Road of Bones (85 page)
Authors: Fergal Keane
p. 423 ‘The massacres were’
Robin Rowland,
Sugamo and The River Kwai
, paper presented to ‘Encounters at Sugamo Prison, Tokyo 1945–52, The American Occupation of Japan and Memories of the Asia-Pacific War, Princeton University, 9 May 2003.
p. 424 ‘They asked his family’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 425 ‘I started to feel’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 426 ‘It was pretty hard to’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 426 ‘I realised I was’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 426 ‘but I don’t think’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 428 ‘I got to the second’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 429 ‘if I can do the army’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 429 ‘a kind dad’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 429 ‘I hate people’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 429 ‘It never affected me’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 429 ‘I would wake up’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 430 ‘Here we were bashing’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 430 ‘I felt I couldn’t’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 430 ‘It is just fragments’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 431 ‘The War was generally’
Margery Willis, correspondence with author, March 2008.
p. 433 ‘Wherever he was’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 433 ‘his personal tenacity’
NA, WO/373/32, ‘Recommendation for the award of D.S.O. to Lieutenant Colonel Henry Jarvis Laverty.’
p. 434 ‘The command and staff’
E. B. Stanley Clark and A. T. Tillot,
From
Kent to Kohima
(Gale and Polden, 1951), pp. 123–6.
p. 434 ‘complete idiot, should’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 434 ‘grave injustice’
Richards Papers, Letter of Lieutenant Colonel G. Borrowman to Lieutenant Colonel A. Campbell, 2 August 1956.
p. 435 ‘What surprised me’
Ibid.
p. 435 ‘I therefore chose to’
Richards Papers, Letter of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Campbell to Lieutenant Colonel G. Borrowman, 13 August 1956.
p. 435 ‘would like to rub’
Richards Papers, Letter of Lieutenant Colonel G. Borrowman to Brigadier Hugh Richards, 9 March 1956.
p. 435 ‘to the garrison’
Richards Papers, Letter of Lieutenant Colonel G. Borrowman to Lieutenant Colonel A. Campbell, 24 August 1956.
p. 435 ‘[I] would have thought’
Ibid.
p. 435 ‘I also feel that’
Richards Papers, Letter of Brigadier M. R. Roberts, to Lieutenant Colonel G. Borrowman, 15 March 1956.
p. 435 ‘You will remember’
Richards Papers, Letter of Lieutenant Colonel G. Borrowman to Field Marshal Lord Slim, 25 July 1956.
p. 436 ‘solely responsible for’
NA, WO 373/35, ‘Citation for the award of D.S.O. to Colonel Hugh Upton Richards, 22 September 1944.’
p. 436 ‘I am sorry that Laverty’
Richards Papers, Letter of Field Marshal Lord Slim to Lieutenant Colonel G. Borrowman, 27 August 1956.
p. 436 ‘as grave an injury’
Richards Papers, Letter of Brigadier Hugh Richards to Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Campbell, October 19 1956.
p. 436 ‘I am glad to’
Richards Papers, Letter of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Campbell to Brigadier Hugh Richards, 30 October 1956.
p. 438 ‘I tried to raise it’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 438 ‘We had been apart’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 438 ‘there wasn’t a family’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 438 ‘Up to twenty or so’
Letter to the author from C. Booth, 11 May 2009.
p. 439 ‘So far the Graves’
Letter of Charles Pawsey to Lieutenant Colonel G. Borrowman, 30 September 1944.
p. 440 ‘Independence will mean’
Ramachandra Guha,
India After Gandhi
(Pan Macmillan Ltd, 2007), pp. 269–278.
p. 440 I will ask them to’
Anne Yates and Lewis Chester,
The Troublemaker – Michael Scott and his Lonely Struggle Against Injustice
(Aurum Press, 2006), p. 242.
p. 440 ‘When the British left’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 440 ‘Individuals told of’
The Nagas, an unknown war
, Gavin Young
(Observer
, London 30 April, 7 May and 14 May 1962), cited Anne Yates and Lewis Chester,
The Troublemaker – Michael Scott and his Lonely Struggle Against Injustice
(Aurum books, 2006), pp. 244–245.
p. 441 ‘In the interest of’
‘Naga Queen’ article by Trina Betts.
p. 441 ‘knock some sense’
IWM, file no. NRA 28568, letter from Lady Pawsey to Arthur Swinson, 15 February 1965, Swinson.
p. 442 ‘like the Burma Retreat’
Pieter Steyn,
A History of the Assam Regiment
(Longman Orient, 1959), p. 245.
p. 442 I had a double-barreled’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 445 ‘Perhaps it is my’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 445 ‘I did a very wrong’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 446 ‘It hurts me still’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 446 ‘I was a Buddhist’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 447 ‘Did we fight a war’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 448 ‘garrotted in the street’
Interviewed for this book.
p. 449 ‘I had to baptise’
Interviewed for this book.
