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Japanese invasion of Burma

The Japanese invasion of Burma was the opening phase of the Burma campaign in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II, which took place over four years from 1942 to 1945. During the first year of the campaign (December 1941 to mid-1942), the Japanese Army (with aid from Thai Phayap Army and Burmese insurgents) drove British Empire and Chinese forces out of Burma, then began the Japanese occupation of Burma and formed a nominally independent Burmese administrative government.

Background[edit]

British rule in Burma[edit]

Before the Second World War broke out, Burma was part of the British Empire, having been progressively occupied and annexed following three Anglo-Burmese wars in the 19th century. Initially governed as part of British India, Burma was formed into a separate colony under the Government of India Act 1935. Under British rule, there had been substantial economic development but the majority Bamar community was becoming increasingly restive.[14] Among their concerns were the importation of Indian workers to provide a labour force for many of the new industries, and the erosion of traditional society in the countryside as land was used for plantations of export crops or became mortgaged to Indian moneylenders.[15] Pressure for independence was growing.[16] When Burma came under attack, the Bamar were unwilling to contribute to the defence of the British establishment, and many readily joined movements which aided the Japanese.

British defences[edit]

British plans for the defence of British Far Eastern possessions involved the construction of airfields linking Singapore and Malaya with India. These plans had not taken into account the fact that Britain was also at war with Germany, and when Japan entered the war, the forces needed to defend these possessions were not available. Burma had been regarded as a military "backwater", unlikely to be subjected to Japanese threat.[17]


Lieutenant General Thomas Hutton, the commander of Burma Army with its headquarters in Rangoon, had only the 17th Indian Infantry Division and 1st Burma Division to defend the country, although help was expected from the Chinese Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek. During the war, the British Indian Army expanded more than twelve-fold from its peacetime strength of 200,000 but in late 1941 this expansion meant that most units were undertrained and ill-equipped. In most cases, such training and equipment as the Indian units in Burma received was for operations in the Western Desert campaign or the North West Frontier of India, rather than jungles. The battalions of the Burma Rifles which formed most of the 1st Burma Division were originally raised as internal security troops only, from among minority communities in Burma such as the Karens. They also had been rapidly expanded, with an influx of Bamar soldiers, and were short of equipment and consisted mainly of new recruits.

Japanese plans[edit]

Japan entered the war primarily to obtain raw materials, especially oil, from European (particularly Dutch) possessions in South East Asia which were weakly defended because of the war in Europe. Their plans involved an attack on Burma partly because of Burma's own natural resources (which included some oil from fields around Yenangyaung, but also minerals such as cobalt and large surpluses of rice), but also to protect the flank of their main attack against Malaya and Singapore and provide a buffer zone to protect the territories they intended to occupy.[18]


An additional factor was the Burma Road completed in 1938, which linked Lashio, at the end of a railway from the port of Rangoon, with the Chinese province of Yunnan. This newly completed link was being used to move aid and munitions to the Chinese Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek which had been fighting the Japanese for several years. The Japanese naturally wished to cut this link.[19]


The Southern Expeditionary Army Group under overall command of General Hisaichi Terauchi was responsible for all military operations in the South-East Asia. The Japanese Fifteenth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Shojiro Iida, was initially assigned the mission of occupying northern Thailand, which had signed a treaty of friendship with Japan on 21 December 1941, and attacking the southern Burmese province of Tenasserim across the Tenasserim Hills. The army consisted of the highly regarded 33rd Division and the 55th Division, although both divisions were weakened for several weeks by detachments to other operations.

– a landmark 1965 court case on the scope of prerogative power arising from the invasion

Burmah Oil Co Ltd v Lord Advocate

Allen, Louis (1984). Burma: The Longest War. Dent.  0-460-02474-4.

ISBN

Bayly, Christopher; Harper, Tim (2005). Forgotten Armies. London: Penguin.  0-140-29331-0.

ISBN

Government of India (1945). . New Delhi: Government of India. Retrieved 20 April 2011.

Famine Inquiry Commission, Report on Bengal

Jackson, Ashley (2006). The British Empire and the Second World War. London: Hambledon Continuum.  978-1-85285-517-8.

ISBN

Rodger, George (10 August 1942). . Life. Time Inc. pp. 61–67. ISSN 0024-3019.

"75,000 Miles"

(1956). Defeat into Victory. London: Cassell. ISBN 0-304-29114-5.

Slim, William

Tinker, Hugh (1975). "A Forgotten Long March: The Indian Exodus from Burma, 1942". Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 6 (1): 1–15. :10.1017/S0022463400017069. S2CID 159785896.

doi

Wen-Chin, Chang (16 January 2015). . Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-5450-9.

Beyond Borders: Stories of Yunnanese Chinese Migrants of Burma

Carew, Tim. The Longest Retreat

. Fighting Mad

Calvert, Mike

Dillon, Terence. Rangoon to Kohima

Drea, Edward J. (1998). "An Allied Interpretation of the Pacific War". In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.  0-8032-1708-0.

ISBN

Fujino, Hideo. Singapore and Burma

Grant, Ian Lyall & Tamayama, Kazuo Burma 1942: The Japanese Invasion

From the Battlefields

Iida, Shojiro

Ikuhiko Hata Road to the Pacific War

Hodsun, J.L. War in the Sun

(1991). Keegan, John (ed.). Churchill's Generals. London: Cassell Military. pp. 243–255. ISBN 0-304-36712-5.

Anderson, Duncan

Latimer, Jon. Burma: The Forgotten War

Moser, Don (1978). World War II: China-Burma-India. Time-Life.  978-0-8094-2484-9.

ISBN

Ochi, Harumi. Struggle in Burma

Reynolds, E. Bruce. Thailand and Japan's Southern Advance

Sadayoshi Shigematsu Fighting Around Burma

Before the Dawn

Smyth, John

Sugita, Saiichi. Burma Operations

Young, Edward M. Aerial Nationalism: A History of Aviation in Thailand

Burma Star Association

. The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 September 1946. pp. 4663–4671. "Operations in Eastern Theatre, Based on India from March 1942 to 31 December 1942", official despatch by Field Marshal The Viscount Wavell

"No. 37728"

Sino-Japanese Air War 1937–45, see 1941 and 1942

Burma Campaign, Orbat for 1942 campaign, Japan, Commonwealth, Chinese, USA

A Forgotten Invasion: Thailand in Shan State, 1941–45

at the Wayback Machine (archived 27 October 2009)

Thailand's Northern Campaign in the Shan States 1942–45

Siam Goes to War

Phayap Army