Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [179]
With the diversion out of the way, the British then took the Maungdaw ridge in a series of heavy, hard-fought battles. They finally broke through in April, and were about to finish the drive to Akyab when they were diverted to Imphal and Kohima by the major Japanese offensive there. Before they regained their momentum the monsoon rains came in, and it was not until the beginning of the winter dry season that they finally reached Akyab.
The second British drive, a projected advance to the Chindwin River by the other flank of 14th Army, was forestalled by the Japanese drives in the Chin Hills. General Renya Mutaguchi’s 15th Army, consisting of 100,000 hard veteran troops, drove across the frontier into the Manipur plain to deprive the British of bases for their own offensive. The keys to the plain were the towns of Imphal at the southern end and Kohima at the northern. The Japanese attack was expected by the British, but both its strength and its speed were a surprise. They rolled up out of the Chindwin Valley, across the Chin Hills, and moved rapidly through mountains thought all but impassable. They scooped up British outposts and arrived in front of the two towns nearly as fast as the news of their coming. By the end of the first week of April, both towns were surrounded, and the British IVth Corps, 50,000 strong, was cut off, most of it in Imphal and a small garrison in Kohima.
Once again, as he had on the seacoast, Slim ordered the garrisons to hold on. The air forces flew round-the-clock resupply missions, and fighters and medium bombers mounted tactical air-support operations, serving in effect as the artillery the troops on the ground lacked. For a few days it looked as if Kohima would go under, and it probably would have, had it not been for the strafing and bombing by the planes that broke up or weakened the heavy Japanese attacks. But after two weeks relieving forces broke through, and the siege of Kohima was lifted.
Imphal took much longer; the Japanese kept the town under constant pressure, and at the same time dug in and resisted fiercely the attempts of relieving forces to advance to the south. The British numbers mounted to 100,000 men as reinforcements were flown into the beleaguered city, but still the Japanese lines around it held fast. They were encountering increasing difficulties; they had expected to capture large amounts of supplies—indeed, they had based their whole logistical schedule for the operation on the risky presumption that they could live off British goods, and now the fallacy was shown to be disastrous. The monsoon rains began; sickness growing to epidemic and hunger growing to starvation took their toll, and at last, in mid-June, they began to fall apart. After eighty-eight days the British finally broke through, and their units in Imphal linked up with the relieving forces fighting their way into the town. Wearily, Mataguchi’s army, what was left of it, took up its retreat.
The result of the Kohima-Imphal battles was that the Japanese mobile resources in Burma were all but used up. Late in the year, after the monsoon had ended, Slim was able to take up his advance, not only to the Chindwin but well beyond it. Early in December his troops linked up with the Chinese, now commanded by the American General Daniel Sultan, who had taken over Stilwell’s Burmese responsibilities. The year ended on a rising note, with the Japanese falling back all along the line in central Burma, and the united Allies approaching Mandalay and Lashio, the Burmese terminus of the Burma Road.
On the American side of the Japanese Empire, progress was no less hard won, and even more dramatic in its results. The 1943 decisions on relative priorities of Germany and Japan had resulted in increased allocations of resources to the Pacific war, and by 1944 their weight was definitely beginning to tell. Under MacArthur’s leadership in the Southwest Pacific Area, the Allies undertook