FORGOTTEN VOICES OF THE JAPAN LAAN: The Battle of Imphal and the Second World War in Manipur

The book takes the reader back to a little heard period in Manipur’s recent history but one which is marked by parallel trauma – the place’s World War II experience. There is a growing volume of scholarship on this battlefield now and the extent of this trauma is beginning to come to light. Till recent times, most of these accounts and interpretations have been either purely military treatises or else accounts from the perspective of the victors, the British army and administrators. This book is important as it gives an account of these battlefields by local Manipuri residents on whose courtyards these fierce and bitter battles were fought. As to the intensity of the conflict here, it may be recalled that in 2013, a vote taken by the National Army Museum, London, ranked it as the most important for the British in their entire history. A defeat here would have not only changed the complexion of the WWII in Asia where Japan was already acquiring a visage of invincibility, but perhaps resulted in an ignominious exit for the British from its prized Indian colony where there was already a struggle for an end to their rule. This is especially so as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army was also fighting alongside the Japanese. The book is a collection of testimonies by surviving witnesses of the war. Many who saw the war are no more, and those who the author managed to speak to, are also in their 80s. In another decade or so, nobody from that generation would be around. This being so, this book will be a very valuable resource for future researchers into the nature and impact of those traumatic war years.