British and Indian forces won the Battle of Kohima, fought from 4 April to 22 June 1944 in northeast India2. A small garrison held Kohima ridge against the Japanese 31st Division for about two weeks until relieved, and the Allies then fought to clear the Japanese from the area. Together with Imphal, it destroyed Japan's offensive into India and turned the tide of the war in Burma.
In the spring of 1944 Japan struck west from Burma toward India. At the hill station of Kohima, on the only road to the Allied base at Imphal, a small garrison of British and Indian troops found itself facing an entire Japanese division, in fighting so close that the two sides held opposite ends of a tennis court.
Japan's march on India
In March 1944 the Japanese launched Operation U-Go, aiming to destroy the British and Indian forces at Imphal and strike into India. Their 31st Division, under Kotoku Sato, crossed the jungle hills to seize Kohima1, cutting the road that supplied Imphal.
The siege of Kohima ridge
From early April a garrison of about 1,500 fighting men3, including the Assam Regiment and the Royal West Kent Regiment, held the ridge at Kohima against repeated Japanese assaults. Short of water and under constant fire, they were pushed back into a shrinking perimeter around Garrison Hill.
The tennis court
The fiercest fighting raged around the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow, where the two sides faced each other across its tennis court1, close enough to throw grenades. The tennis court became the symbol of the battle, and today it lies within the Kohima War Cemetery.
Relief and counterattack
On 18 April the 161st Indian Brigade3, supported by tanks and artillery, broke through to relieve the garrison, and the British 2nd Division then took over the fighting. Weeks of hard fighting followed to drive the Japanese from the ridges around Kohima in the monsoon rains. At the end of May Sato, his men starving, began to withdraw, and on 22 June the road to Imphal was reopened1 when British and Indian columns met at Milestone 109.
Why Kohima mattered
Kohima and Imphal together are often described as Japan's greatest defeat on land up to that time4. The offensive cost the Japanese tens of thousands of men, many to hunger and disease, and opened the way for William Slim's Fourteenth Army to reconquer Burma. In 2013 a poll by Britain's National Army Museum named Imphal and Kohima Britain's greatest battle5, and the Kohima Epitaph, ending with the words 'For your tomorrow, we gave our today', is still read at remembrance services.
