Qualla: Kohima War Cemetery

Kohima War Cemetery: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PP Yoonus, CC BY-SA 3.0. The words carved into the memorial stone have haunted visitors for eight decades: "When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Your Tomorrow We Gave Our Today." The Kohima Epitaph, adapted from a verse by John Maxwell Edmonds, sits at the heart of a cemetery built on the very ground where soldiers fought hand-to-hand in April 1944. This was no sweeping battlefield of open terrain. The decisive engagement happened on a tennis court belonging to the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow, a space barely large enough for doubles play, where Commonwealth troops and Japanese soldiers killed each other at arm's length. The white concrete lines marking that court are still visible today, threading through the immaculate grass and rose bushes that now cover Garrison Hill.

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Image: PP Yoonus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kohima War Cemetery: The Battle That Broke an Empire's Advance

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shyamal, CC BY-SA 4.0. In early 1944, the Japanese 15th Army launched Operation U-Go, an audacious thrust into northeast India aimed at capturing the supply bases at Imphal and Kohima. If they succeeded, the road to the rest of India lay open. The Japanese reached Kohima in April and occupied the strat...

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Image: Shyamal | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kohima War Cemetery: Terraces of Remembrance

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shyamal, CC BY-SA 4.0. The cemetery occupies the exact slope where the fighting took place, arranged in a series of terraces roughly three meters high that follow the contour of Garrison Hill. Stone markers embedded with bronze plaques carry the names of the 1,420 Commonwealth soldiers buried here, the...

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Image: Shyamal | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kohima War Cemetery: The Cherry Tree and the Tennis Court

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PP Yoonus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Near the tennis court stands a cherry tree grown from a branch of the original that witnessed the battle. Japanese soldiers had used the first tree for target practice, and it was destroyed in the fighting. A small brass plaque on the replacement reads with quiet understatement, ...

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Image: PP Yoonus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kohima War Cemetery: Pilgrimages to Garrison Hill

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shyamal, CC BY-SA 4.0. The cemetery draws visitors from across the world, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains it with characteristic precision: roses bloom in season, the grass stays clipped, the bronze plaques gleam. On the 60th anniversary of the war's end in 2005, 41 members of the ...

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Image: Shyamal | CC BY-SA 4.0