Qualla: Battle of Ramree Island

Battle of Ramree Island: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Official photographer Sergeant Wackett of No.9 Army Film and Photographic Unit, Public domain. Of about one thousand Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about twenty were found alive. So wrote Bruce Wright, a Canadian naturalist and Burma veteran, in 1962 -- and the Guinness Book of World Records duly recorded it as the deadliest animal attack in history. The story is almost certainly wrong. But the battle that inspired it, Operation Matador, was real enough: a five-week amphibious campaign on a flat, mangrove-fringed island off Burma's Arakan coast, fought between the 26th Indian Infantry Division and a determined Japanese garrison in the closing months of World War II. What happened in those swamps remains one of the war's most persistent and contested legends.

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Image: Official photographer Sergeant Wackett of No.9 Army Film and Photographic Unit | Public domain

Battle of Ramree Island: Why Ramree Mattered

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wackett A (Sgt), No 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Public domain. By January 1945, Lieutenant General William Slim's Fourteenth Army was advancing into central Burma, but its supply lines were stretched dangerously thin. The airbases at Imphal and Agartala would soon be out of range. The Allies needed forward airfields, and Ramree Island -- fla...

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Image: Wackett A (Sgt), No 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit | Public domain

Battle of Ramree Island: Fire from the Sea

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Wackett, Frederick (Sergeant), Public domain. The assault opened on 21 January 1945 with a bombardment that left little doubt about Allied naval superiority. An hour before the 71st Indian Infantry Brigade was to land, the battleship Queen Elizabeth opened fire with her main battery, while aircraft from the escort carrier Am...

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Image: No 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Wackett, Frederick (Sergeant) | Public domain

Battle of Ramree Island: Into the Swamps

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Official photographer Sergeant Wackett of No.9 Army Film and Photographic Unit, Public domain. The Japanese garrison resisted with what the British official historian Stanley Woodburn Kirby later called great determination. As the 71st Brigade advanced south down the west coast and then swung inland toward Ramree town, the defenders fought at every river crossing and chaun...

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Image: Official photographer Sergeant Wackett of No.9 Army Film and Photographic Unit | Public domain

Battle of Ramree Island: Anatomy of a Legend

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Official photographer Sergeant Wackett of No.9 Army Film and Photographic Unit, Public domain. On 24 February 1945, Reuters correspondents reported that Japanese soldiers were 'being forced by hunger out of the mangrove swamps and many have been killed by crocodiles.' Wright's 1962 account elaborated the story into something cinematic, and it entered popular culture throug...

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Image: Official photographer Sergeant Wackett of No.9 Army Film and Photographic Unit | Public domain

Battle of Ramree Island: What Remains

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No. 231 Wing RAF, Public domain. The airfield that justified the entire operation did not become operational for transport sorties until 16 April 1945, weeks after Akyab's field came into use on 1 April. The urgency had been real: Operation Dracula, the assault on Rangoon, needed to launch by early May to beat t...

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Image: No. 231 Wing RAF | Public domain