Road of Bones Read online

  The Japanese were harried by the British divisions advancing from Kohima and Imphal and by the revived guerrillas of V Force, reappearing through May and June. The V Force situation reports for summer 1944 are filled with references to starving Japanese stragglers. A note to V Force headquarters in July talks of one hundred Japanese drowned trying to cross a river; another speaks of twelve Japanese killed by Nagas. The hill tribes turned on the retreating army with a vengeance.

  In some cases they lured them to their deaths with offers of food. On 20 August, three Japanese stragglers were offered rice by Nagas. As they were eating, their hosts opened fire and killed two of them. No mention is made of what happened to the other man. B. K. Sachu Angami of Kohima was hiding with other villagers in the forest when a Japanese soldier sought refuge among them. The man was given food and had his shaved so that he resembled a Naga, but he was eventally killed. ‘This Naga wanted a medal and so he took him into the jungle and cut off his head.’

  In another incident three INA men, offered a bed in a Naga village, were stabbed to death as they slept. ‘Several noses of victims have been produced.’ The reports provide a grim litany of suffering. Fifty dead Japanese found in Pyangbok village; three killed at Tuitum and an ‘ear and pay book brought in’; around fifty dead on the road to Nangadeikon; a track near Thanan Nala ‘littered with Jap dead … and open latrines and temporary shelters’. As the defeated men headed down the tracks towards the Chindwin, the 31st Division resembled an army of ghosts.

  Yoshiteru Hirayama, the monk’s son from Tokyo, managed to avoid being abandoned in a hospital. His greatest fear was that his stretcher-bearers would throw him into one of the steep ravines. It was happening with growing frequency. ‘It was hell. Men would throw their friends into the valley below.’ The carriers were starving and exhausted, their feet sinking into the mud, deperate men on a road without end. Hirayama was lucky. The men with him were from Niigata of the snows, ‘strong men with a strong will’. When Hirayama reached the Chindwin he saw dead soldiers lining the river bank and others begging for food. They stumbled with hands outstretched and then, seeing he had nothing to give, passed listlessly on.

  A recurring image in the memories of survivors is of groups of men gathering together to die. Dr Kuwaki of the 124th Regiment passed many as he was carried to the Chindwin. ‘I saw the dead soldiers lying in groups under trees. It was a human thing. They didn’t want to die alone. One would be dying and others would crawl towards him. I was sick as well but looking at the dead I had the will to live.’ His comrade Chuzaburo Tomaru explained the clinging together as a spiritual necessity. ‘I found out people goes to river side when they die. I used to hear from my father that the spirit calls spirit. It was true. One soldier approached the river side and died; then, other soldier went there and died next to him.’ He saw men left behind on stretchers. He approached one sitting soldier who appeared to have his hand raised. The man was frozen in rigor mortis. In a prisoner-of-war camp at the end of the war, Tomaru heard from other survivors that the British had captured deserters and had not killed or tortured them. Such civilised treatment of prisoners would have been unimaginable to the average Japanese soldier. ‘When I heard of it, I thought how kind British army was!’

  At the top of every hill there were groups of men who had stopped to rest. The supply officer Masao Hirakubo found himself saying hello to men who were dead. ‘Just like taking a rest. Next to him would be one already white bone. Next one would have maggots and clothes rotted. People who died earlier were existing in the same place as the ones who sat down now.’ A popular soldier, a married man with children, looked up to by the others, went off on his own after telling his friends he felt much better. He would catch up with them later. They found him a short time later, dead in the middle of the road where he had placed his big toe in the trigger of his rifle, pointed the barrel at his head and blown his brains out. ‘In tears some of our younger soldiers held on to him,’ said Staff Sergeant Yasamusa Nishiji, 20th Independent Engineer Regiment. He saw soldiers committing suicide in pairs, one clutching a grenade to his chest and then embracing the other. Another dying man was handed a grenade with which to commit suicide by an officer who continued on his way. The dying man screamed at the departing officer: ‘You’ve lorded it over me; what have I got in return? I’ll bloody kill you.’ Nishiji drew some of the scenes he witnessed. The result was a harrowing tableau: an army nurse injecting wounded men with lethal poison; men swept away in a raging river; a dying soldier raising his hand in protest after another has stolen his knapsack; another man laying out his clothes and belongings on a rock and then lying down to die.