1941 | |
8 December | Japanese forces simultaneously invade Malaya, Thailand and Hong Kong and attack United States bases at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines. |
10 December | HMS |
14 December | Japanese troops cross into Burma and seize the vital airfield at Victoria Point. |
25 December | Hong Kong surrenders to Japanese forces. |
1942 | |
15 January | The Japanese invasion of Burma begins. |
15 February | Singapore surrenders to Japanese forces. |
23 February | British blow up the bridge over the Sittang river, the last natural barrier before Rangoon. |
8 March | Japanese forces occupy Rangoon. |
19 March | General Slim is appointed corps commander in Burma. |
1 May | Mandalay falls to the Japanese. |
May – June | British, Indian, Burmese and Chinese troops complete their retreat from Burma to India, along with hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees. |
8 August | Congress Party launches the Quit India campaign in response to failure of talks with British on future of India. The British respond by arresting the entire senior leadership of the party, including Mahatma Gandhi. |
16 December | The British begin their first offensive in the Arakan. The operation ends in failure several months later. |
1943 | |
13 February | Wingate’s first Chindit expedition begins. |
13 October | Lord Louis Mountbatten appointed Supreme Commander, South-East Asia Command. |
22 October | Mountbatten meets General William Slim at Dum Dum in India and offers him command of what is to become 14th Army. |
30 November | The second British offensive in the Arakan begins. |
31 December | The 5th Indian Division, including 4th battalion, Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, begins its attack on the Razabil Fortress. |
1944 | |
4 February | Japanese launch Operation ‘Ha-Go’ in the Arakan. |
5–29 February | Battle of the ‘Admin Box’. The Japanese suffer their first major defeat in Burma. |
5 March | Wingate’s second expedition, Operation Thursday, begins. |
8–16 March | The Japanese 15th Army begins Operation ‘U Go’ moving it’s troops across the Chindwin river and towards its twin objectives; Imphal and Kohima. |
22–26 March | Japanese forces attack 50th Indian Parachute Brigade at Sangshak. The brigade is forced to withdraw after suffering heavy casualties. |
30 March–1 April | 1st Assam Regiment’s positions at Jessami and Kharasom are attacked. The battalion becomes divided on the retreat with some troops reaching Kohima and others Dimapur. |
4 April | First Japanese attack on GPT Ridge at Kohima. |
4–20 April | The defence of Kohima. |
5 April | Japanese troops begin to arrive at Kohima’s Naga Village. Tokyo radio erroneously reports that Kohima has fallen. |
20 April | The Kohima garrison is relieved by troops of 2 British Division. |
13 May | Kohima Ridge is finally cleared. |
25 May | General Sato, commander of Japanese 31st Division, signals to 15th Army HQ that he is withdrawing from Kohima. |
2 June | Naga Village is finally cleared. |
6 June | The final Japanese positions at Kohima are abandoned. |
22 June | 2nd British Division advancing south from Kohima meet their counterparts advancing north from Imphal. The Imphal Road is re opened. |
5 July | The Burma Area Army orders the end of the Imphal operation. The commander of 2nd British Division, Major General John Grover, is relieved of his command. |
7 July | The commander of 31st Division, Lieutenant General Kotuku Sato, is relieved of his command. |
1945 | |
20 March | Mandalay is re-captured by 14th Army. |
2 May | Rangoon is re-occupied by 26th Indian Division. |
6 August | An atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. |
9 August | An atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki. |
15 August | Japan formally surrenders. |
2 September | Formal surrender ceremony held on board the |
Charles Ridley Pawsey
: Pawsey was the deputy commissioner of the Naga Hills, a civil servant responsible for more than 6,000 square miles of wild mountainous territory on India’s north-eastern frontier. He was the de facto ruler of the territory, in charge of the administration of courts, roads, tax, labour, and security. Charles Pawsey had been living in the region for more than two decades when the Japanese invaded. Although he could have been evacuated Pawsey chose to stay in Kohima throughout the siege.