Burma Campaign 1942 – 43 The Burma Campaign in the South - East Asian Theatre of World War II took place over four years from 1942 to 1945 . During the first year of the campaign , the Imperial Japanese Army ( with aid from Thai forces and Burmese insurgents ) had driven British forces and Chinese forces out of Burma , and occupied the country . From May to December 1942 , active campaigning ceased , as the monsoon rains made tactical movement almost impossible in the forested and mountainous border between India and Burma , and both the Allies and Japanese faced severe logistical constraints . When the rains ceased , the Allies launched two offensives . One , an attack in the coastal Arakan Province , failed , with severe effects on Allied morale . This was restored partly by improvements to administration and training , and partly by the much - publicised results of a raid by troops under Brigadier Orde Wingate . This raid may also have goaded Japanese commanders into launching major offensives the following year , which failed disastrously . India and Burma , May - December 1942 . A total of about 450 , 000 Allied troops faced 300 , 000 Japanese . However , both Allied and Japanese operations were constrained by terrain and logistics . The frontier region between Burma and India was for the most part almost impassable country , with very few practicable routes through the jungle - clad hills . The Japanese could make use of rail and river transport only as far as the port of Kalewa on the Chindwin River , while the Allies depended on inadequate rail and river links to Dimapur in the Brahmaputra River valley , from where a single road led to the base at Imphal . Allies . The Far Eastern theatre was accorded the lowest priority by the Chiefs of Staff Committee in Britain . British military efforts were instead concentrated on the Middle Eastern theatre , partly in accordance with the declared " Germany First " policy of the United States government under President Franklin Roosevelt . Few resources were allocated to India , and indeed newly raised formations of the British Indian Army were being trained in desert warfare rather than for jungle warfare , until December 1942 , when it was clear that the North African Campaign was finished to all intents and purposes . Allied efforts in India were also hampered by the disordered state of Eastern India at the time . In the aftermath of the Allied military disasters in the early months of 1942 , there were violent Quit India movement protests in Bengal and Bihar which required large numbers of British troops to suppress . There was also a disastrous famine in Bengal which may ultimately have led to 3 million deaths through starvation , disease and exposure . Although the immediate causes were a typhoon which devastated large areas in October 1942 and a premature scorched earth operation in Eastern Bengal to deny resources to the Japanese in case of invasion , the reserves of food available for relief were reduced by the loss of rice normally imported from Burma and Allied demands for exported rice in other theatres , while the dislocation caused by sporadic Japanese bombing , and corruption and inefficiency in the government of Bengal prevented any proper distribution of aid , or other drastic measures being taken for several months . Axis . The Japanese were consolidating their position in Burma . Lieutenant General Shojiro Iida , commander of the Japanese Fifteenth Army , was asked by higher headquarters for his opinion as to whether to resume the offensive after the rains stopped . He in turn consulted the commanders of his forward divisions , who felt that the terrain was too difficult and the logistical problems could not be overcome . Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi , commanding the Japanese 18th Division , was particularly scathing . Plans for an attack were accordingly dropped . Within Burma , the Japanese disbanded the Burma Independence Army , which had grown rapidly during the Japanese invasion of Burma , but was only loosely organised and in some cases was opposed to Japanese control . The Japanese replaced it with the Burma Defence Army , trained by Japanese officers . They also prepared to form a Burmese government , which was eventually established in May 1943 , under Ba Maw . This government had little real power , and the Japanese remained in control of most aspects of Burma ' s administration . The Burmese economy , already damaged by the earlier fighting , declined further through damage to the transport infrastructure ( resulting from the fighting of the previous year and British demolitions ) and lack of commercial markets for exported rice and other products . Lieutenant General Iida made efforts to promote Burma ' s interests , but he was repeatedly overruled by directives from Tokyo , and was relieved in 1943 , partly because he objected to Tokyo ' s economic policies in Burma . Operations . First Arakan campaign . In spite of their difficulties , the Allies mounted two operations during the 1942 - 1943 dry season . The first was a small scale offensive into the coastal Arakan region of Burma . The Indian " Eastern Army " under British General Noel Irwin