  Reaching the Chindwin was by no means a guarantee of survival. Private Manabu Wada, 138th Regiment, marched through jungle filled with corpses where ‘thousands upon thousands of maggots crept out of bodies lying in streams and were carried away by the fast flowing waters’. At one stream he found the skeletons of ten or more soldiers who had, like himself, come for water. On reaching the Chindwin with three other men, Manabu helped to build a raft. They set off on their tiny bamboo craft as twilight came on, swept along by the swift rainy season currents. The water was red-brown and capped with white waves and they clung on, afraid to move for fear of capsizing. There were periodic attempts to steer towards the eastern shore. One of the men stripped to his loincloth, tied a rope to the raft and swam with the other end towards the shore. But when he clambered out of the racing waters the raft shot onwards and the rope was whipped from his hands. Manabu last saw him disappearing into the jungle. After a journey that lasted weeks – he lost count of the time – Manabu Wada was dragged to safety by his surviving comrades. At one point they beat him with a stick to wake him, knowing that if he lay down on the road he would never get up. As for the man who had sent the 15th Army into India, Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, he was seen by the military correspondent Masanori Ito, sipping rice gruel while watching his men stagger towards the Chindwin. ‘You want a statement,’ he asked Ito. ‘I have killed thousands of my men. I should not go back across the Chindwin alive … that is all I have to say.’ But he did go back back across the Chindwin and continued to blame his commanders.

  By the end of June, Mutaguchi had sacked the commanders of the 15th and 33rd Divisions. On 7 July he removed General Sato. The battle between the two men was about to enter a new realm of bitterness.

  Mutaguchi’s intention was to have Sato declared insane. That would remove the danger of a court martial at which all kinds of unpleasant facts about the supply plans for the invasion might be made public. Sato, on the other hand, wanted his day in court. He first headed to 15th Army headquarters to organise supplies for the troops he had left behind. According to his biographer, Sato succeeded in persuading a staff officer to send some relief. He then signalled 31st Division. ‘General Sato is always with you.’

  He followed that up with a defiant signal to General Kawabe suggesting that Mutaguchi should be examined for signs of mental illness and his staff sacked. ‘They are leading the entire army’s self-destruction minute by minute. The commander has lost his dignity and is shifting responsibility to the lower ranks … This is truly unprecedented. They do not have [a] sense of responsibility; they threaten their subordinates. I have observed the truth ever since I was in Kohima.’ Several days later, on 24 July, Sato sat opposite Kawabe in his Rangoon office. Here was the man whose failure to confront Mutaguchi had helped propel thousands of Sato’s men to their deaths. The 31st Division leader struggled to contain himself. Kawabe nervously twiddled his extravagant moustache as he spoke.

  He told Sato to prepare himself for a health check. Sato knew immediately that this was the first stage in the conspiracy to have him declared insane. ‘I don’t need a health examination. I am quite strong,’ he snapped. Kawabe insisted. ‘It has been arranged. Please take your examination.’ Sato told him it was rude to force a healthy person to take a health examination, then kicked his seat away and walked out. When an
officer was sent to call him for the ‘health check’, Sato raged again. ‘How come you cannot hold a court martial openly? If I am charged for the crime of disobeying the order, then Mutaguchi and Kawabe ought to be charged for treason to massacre the Imperial army for his private gain and ambition? How dare you call me mentally ill for the fear of taking this to the court martial?’ The following day four army doctors arrived at the guesthouse where Sato was staying and questioned the general. Their report is worth quoting. ‘The attitude, facial expression and language of Gen Sato were completely normal and stable and no sign of anxiety and fret/impatience was seen. Speed of recall during conversations was clear with no circumlocution and idle speech. His ability to recall and memory was brilliant. There was no indication of emotional disturbance; no excitement or depression was observed. The ability to control his will was sufficient; recklessness and subservience/meanness were not seen at all. He was a fine general.’ The doctors added that Sato was mentally and physically exhausted and needed rest. Mutaguchi and Kawabe were beaten. After recuperating, Sato was sent to Java as a military adviser, where he remained until the end of the war.

