Qualla: Battle of Kohima

Battle of Kohima: Introduction

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PP Yoonus, CC BY-SA 3.0. The most famous tennis court in military history belongs to no club. It sits on Garrison Hill in Kohima, the capital of Nagaland in northeast India, and for two weeks in April 1944, its modest rectangle marked the dividing line between the British Empire and the Japanese Imperial Army. Soldiers fought across it with grenades, bayonets, and bare hands, separated at times by little more than the width of a tennis net. The Battle of Kohima, fought from 4 April to 22 June 1944, stopped Japan's Operation U-Go -- the last and most ambitious attempt to invade India -- and turned the tide of the entire Burma campaign. In 2013, the British National Army Museum voted it, alongside the linked Battle of Imphal, as Britain's Greatest Battle. Historians have called it the Stalingrad of the East, and the comparison is not hyperbole.

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Image: PP Yoonus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Kohima: A Blockhead's Gamble

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Anonymous Earthling, CC BY-SA 4.0. The plan was audacious and possibly insane. Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi, commanding Japan's Fifteenth Army, had expanded a limited spoiling attack into a full-scale invasion of India. His objective was Imphal in Manipur, supplied by a single road winding through the hills ...

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Image: The Anonymous Earthling | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Kohima: Fifteen Hundred Against Fifteen Thousand

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hodson, T. C. (Thomas Callan), Public domain. Kohima was supposed to be empty. British intelligence had expected the assault elsewhere, and the garrison consisted of just 1,500 troops -- Royal West Kents, Assam Regiment soldiers, and administrative personnel from a convalescent depot. Against them came roughly 15,000 Japanes...

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Image: Hodson, T. C. (Thomas Callan) | Public domain

Battle of Kohima: Starving the Sword

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 4.0. Relief did not end the battle. The Japanese had dug into the ridgeline and surrounding Naga villages, and dislodging them took two more months. The British brought overwhelming firepower -- thirty-eight mountain howitzers, forty-eight field guns, and constant air strikes from Hur...

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Image: CC BY 4.0

Battle of Kohima: Milestone 109

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jrissman, CC BY 3.0. On 22 June 1944, British and Indian troops advancing south from Kohima met forces pushing north from Imphal at Milestone 109 on the road between the two towns. The siege of Imphal was broken. Japan's invasion of India was over. The human cost was staggering. Japanese casualties i...

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Image: Jrissman | CC BY 3.0

Battle of Kohima: When You Go Home

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PP Yoonus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today Kohima's War Cemetery holds 1,420 Allied graves on the slopes of Garrison Hill, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The cemetery occupies the ground where the Deputy Commissioner's tennis court once stood -- the same patch of earth where the fighting was f...

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Image: PP Yoonus | CC BY-SA 3.0