Beyond the Epitaph: 6 Intriguing Facts About Britain’s Forgotten War

At the British 2nd Division War Cemetery located in Kohima, India, there is a stone memorial with an inscribed epitaph that states, ‘When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today.’ Unfortunately, these poignant words have largely gone unheeded. Despite the fact that the British Empire and Commonwealth eventually employed upwards of two million men and suffered some 250,000 combat casualties in the war against Japan, its accomplishments and sacrifices in this endeavour have largely become a forgotten war.

By Brian E. Walter | 4 min read

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Unnoticed Contributions

In the United Kingdom, the war in Europe attains far more notice than that in the Far East while people in the United States tend to view the Pacific contest as an American affair thus overlooking or undervaluing the contributions made by the other Allied participants. Similarly, while the Asia/Pacific conflict might retain more awareness in Australia, India and New Zealand, the sad reality is that the contributions made by these nations have largely gone unnoticed by much of the rest of the world.

Still, notwithstanding this general lack of popular awareness, the fact remains that during a period of desperate trial and tribulation, men from across the British Empire and Commonwealth came together in their millions to collectively confront a common enemy bent upon regional conquest and social subjugation. Overcoming innumerable hardships, these men turned back and eventually helped destroy the Japanese Empire, which in turn, helped form the democratic world now prevalent throughout much of Asia including in Japan itself. In doing so, their actions not only warrant our awareness, but also our thoughtful recognition and genuine gratitude.

In this spirit, here are six obscure facts regarding the contributions made by the British Empire and Commonwealth in the Asia/Pacific war:

The Land War

• Fact No. 1: The first Allied ground victory in the Asia/Pacific war occurred at Milne Bay on the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea in August and September 1942. During this battle a garrison made up predominantly of Australian militiamen repulsed a Japanese attempt to capture the local airfield and inflicted about a thousand casualties on the attackers for the cost of 123 Australian dead and 198 wounded. This would prove to be the first of many Australian victories in the region which would eventually see their forces liberate all of eastern Papua New Guinea and effectively destroy the Japanese Eighteenth Army.
• Fact No. 2: From March through July 1944 the British Fourteenth Army won a stunning victory against the Japanese Fifteenth Army as the latter was attempting to capture the important Allied centres of Imphal and Kohima in eastern India. Not only was this Japanese offensive decisively repulsed, but the attacking Japanese army suffered a staggering 53,505 casualties out of the 84,280 men employed. This constituted the worst defeat ever to befall the Imperial Japanese Army up to this point in its history, and the battle served as a springboard for the subsequent British reconquest of Burma.

The Sea War

• Fact No. 3: During World War II the British commissioned six armoured aircraft carriers into the Royal Navy that all saw service against the Japanese. Five of these aircraft carriers participated in the invasion of Okinawa where they all sustained hits from Kamikaze suicide aircraft. Fortunately, given their armoured flight decks and stout construction, all five aircraft carriers remained on station and continued operations. By comparison, during the same period no fewer than seven American aircraft carriers were forced to withdraw from the combat area to enact repairs following Kamikaze or conventional bomb hits.
• Fact No. 4: During the war British and British-controlled Dutch submarines sank by all means at least three Japanese cruisers, 12 other purpose-built warships, nine auxiliary warships, 46 merchant ships and some 600 minor vessels worth upwards of 235,000 tons in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Three British and four Dutch submarines were sunk in return thus constituting a favourable exchange rate of at least ten Japanese/Axis vessels sunk (excluding minor craft) for every British/Dutch submarine loss.

The Air War

• Fact No. 5: During the last two and a half years of the war RAAF and RAF aircraft carried out 1,912 aerial mining sorties in which they laid a total of 5,733 mines against 77 targets in the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean. For the loss of 11 RAAF and seven RAF aircraft, these mines sank or damaged upwards of half a million tons of Japanese shipping. Equally important, this mining campaign had a disruptive effect on Japanese logistics as the presence of even a few Allied mines often forced the Japanese to shut down major ports or delay convoy movements.
• Fact No. 6: From 1 June 1944 through 2 May 1945, Eastern Air Command (consisting primarily of RAF squadrons) claimed the destruction or damage of 3,846 motor vehicles, 432 locomotives, 364 Japanese aircraft and some 300 bridges in the Burma area. Among other things, these results reduced Japanese rail traffic within the region from 700–800 tons to just 100–200 tons per day. In addition, in March and April Allied bombers wholly or partially destroyed an estimated 524 regional Japanese supply dumps. This aerial onslaught severely degraded Japan’s position in Burma and eased the way for Britain’s reconquest of the territory.

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WANT TO LEARN MORE?
Be sure to read Forgotten War: The British Empire and Commonwealth’s Epic Struggle Against Imperial Japan, 1941-1945

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