  Four months later, when the scale of the calamity could no longer be denied in Tokyo, a signal was dispatched removing Mutaguchi as commander of 15th Army. Kawabe was also dismissed. The two architects of the disaster lasted longer than war minister Tojo, who had clutched at the dream of victory they offered. Amid rising disquiet over war losses, he was forced from office in July.

  General Sato’s 31st Division had crossed the Chindwin into India approximately 15,000-strong. Nearly half never came back. A soldier came across a body where maggots were feasting on the eyes. He tried to remove the boots from the corpse and heard the man speak: ‘Please … please don’t take off my shoes yet … I will go [die] very soon.’ Another soldier also recalled how dying men would cling to the legs of passing comrades and cry, ‘Please bring me along.’ For many of the survivors the emotional torment of hearing the dying call out for mothers, wives, children would endure for a lifetime. Some dying men asked to be cast over cliffs to spare remove the burden on exhausted stretcher bearers. Humanity and horror followed the retreating army. The remnants of the 15th Army were still being harried and killed in the corpse-littered Naga Hills well into the autumn. A British intelligence signal of 19 September 1944, reported: ‘V Force patrol shot one moribund Jap straggler.’ It was a poignant, if fitting, epitaph for Mutaguchi’s dream of conquest.

  * * *

  * The 33 Corps account gives a figure of 3,384 Japanese killed in action, which is broadly consistent with the official Japanese count of 3,700 (Japanese Monograph No. 134, p. 164). The British figure for Japanese wounded is 3,931. A further 500 were listed as Missing in the Naga Hills by the Imperial Army. The Japanese give a figure of 6,264 men dead from 31st Division by the end of September 1944 with an estimated 2,800 hospitalised. The vast majority of those listed as still being on duty were suffering from the effects of disease and malnutrition.

  * The total number of Japanese killed, wounded and taken prisoner by 23 Long Range Penetration Brigade is given as 854, with a total of seventy-four killed and eighty-eight wounded. NA, WO 203/6388.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When the War Is Over

  The hour of immediate trial had passed for Admiral Mountbatten. Slim was chasing the 15th Army to destruction and his line of communication was holding despite the monsoon. The American planes had been returned but the RAF was continuing to drop supplies. The supreme commander could sense a famous victory. By the time Mountbatten reached Kohima on 1 July the bodies had been buried; the British and Indians were placed in single graves, the Japanese dead piled into pits. The place was still a ruin. On Garrison Hill he was shown the bunkers where the defenders had held out for over a fortnight. ‘One could not visit this pathetic little hillock without being deeply moved at the gallantry of this scratch lot of defenders,’ he wrote.

  Mountbatten met Charles Pawsey, back now in a makeshift office in Kohima, and heard how the Nagas had done ‘everything in their power to help us and volunteered to carry our wounded back under fire, proudly refusing any pay … These Nagas, primitive headhunters though they be, have shown themselves true friends of the British and we must do everything we can for them.’ Mountbatten resolved to write to the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, to insist on the speedy rebuilding of the Naga Village. The supreme commander passed on. He would not have known, or sensed, that the hills were in a state of flux at that moment; the passage of modern armies back and forth across their lands, and the hunger and disease wrought by fighting, had traumatised traditional communities. Twelve-year-old B. K. Sachu Angami returned from the forest to Kohima at the end of June 1944. ‘It was difficult to locate our plot of land because of all the destruction. Everything was gone. Everything. We saw a lot of British bodies and also Japanese … People used to go and see these dead bodies.’

