Battle of Imphal

Fought together with the siege of Kohima, March to July 1944 Japan's Operation U-Go invaded north-east India to destroy the Allied build-up there. On 3 April a force of 15,000 attacked Kohima, where the District Commissioner's house and tennis court saw brutal hand-to-hand fighting, while the main Japanese army encircled Imphal. The Fourteenth Army, drawn from across undivided India alongside British and African units, held both. On 3 July the surviving Japanese forces fell back, most of their losses caused by starvation and disease. More than 8,000 Commonwealth servicemen were killed, wounded or missing at Imphal. It was by far the worst Japanese land defeat of the war to that date, and it opened the way to retaking Burma.