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 BOOK REVIEW ON
THE WAR IN BURMA

1. Introduction. `The War in Burma` is written by Col MG Abhyankar .

This book gives a complete picture of BURMA Compaign. The author has
explained the important aspects of the operations in logical sequence and in
lucid style, bringing out clearly the application of principles of war. The book
was first published in 1955 and it had total 6 editions. The 6 th edition was
published in 1981. The book is Printed at Gayatri Offset Press New Delhi and
published by Natraj Publishers, Dehra Dun.

2. This book has total ten chapters. All the chapters of this book are well
arranged and give a continuous picture of many events as they took place. The
strategical, tactical and administrative problems were tackled and solved, have
also been well brought out. Chapter one describes the strategic concept while
chapter two explains the administrative problems faced during Burma
Campaign. The other chapters chronologically very describe the Southern
Front- Arakan Operations, the Central Front, the Northern Front, Chindit
Operations, the Significance Of Air Power, Naval Operations,. Problems Of
Command And Control as well as Intelligence And Security respectively. At the
beginning of the chapters some relevant questions is given which are important
for the staff college entrance examinees. In each chapter the author has also
very clearly discussed the answer of those questions which would be very
helpful for the readers.

3. This book reviews the operations launched by South East Asia Command
under the leadership of its Supreme Commander Lord Louis MountBatten for
the reconquest of Burma. In the Last edition of the book only essential maps
has been incorporated as certain accounts such as Kohima and Imphal battles
or the assault on Meiktila will always remain incomplete without maps.

4. Aim. The aim of this paper is to review the book, `The war in Burma`.

5. Chapter-1. In this chapter the author is discussing the strategic concept

very clearly. By the latter half of 1943 the Japanese had been for more than
eighteen months, masters of vast defensive arc covering their early conquests.
This stretched from the jungle-covered mountains of Northern and Western
Burma across the sea to the Andamans. The Strategic aim of the operations in
Burma was :
a. To develop, maintain, broaden and protect the air and supply link
to China.
b. To eliminate the Japanese forces from Northern Burma as a
prelude to their total defeat in South East Asia.

6. This Chapter has also covered Indian Command, European and Pacific
Theatres, China Theatre operations. First impression of F.M Viscount Slim in
'Defeat into Victory' is also given at the end of this chapter.

7. Chapter – 2. The major administrative problems has been

discussed in this chapter. It was therefore vital that solutions were found to the
various logistical requirements if they were not to interfere with projected
operations. Such problems confronting the Supreme Allied Commander could
be listed as follows:
a. Lines of Communication and Supply Bases.
b. Long range Air Supply and Air Transport.
c. Construction and Maintenance of roads, ports, railways, airfields
and Nodal points.
d. Supply of Petrol to China.
e. Effects of monsoon on operations.
f. Incidence of tropical diseases.
8. This chapter has discussed lines of communications and supply bases,
long range air supply and transport, construction and maintenance of roods,
rivers, ports, railways, air fields and nodal points.

9. Chapter – 3. This Chapter has covered Arakan operations. The

operations are discussed chronologically in the following sequences:
a. Topography, Enemy dispositions and intentions.
b. Land operations- Battle of Adm Box.
c. Amphibious operations – operation Romulus and operation Talon.
d. Causes of Japanese defeat.
e. Air Supply.
10. A very good map of attempted invasion of India phase-1 is given. The
causes of Japanese defeat are also well narrated in this chapter.

11. Chapter – 4. The operations in the central front are discussed in

this chapter. The operations on the central front devide themselves into the
following distinct phases as various actions came in almost with a logical
sequence, one after another. They are:
a. The Battle of Imphal and Kohima.
b. Operation Capital.
(i) Crossing of the Chindwin.
(ii) Crossing of the Irrawady.
(iii) Breakout from Meiktila.
c. Operation Dracula.
d. Pursuit across the Sittang.

12. Chapter – 5. The operation and actions taken by allied forces in the
northern front of Burma are discussed here. The operations in NCAC can be
divided into three phases:
a. Advance from Ledo to capture Myitkyina.
b. Securing of Irrawaddy line and link up with the Chinese
Expeditionary Forces.
c. Advance to Mong Mit-Lashio line and link up with the Fourteenth
Army.

