All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [140]
Mi Mi Khaing, a twenty-five-year-old Burmese woman who had studied at Rangoon University, wrote bitterly about the fashion in which her people were thrust into the war with no pretence of popular consultation. Hers was, she said, ‘a country which had lost proud sovereignty fifty-years before, which had not yet gained a modern replacement for it, and which felt itself to be only incidentally in the path of the war monster’s appetite’. By chance Burmese prime minister U Saw was passing through the United States at the moment of Pearl Harbor. Impressions of American disarray and hysteria enhanced his contempt for the white races. Back in Burma shortly afterwards, Ultra decrypts revealed U Saw making overtures to the Japanese, which caused him to be exiled to East Africa. In such circumstances, British claims to be upholding the cause of democratic freedom by fighting in Burma seemed less than wholly convincing.
The invaders, meanwhile, were astonished by the warmth of the welcome they received, especially from Burmese youths. One of their liaison officers wrote: ‘It came to us how strong was their passion for independence.’ Burmese villagers crowded around Japanese soldiers, offering them water and saybawleit cheroots. Soldiers were bewildered to be questioned in English, the only foreign language local people spoke. The commonest question was: ‘Has Singapore fallen?’ Lt. Izumiya Tatsuro said: ‘I answered proudly, “Yes, Singapore has fallen.”’
Some of the first bombs to fall on Mandalay wrecked the colonists’ Upper Burma Club. A guest at a lunch party there said, ‘We didn’t know what hit us. One minute we were seated at table, the next the roof caved in, tables, chairs, food and ourselves were scattered all over the room.’ The attacks started fires which burned down much of the city. Bodies lay unburied for days, intensifying popular contempt for British incompetence. With a symbolism that did not go unnoticed, flowers in the colonists’ gardens began to die, because the servants who watered them had abandoned their posts. The British bosses of the Burma Corporation washed their hands of their local staff, shrugging that they could do nothing for them.
In reply to a plea for reinforcements for Burma, Wavell in Java signalled Rangoon on 22 January: ‘I have no resources with which I can assist you … Cannot understand why with troops at your disposal you should be unable to hold Moulmein and trust you will do so. Nature of country and resources must limit Japanese effort.’ When the modest Japanese invasion force of two divisions launched its attack from Siam in the last days of January, some Indian units mounted a stalwart defence, but the locally recruited Burma Rifles crumbled quickly. The British had no significant air or artillery support, and John Smyth was furious that his superiors insisted on an attempt to hold exposed Moulmein. The first crisis of the campaign came in the early hours of 23 February, at a bridge across the Sittang eighty miles north of the town. As the Japanese approached, in darkness British engineers fired demolition charges. Two of Smyth’s brigades were cut off east of the river. All but a handful of men were obliged to surrender, a crippling moral and strategic blow.
Lt. John Randle of the Baluch Regiment was holding a position west of the Salween river when he realised Japanese troops were behind him. ‘I sent my runner, the company bugler, with a message to my CO to tell him there were a lot of Japs about. They cut in behind us and we could hear the runner screaming as they killed him with swords and bayonets … The Japs butchered all our wounded.’ His battalion lost 289 men killed and 229 taken prisoner in its first engagement. Randle said: ‘We were arrogant