What happened at the Battle of Imphal?
The British Empire won. IV Corps under Lieutenant General Geoffry Scoones, mostly Indian troops of Slim's Fourteenth Army, held the Imphal plain from March to July 1944 with supplies flown in. Mutaguchi's Fifteenth Army and its Indian National Army allies were broken by battle, hunger and disease.1
From March to July 1944 the hills around Imphal, capital of Manipur in northeast India, saw some of the hardest fighting of World War II. The Japanese Fifteenth Army of Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, with the Indian National Army (INA), tried to take the Allied base on the Imphal plain; IV Corps under Lieutenant General Geoffry Scoones held until hunger, disease and the monsoon broke the attackers. The twin battle to the north is told in the Battle of Kohima.2
Part of Battles of India · Before: Saragarhi, 1897 · Next: Kohima, 1944
Background: Burma lost, Slim's new army
Japan overran Burma in 1942, and the beaten British and Indian army fell back into India through Manipur. Imphal became a forward base of airfields, depots and new roads, and Slim rebuilt the Fourteenth Army around jungle training and defensive "boxes" that aircraft could keep supplied when surrounded. The method was proven when a diversionary Japanese attack in the Arakan was beaten at the Admin Box.3
Mutaguchi's plan and the road to Delhi
Operation U-Go opened on 7 or 8 March 1944, depending on the source: Japanese Monograph No. 134, a postwar record of the Fifteenth Army's operations, says the 33rd Division began moving its units on 7 March, while the Japanese archive JACAR says Japanese forces began their advance on Imphal on 8 March. The offensive aimed to seize the Imphal supply bases and cut the Dimapur road at Kohima; JACAR adds cutting the Allied supply route to China and stirring anti-British movements in India. For Subhas Chandra Bose's INA, as the historian Peter Ward Fay put it, breaking into India was its reason for existing; Shashi Tharoor recalls Bose's battle cry "Chalo Dilli," on to Delhi.4
A 2024 study by Shinpuku Yuichi of Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies traces the offensive to a 1942 plan, Operation 21, that Mutaguchi had then opposed, and points to his ambition and his regret at that caution. The gamble was logistical: the divisions crossed the Chindwin and the mountains on a thin supply line and counted on capturing British stores before their own ran out.5
The armies
IV Corps had the 17th, 20th and 23rd Indian Divisions plus parachute and tank brigades, later reinforced by air with the 5th Indian Division. The Indian researcher Hemant Singh Katoch counts over 120,000 men; a British National Archives study gives 340,000 Indian, 100,000 British and 90,000 African troops in northeast India. The Japanese 15th and 33rd Divisions struck at Imphal while the 31st marched on Kohima: about 70,000 men plus over 6,000 INA by Katoch's count, out of some 85,000 in the Fifteenth Army.6
The commanders' decisions
The British had long planned what to do if the Japanese came. In his appreciation of 29 February 1944 Scoones foresaw the 17th Indian Division being cut off on the Tiddim road and the 20th being mauled near Tamu, and he chose to pull both back to the edge of the Imphal plain, hold the vital points with as few men as possible and gather a large reserve for a counterstroke on ground of his own choosing. Katoch describes the same plan: fight the Japanese where conditions favored the British, at the end of the enemy's long supply line.7
According to the official history, Slim agreed with the plan when he met Scoones at Imphal on 7 March, but only if Scoones gave the divisional commanders permission to withdraw once he was sure beyond reasonable doubt that a major offensive had begun. The official historian, Major General Woodburn Kirby, judges that this proviso left the 17th Division's withdrawal until too late. Slim also arranged for the 5th Indian Division to come from the Arakan, and it was flown in as the battle developed.8
Mutaguchi's plan, as the National Army Museum puts it, relied on destroying IV Corps quickly and seizing its supplies before his own communications broke down. The 33rd Division was to cut off the 17th Indian Division south of Imphal, the 15th Division was to strike from the northeast and cut the road to Kohima, and the 31st Division was to take Kohima itself. Katoch and Japanese Monograph No. 134 describe the same three thrusts.9
March: withdrawal and the stand at Sangshak
Slim and Scoones pulled their forward divisions back to the edge of the plain: the 17th Indian Division fought its way up the Tiddim road against the Japanese 33rd Division, and the 20th fell back from Tamu to the Shenam Saddle.10
The 17th Division came close to disaster. On the Tiddim road it had to fight its way back through Japanese roadblocks, in actions at Tonzang, Singgel and Sakawng on the Burmese side of the border, and the Japanese 33rd Division almost surrounded it. Kirby records that by 14 March all of IV Corps' available reserves had to be sent south to help it escape encirclement, which left the plain itself thinly held just as the Japanese 15th Division was approaching from the northeast.11
Northeast of Imphal, at the hill village of Sangshak, the newly arrived 50th Indian Parachute Brigade held off the 58th Regiment of the Japanese 31st Division, which had turned aside from its march on Kohima, from 22 to 26 March. On the night of the 26th, on orders from the 23rd Division, the survivors walked out of the perimeter and made for Imphal. Kirby and Katoch both judge that the stand delayed the Japanese advance and gave IV Corps time to deploy its reserves. On 29 March the Japanese cut the road to Kohima.12
April to June: the spokes of the wheel
The Japanese then attacked on every road into the plain. In the north the Japanese 15th Division seized the summit of Nungshigum hill on 11 April, the closest the Japanese ever came to Imphal. On the 13th, after dive-bombers and artillery had pounded it, Indian infantry with tanks dragged up the steep slopes stormed both peaks and held them; Slim, quoted by Katoch, describes the last defenders being bombed or bayoneted in their foxholes. On the Tamu to Palel road the Yamamoto Force, with INA brigades on its flanks, struck the Shenam Saddle for months; hills nicknamed Nippon Hill and Scraggy changed hands again and again.13
In the southwest the 33rd Division drove up the Tiddim road toward Bishenpur, scene of some of the heaviest fighting of the campaign in Slim's judgment, and in late May, by Katoch's account, reached Red Hill, its closest point to Imphal from the south. By Katoch's count, five Victoria Crosses were won at Imphal, among them Jemadar Abdul Hafiz, the first Muslim to receive it in World War II.14
Supplied from the sky
Cut off by land, IV Corps lived by air. The National Army Museum counts nearly 19,000 tons of supplies and over 12,000 men flown in and about 13,000 casualties flown out. The 5th Indian Division and its equipment, the museum adds, were airlifted from the Arakan to Imphal in only two days.15
Who won the Battle of Imphal and why?