13. The aim given to Supreme Commander South East Asia is to maintain
and enlarge contacts with china both by air route and by making direct contact
in Northern Burma by use of suitably organized and air-supplied ground forces
of the greatest possible strength. With this aim in view, Lieutenant General
stilwell was ordered to occupy Northern Burma upto the Mogaung-Myitkyina
area so as to cover the construction of the overland route to China. It was
decided that Major General Wingate’s special force should at the appropriate
moment be brought in to cut the enemy road and rail communication to his
northern forces while the main Japanese forces were to be contained by IV
corps on the central front. The special forces succeeded in the operation.

14. Chapter – 6. In this chapter the author has narrated Chindit

Operation. The late Major General Orde Charles Wingate who created the
chindits, planned their long-range penetration behind the enemy lines and
gave guerilla tactics a new character and outlook. Early in 1942, during the
retreat from Burma Wavell had applied for his services to organize guerilla
levies. Wingate drew from it necessary deductions and set before Wavell a plan
to carry Jananese tactics beyond their own practice. He proposed a specially
trained or organized brigade which should penetrate deep into enemy territory
and operate there by means of air supply and wireless without depending on
the normal military lines of communications. There are two chindit operations.
The first one took place in 1943 which had not been discussed here. The
second chindit operation has been narrated here that can be studied in two
parts:
a. Operations in conjunction with the Fourteenth Army which is
known as operation ‘Thursday’.
b. Operations in support of the Northern Combat Area Command
(NCAC) Forces where Stilwell’s forces had been linked up by 14 th
Army of General Wingate to establish land contact with India.

15. Air Supremacy plays a vital role in favour of the special force in these
operations. The special force succeeded in the operation. It was a new type and
dimension of war and new tactics that made victory possible.

16. Chapter – 7. In this chapter significance of air power has been

discussded very clearly. The contribution which air power made the victory of
the Allied Forces in Burma was both unique and significant. The air operations
established beyond doubt that the aeroplane was not primarily a bomb carriage
but instead a new means of transportation and supply around which warfare
could be reshaped. Realizing the situation of war Admiral Mountbatten
integrated the British Empire Air Force and united Air Force on 14 December
and put under Air Chief Marshall Peirse who became the Allied Air
Commander-in-Chief with General Stratemeyer as his Second-in-Command.
Stratemeyer was put in charge of the Eastern Air Forces fighting in the Burma
campaign.

17. The author has discussed the significance of air power in conjunction
with land operations fought on different fronts in the following manners:
a. Organization of air forces in the South East Asia Command.
b. Army/Air co-operation.
c. Air operations- Local.
d. Air Supply.
(i) Air Support.
 (ii) Air Transportation .
e. Air Operations- Long Range.

e. Limitations of Air power.

18. Chapter- 8. The Naval operations is being discussed in this chapter. The
campaign in Burma was primarily as Admiral Mountbatten says an `Infantry
man’s Battle’ and the scope of naval operations was therefore extremely
limited. The Eastern Fleet was generally responsible for security of sea
communications in Indian Ocean.

19. The naval operations in Burma were confined to:

a. Amphibious operations like Romulus, Talon, Dracula, Zipper,
Mailfist and Roger.
b. General Fleet operations.

20. Chapter – 9. In this chapter the author has narrated the problems
of command and control in South East Asia between October 1943 to February
1945. In this chapter he has described the Chain-of- Command between the
Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia and the combined Chiefs-of-
Staff( Washington).

21. The system of Supreme Allied Command was established in various

theaters of war, such as Europe, Middle East and the Mediterranean.

22. Chapter- 10. In this chapter the author has narrated Intelligence
and Security. Intelligence had still another aspect which was peculiar to the
operations in Burma and that was the need for inter service co-ordinations on
intelligence matters. The various problems which confronted the intelligence
staff and the way they were handled in practice during the campaign can be
studied as follows:
 a. Intelligence Organization.
b. Employment of Sources and Agencies.
c. Enemy Appreciation.

23. Conclusion. The war in Burma is a complete picture of Burma

Campaign. The author has discussed all the chapters chronologically very
clearly and in a very informative way. In the first chapter author has explained
strategic concept and chronologically has discussed the major administrative
problems, operations in all the fronts in details, significance of air power,
problems of command and control and finally intelligence and security. This
book is helpful for all military leader to study as military history subject.