intended to reoccupy the Mayu peninsula and Akyab Island , which held an important airfield . Beginning on 21 December 1942 , the 14th Indian Division advanced to Donbaik , only a few miles from the end of the peninsula . Here they were halted by a small Japanese force ( initially of only two battalions but with heavy artillery support ) which occupied nearly impregnable bunkers . Indian and British troops made repeated frontal assaults without armoured support , and were thrown back with heavy casualties . Japanese reinforcements , amounting to an understrength division , arrived from Central Burma . Crossing rivers and mountain ranges which the Allies had assumed to be impassable , they hit 14th Division ' s exposed left flank on 3 April 1943 and overran several units . The division ' s headquarters was replaced by that of 26th Indian Division , which attempted to hold a defensive line south of the town of Buthidaung , and even to surround the Japanese as they pressed their advantage . The exhausted units which the division had inherited were unable to hold this line and were forced to abandon much equipment and fall back almost to the Indian frontier . Irwin was dismissed , partly as a result of this disaster . He made several disparaging remarks regarding the state of equipment , training and morale of Eastern Army . Although not wholly inaccurate , they were widely resented . Irwin ' s successor , General George Giffard , concentrated on restoring the army ' s administration and morale . First Chindit expedition . The second action was much more controversial . Under the command of Brigadier Orde Wingate , the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade , better known as the Chindits , infiltrated through the Japanese front lines and marched deep into Burma with the initial aim of cutting the main north - south railway in Burma . The operation ( codenamed Operation " Longcloth " ) had originally been conceived as part of a much larger coordinated offensive , which had to be aborted due to lack of supplies and shipping . Rather than let the Chindits ' training be wasted , Wingate nevertheless carried out the operation , even though its original purpose was invalid . Some 3 , 000 men entered Burma in seven columns . They caused some damage to the communications of the Japanese in northern Burma , cutting the railway for possibly two weeks . However , they suffered heavy casualties : 818 killed , wounded or missing , 27 % of the original force . Those who did return were wracked with disease and quite often in dreadful physical condition . Though the operational results were questioned , both at the time and subsequently , the raid was used to great propaganda effect to prove to British and Indian soldiers that they could live , move and fight as effectively as the Japanese in the jungle , countering the impression created after the battles of early 1942 that the Japanese could not be beaten in such terrain . It was also said by the Japanese commanders after the war that the Japanese in Burma decided later to take the offensive in 1944 , rather than adopt a purely defensive stance , as a direct result of the Chindit operation . Central Front . There was continual patrol activity and low - key fighting on the frontier south of Imphal , but neither army possessed the resources to mount decisive operations . 17th ( Light ) Indian Division held positions around the town of Tiddim at the end of a precarious supply line south of Imphal , and skirmished with units of the Japanese 33rd Division . The Japanese had a shorter and easier supply line from the port of Kalewa on the Chindwin River and had the upper hand for most of 1942 and 1943 . V Force , an irregular force raised by GHQ India in the frontier areas of Burma and India , also patrolled and scouted in the large areas controlled by neither army , but could have no decisive effect on Japanese operations . Burma Road and the " Hump " . At American insistence , one of the overriding Allied strategic aims was the maintenance of supplies to the Nationalist Chinese government under Chiang Kai - Shek . When the Japanese had occupied Burma , the supply route via Rangoon had been cut . The Americans organised an airlift of supplies over the Himalaya mountain range . The route , and the airlift itself , acquired the nickname of The Hump . There were heavy losses from the natural hazards of the route , and at this stage of the war , the Allied transport aircraft were vulnerable to Japanese fighter aircraft operating from Myitkyina airfield in northern Burma . At the insistence of the American Joseph Stilwell , who was Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai - shek among other appointments , the Allies also began construct the Ledo Road to link India with China , which was to prove an enormous engineering task . As part of the preparations to drive this road through Japanese - occupied northern and eastern Burma , two divisions of Chinese troops who had retreated into India in 1942 were re - equipped and trained by the Americans at camps in Ramgarh in Bihar . Following Wingate ' s raid and the expansion of his force for the campaigning season of 1943 - 1944 , the Americans also formed