion of India in March 1944 met with disaster at the Battle of Imphal and the Battle of Kohima, which cost the Japanese 60,000 dead and 100,000 casualties, inflicting Japan's worst yet military defeat. By November, British East African and Indian troops pushed the Japanese back to the Chindwin River.
From late 1944 to early 1945, the Allies launched a series of offensives into Burma. Japan's new general in Burma, Hyotaro Kimura, withdrew behind the Irrawaddy River. The Allies captured Lashio in the north on 7 March 1945, while Meiktila in central Burma fell on 5 March 1945 after the Japanese fought to the last man. Mandalay was liberated by the Indians on 20 March, although much of the city burned to the ground. The entire Burma National Army defected to the Allied side after secret negotiations with the British, and the Allies defeated the remnants of the IJA 33rd Army at Pyawbwe, enabling an advance on Rangoon. In April, the Japanese evacuated the Rangoon area, and the British retook the city in Operation Dracula in May 1945, resulting in the breakdown of public order in the city. A new British 12th Army headquarters was created in Burma to organize the final assault on Japanese forces in Burma. In July 1945, the Japanese fought the Allies to a halt at Sittang Bend, and Burmese guerrillas and bandits, failed river crossings, and British ambushes killed 10,000 men - half the strength of the IJA 28th Army - as it attempted to break out of the Sittang Bend.
Afterwards, the Allies planned Operation Zipper, an amphibious assault on the western side of Malaya. On 15 August 1945, the Japanese surrender put an end to the fighting in Asia and the Pacific, and the remaining Japanese forces along the Sittang River gave up their weapons. The weakening of British rule over India and Burma resulted in both countries obtaining their independence within three years, while Chiang Kai-shek's mismanagement of the American supply missions over "the Hump" exposed a corruption within the Kuomintang that would result in its defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949.