24. Comments.
a. The Author could have given more numbers of maps of each front with
respect of neighboring countries for better understanding.
b. The author has incorporated the major administrative problems in the
second chapter just immediately after explaining the strategic concept. But it
would be better if the administrative problems were discussed at the later
chapters, because initially the readers remain more interested to know about
the operation itself.
c. The author could orient the readers with Burma in relation to India more
closely that would be more effective.
d. At the end of each operation the author could write reasons of victory
and defeat for both Allied and Japanese forces.
e. The author could include tactical lessons learnt and the principles of war
followed in each battle or chapter. This would more informative.

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Burma
 1. What is the book's main argument?
2. Who seems to be the intended audience for the book?
3. How is the book structured?
4. Does the structure of the book (its various parts and chapters) reinforce its larger argument? How?
5. What kinds of sources, or examples, does the book offer in support of its argument, and which are most
(and least) effective? Why?
6. Does the book engage other writers' works on the same subject and, even if not, how would you position
the book in relation to other texts you are aware of on the same subject (texts you have read for class, for
example)?
7. Does the author seem biased or prejudiced in any way and, if so, is that prejudice or bias the product of the
author's own background, as far as you can tell?
8. How persuasive is the book (if certain aspects are more persuasive than others, explain why)

A SAMPLE BOOK REVIEW

Let us assume that the text assigned for your book review is Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten
Holocaust of World War II (New York: BasicBooks, 1997). This best-selling work of narrative history describes in
graphic detail the imperial Japanese army's 1937 attack and occupation of the Chinese city of Nanking, which,
Chang claims (in accordance with most Western historians) resulted in a six-week massacre of the civilian
population marked by widespread rape, pillage, murder, and other atrocities. This event is often referred to as "the
Rape of Nanking." On this text, see also historiographic essays and evaluating contradictory data and claims.
Below, we briefly respond to each of the bulleted questions above:

1. The book's main argument is threefold:

a. most determinedly, that the Rape of Nanking, disputed by some Japanese
historians, did occur;
b. that the Japanese government, post-war Japanese historiography and, therefore, the
Japanese population as a whole, have failed to fully acknowledge and apologize for the
massacre, and indeed deny it;
c. and, 3.) that what Chang refers to as the Japanese "cover up," the effort "to erase the entire
massacre from public consciousness, thereby depriving its victims of their proper place in
history" is an example of revisionist history equal to Holocaust-denial (14).

While her hoped-for objective, in this context, is that the book "will stir the conscience of Japan to accept
responsibility for this incident," the larger argument is that history, including horrific history, needs to be told
truthfully in order for us to learn from the past (16).

2. The book's intended audience is a non-academic American readership, generally uninitiated into the events
described. The book can fairly be called a work of popular narrative history directed at a mass audience.
3. The book is divided into three parts, each subdivided into several chapters.