the long - range penetration unit which later became known as Merrill ' s Marauders and deployed them to Ledo . The Americans also supplied logistical units ( especially construction units and railway operating personnel ) which improved and maintained the Allied railway lines and river transport in North Eastern India , in preparation for Allied offensives in 1944 . Fort Hertz . In mid - 1942 , a small reconnaissance party was parachuted into the Myitkyina area , to investigate Myitkyina and the outpost at Fort Hertz in the far north of Burma , which had been cut off from India . Fort Hertz was found to be still in Allied hands . Liaison and engineering parties were flown or parachuted into Fort Hertz , and a locally - raised irregular force , the Kachin Levies , was established . The airstrip was improved to become an emergency landing strip for aircraft flying the " Hump " route . Although the Kachin Levies were directly controlled at first by Eastern Army ( and later by Fourteenth Army ) , they were later transferred to the American Northern Combat Area Command , to cooperate more closely with the impending American and Chinese advance from Ledo . Burma Railway . Like the Allies , the Japanese sought to improve their lines of communication within South East Asia . To this end , they constructed the Burma Railway which linked Moulmein in Southern Burma with Bangkok in Siam . Construction began on 22 June 1942 and was completed on 17 October 1943 . The project became notorious for the deaths among the labour force ( 90 , 000 out of 180 , 000 conscripted Asian labourers and 16 , 000 out of 60 , 000 Allied prisoners of war ) . Aftermath . Allied Command Changes . The Allies regarded the command structure in India as inefficient . GHQ India ( commanded by General Archibald Wavell ) was responsible for operations in Persia and Iraq ( where there had been fears of a breakthrough by German forces in North Africa and the Caucasus until late 1942 ) and against the Japanese in Burma , and also for internal security in wide areas of India and the administration of the rapidly expanding Indian Army . GHQ India itself was derided as overstaffed and inefficient . The Australian war correspondent Wilfred Burchett described it as " . . . an antiquarium of Colonel Blimp s . " In August 1943 , the new Allied South East Asia Command was created , to take over control and planning of operations against the Japanese in Burma and the Indian Ocean . In November , Admiral Louis Mountbatten was appointed as Commander in Chief of the new command . Because the theatre was linked to the American administrative China Burma India Theater or CBI , and because increasing numbers of American air force units and logistical resources were being dispatched to India , General Stilwell was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander . Wavell meanwhile became Viceroy of India , and immediately addressed the famine in Bengal , although the crisis was eased only when the Government in Britain was persuaded to ship relief supplies of food to Bengal . He was replaced as Commander in Chief of the Indian Army by General Claude Auchinleck , who had been relieved as Commander in Chief of the Middle East Command a year previously . During the Arakan campaign it had been noted that morale among the inadequately trained Indian troops had declined to the point where many desertions had occurred , and even defections to the Indian National Army . ( Similar low morale among British troops manifested itself as apathy and very high rates of malaria infection . ) Auchinleck reinvigorated the Indian Army ' s headquarters , rear - area and training establishments . Other reforms were made to improve the Indian Army ' s morale ; soldiers ' pay was increased , non - commissioned officers and Viceroy ' s commissioned officer s were given better training and more responsibility , and efforts were made to counter Indian National Army propaganda . The Eastern Army was also split , into the Fourteenth Army , part of South East Asia Command and responsible for the conduct of operations in Manipur and the Arakan , and " Eastern Command " , which reported to GHQ India and was responsible for rear - area security and the lines of communication . Japanese command changes and plans . In March 1943 , the Japanese created a new army - level headquarters , the Burma Area Army , to control operations in Burma . Lieutenant General Masakazu Kawabe was the army ' s Commander . The army took command of the Fifteenth Army in the north and east of the country , and at first directly controlled units in the south and west of the country . The Twenty - Eighth Army was later created to assume the latter responsibility on 6 January 1944 . In August , Lieutenant General Iida was replaced as commander of the Fifteenth Army by Lieutenant General Mutaguchi , former commander of the 18th Division . From the moment he took charge , Mutaguchi forcefully advocated a bold offensive into India for the following year , in contrast to his earlier dismissal of the chances of such an attack succeeding . The offensive plan , codenamed " U - Go " , was endorsed by Imperial General Headquarters and was launched the following year .