The British Empire won. IV Corps, mostly Indian troops, held the Imphal plain while aircraft kept it supplied and reinforced. Mutaguchi's Fifteenth Army had counted on seizing British stores; at the end of a long mountain supply line it ran out of food and ammunition, and the monsoon and disease finished what the fighting began.16
Hunger, monsoon and retreat
Mutaguchi kept attacking long after the offensive had failed, and his men starved in the monsoon rains. On 22 June troops from Kohima and Imphal met at Milestone 109, reopening the road. Katoch dates the end of the last Japanese stand in Manipur, at Ukhrul, to 8 July and the start of the INA withdrawal to 18 July. Mutaguchi, the National Army Museum notes, was relieved and forced to retire in December 1944, while Slim, Scoones and Stopford were knighted at Imphal.17
How many died at Imphal?
Most Japanese totals cover the whole offensive, Kohima included. The National Army Museum gives 53,000 dead and missing out of about 85,000; a British diplomat in 2014 cited nearly 54,000 casualties. Japan's historical records center counts over 30,000 killed and over 20,000 dead of illness and starvation, and the Nippon Foundation a still higher toll. Katoch calls it Japan's greatest defeat on land; the museum, one of the biggest its army ever suffered. The British official history gives the most exact count: the Fifteenth Army had 84,280 men, not counting an INA division of some 7,000, and lost 53,505, of whom 30,502 were killed, missing or died. British and Indian losses were about 12,500 at Imphal by the museum's count; Kirby gives just under 16,700 for Imphal and Kohima together, about a quarter of them at Kohima.18
The British and Indian side
For Slim's army Imphal proved that Japanese troops could be beaten in the jungle. Its soldiers were Indian, Gurkha, African and British, and Indians were the majority. In April 2013 Imphal and Kohima together were voted Britain's greatest battle in a National Army Museum contest, yet Katoch argues the battle long received little attention in India itself.19
The Japanese side
Japanese soldiers fought on long after they had any chance. Of the starving 33rd Division's last attacks, Slim wrote, as Katoch quotes him: "I know of no army that could have equalled them." In Japan the operation is remembered as a failure of command: Shinpuku notes it is a byword for a reckless operation, still criticized today, and the Nippon Foundation speaks of a "reckless operation." The Japanese government built the India Peace Memorial at Red Hill, inaugurated in 1994 according to Katoch.20
The INA: collaborators or freedom fighters?
Imphal had Indian soldiers on both sides. To the British authorities INA men who fought beside Japan were traitors: in November 1945, as Shashi Tharoor recounts, three officers were tried at the Red Fort for waging war against the King-Emperor. One was Shah Nawaz Khan, who had led INA battalions in the Imphal campaign. Tharoor describes a national outcry, with crowds hailing them as patriots, not traitors. Some Indians, the National Archives study notes, saw cooperation with Japan as a faster road to self-rule, and some Manipuris joined the INA. An INA Memorial Complex now stands at Moirang, where Katoch records the INA flag was raised on 14 April 1944.21
Manipur's war
For Manipur the battle was the "Japan war." Japanese bombs destroyed homes and markets, Allied scorched earth measures razed whole villages, and many families were displaced. In April 1944 the Political Agent in Manipur warned that people who saw British forces destroy their homes and food could hardly remain "enthusiastically pro-British."22
The battlefield today
Imphal War Cemetery holds about 1,600 Commonwealth graves, and a second cemetery and a cremation memorial honor Indian Army dead. On 22 June 2019 the Imphal Peace Museum, supported by Japan's Nippon Foundation, opened at Red Hill before Indian, Japanese and British guests. See also the greatest battles of World War II and the greatest battles in Indian history.23