o Part I briefly sets the scene by historicizing the Japanese codes of warfare and honor, then describes
in detail the campaign waged by the Japanese and their many atrocities against the civilian
population of Nanking in 1937. Many of these graphic descriptions are corroborated by eye witness
accounts both Japanese and Chinese.
o Part II describes the ensuing Japanese occupation of the city. An important aspect of this section is
Chang's description of the lengths to which the Japanese government and military went to limit
media access to the city in order to prevent news of the massacre from spreading (she calls this
"Japanese damage control" [147]). This section ends with the liberation of the city and the Allied
war crimes tribunals, as a result of which seven high-ranking Japanese officers were condemned to
death by hanging, and executed.
o Part III describes the efforts of post-war Japan, led by its politicians and historians, to cover up the
events at Nanking, efforts Chang strongly condemns. She concludes with the observation that
although, at the time of the massacre, it was "front-page news across the world, ... yet most of the
world stood by and did nothing while an entire city was butchered." She likens this to "the more
recent response to the atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda: while thousands have died
almost unbelievably cruel deaths, the entire world has watched CNN and wrung its hands" (221).
2. Chang chooses her three-part structure in order to communicate the diversity of voices that need to be heard in
order to fully comprehend the events in Nanking: the victims', the perpetrators', and the historians'. That
history has largely failed at its task to tell the full story is integral to her argument. Thus she likens her three-
part structure to that of the Japanese film Rashomon, in which different witnesses of a rape recount its story,
each from their own perspective (including the victim's, the rapist's, and that of an eyewitness). The accounts,
of course, vary considerably: "It is for the reader to pull all the recollections together, to credit or discredit
parts or all of each account, and through this process to create out of subjective and often self-serving
perceptions a more objective picture of what might have occurred. This [film] should be included in the
curriculum of any course treating criminal justice. Its point goes to the heart of history" (14).
3. The book cites eye witness accounts on all sides, including Western eye witnesses: much mileage is generated
by the memoirs of American missionaries who were on the scene at the time of the massacre. The book also
provides a map of the city, marking specific locations of individual massacres, and twenty-four pages of
photographs. Without a doubt, the graphic verbal accounts of those who witnessed the event are most
effective: they are searing and hard to forget. Some of the photographs, too, are extremely graphic (they
include multiple images of nude victims of rape, beheadings, corpses and the desecration of corpses, and
severed heads); while these are very effective primary sources, their veracity has been retroactively
challenged, which diminishes their effectiveness (see Historiography and Evaluating Contradictory Data
and Claims). The map, which appears prior to any of the main text, is ineffective: it shows no scale, does not
identify Nanking's location within the larger landmass of China for the intended uninitiated readership, nor the
troop movements of the Japanese army as they entered the city or the remnants of the Chinese army as they
 fled. These are events the book describes, but which find no visual correlation on the map itself. The sites of
specific massacres visually identified on the map are simply marked "X" (there are approximately forty-five)
but are not identified by name, and can therefore not be linked to specific events described in the later text.
4. On the issue of other, related works on this subject, please follow the link to Historiographic Essays.
Generally, there was no large body of literature on the Rape of Nanking prior to the publication of Chang's
book, although the book itself has spawned a large number of responses, many of them in general agreement
with Chang, some critical (these, mainly generated by Japanese scholars), and a few that denounce her book as
an outright fabrication. Again, follow the link to historiographic essays and contradictory data and
claims on this. Chang does not provide a bibliography. Part of her argument, of course (in 1997, the year of
her book's publication) is that the Rape of Nanking had been a generally-forgotten event prior to her own
efforts.
5. Chang does seem prejudiced against the Japanese version of the event (again, this is integral to her argument
and she openly reveals the animus she feels towards Japanese historians from the start; given the nature of her
project, it would seem difficult for her not to feel these sentiments). Her personal background as the
grandchild of former residents of Nanking (her grandparents escaped just weeks before the massacres began)
undoubtedly contributes towards her perspective. Here, again, she makes no effort to conceal her position.
Indeed, the manner in which she personalizes her account in her introduction is an important and effective
"hook" that draws the reader in: "I first learned of the Rape of Nanking when I was a little girl. ... Their voices
quivering with outrage, my parents characterized the Great Nanking Massacre, or Nanjing Datusha, as the
single most diabolical incident committed by the Japanese. ... Throughout my childhood Nanjing
Datusha remained buried in the back of my mind as a metaphor for unspeakable evil" (7, 8).
6. Overall, the book is effective, in part because of its sensational and unfathomably horrific subject matter. A
strange moment of cognitive dissonance is created, however, by the fact that, as cited above, Chang claims
that the massacres occurred before the eyes of the world (the event, she states in her conclusion, was "front-
page news across the world ... splashed prominently across the pages of newspapers like the New York Times"
[221]), yet she cites only very few of these news articles to back up her claim. (In fact, she cites the same one
multiple times: "Japanese Atrocities Marked Fall of Nanking After Chinese Command Fled," The New York
Times, December 22, 1937, p. 38 - hardly "front-page news"). Nevertheless, the book is memorable and
powerful, and as evidenced by its bestselling status, succeeded in its day in bringing to the world a story
previously largely unknown, denied, or ignored. As such, it stands as a success, although the controversy it
generated upon publication has slightly diminished its overall legacy (see Historiographic
Essays and Evaluating Contradictory Data and Claims).

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