  Twelve thousand Nagas were still depending on food relief by the autumn of 1944; unknown thousands more had vanished into remote forests and nobody knew what their condition was. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the siege Charles Pawsey spoke with apparent confidence about returning to the old way of life. In June 1944 he told a visitor that the ‘presence of war and British and Indian troops on their territory is not likely to have any profound influence on the Nagas. In the Kohima area they are very conservative and have never even been into the plains.’ Cut off from the political mainstream, Pawsey was still the benevolent patriarch of a territory he knew better than any other foreigner, and he could not have been expected to imagine how swiftly the end of empire would arrive. In the vacuum left by the advance of Slim’s army there was a resurgence of headhunting. Intelligence reports from late 1944 and into the following year give a vivid picture of a deteriorating situation:

  August 1944: There has been some raiding between the Patkoi and the east Boundary of our Control Area and one village in our Control Area was attacked, five heads were taken.

  September 1944: An outbreak of head-taking in the Southern Sangtam country is reported. The troops which were in the area till fairly recently have left and the Nagas find it difficult to understand why they cannot attack their enemies just as we attack the Japanese.

  The toll in one raid in 1945 was four hundred heads of men, women and children. The war brought new weapons into the hills; for the first time Nagas were using Tommy guns and stocks of Chinese rifles sold across the border from Burma. The Governor’s adviser on tribal areas, J. P. Mills, an old friend of Pawsey’s and a veteran of the hills, warned officials to take armed escorts. ‘While the wilder Nagas, being headhunters, are apt to kill inoffensive strangers, the tribes of the North-East Frontier Agency only attack strangers in what they imagine to be self-defence … precautions have to be taken against possible unfortunate results arising from an entirely unintentional shock administered to the nerves of “jumpy” savages.’

  India was still under British rule, the Congress leaders still in jail, but the expectation of independence after the war was now palpable among the country’s educated elite. The Nagas did not belong to this consensus. The Assam leaders of Congress regarded them as one of many tribal groups who belonged in the united India that would soon replace the Raj. Naga independence, or the creation of some sort of British protectorate, was anathema to a movement faced with the claims of numerous different ethnic groups.

  The British were still too busy fighting a war to contemplate what political future they envisaged for the hills, but in the long run, beset by the looming crisis of partition, they would leave the Nagas to make their way with India. A Naga minister, the Reverend L. Gatpoh, recalled that ‘most of our people were not at all aware of what was coming into the political arena of India; they just had no idea of the rapid developments that were taking place in the rest of the country’. The clash of cultures between hill and plain, the separateness entrenched under British rule, the absence of any united Naga movement, and the destabilising effect of w
ar had left the Nagas tragically ill-prepared for the independence that was coming. The Naga historian Sajal Nag put it well when he wrote that to the Nagas Indian administration ‘meant the rule of babus, a category of people they mortally detested … as they had found the plains people to be arrogant who looked down upon the Nagas as a naked and primitive people’.

  Ursula Graham Bower stayed in the hills until the war ended. She met her husband-to-be, Major Tim Betts, when he arrived on a butterfly-hunting expedition early in 1945. As a V Force soldier, he had walked from the Chindwin to Kohima in the early days of the Japanese invasion but had been evacuated just before the siege began. On the day her guerrilla unit was disbanded, Graham Bower presented gifts of cash, ivory, knives and guns. She handed over her Sten gun and the Tommy gun belonging to her bodyguard Namkia. Nobody at that moment could have predicted how they might be used in the future, or what lay in store for the Nagas. Namkia scoured the countryside and found a huge pig for a feast. ‘In the lengthening light the whole camp was a flurry of scarlet, of bordered Kuki clothes, of Magulong in dance-dress with huge tam-o’-shanters of wound cotton thread, and hornbills’ feathers quivering in the stiff breeze. The spectators formed a ring … they danced all night.’