Hemant Singh Katoch is an independent scholar and consultant based in New Delhi. His research has focused on the battles of Imphal and Kohima of 1944 and he has pioneered battlefield tours around them. He has also worked for several years for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Switzerland and Myanmar. He has had stints with the United Nations World Food Programme in Timor-Leste and with the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
<p>The clash between the British Fourteenth Army and the Japanese Fifteenth Army at Imphal in Manipur and at Kohima in the then-Naga Hills of Assam in 1944 was the turning point in the Burma Campaign of the Second World War. It was at these twin battles that the Japanese invasion of India was stopped, with the Allies subsequently driving them out of Burma in 1945. The Japanese lost some 30,000 men, with another 23,000 injured, in what is considered one of their greatest ever defeats on land.</p><p>In April 2013, Imphal-Kohima was named ‘Britain’s Greatest Battle’ by the UK’s National Army Museum. Indians fought on both sides–as part of the British Army and alongside the Japanese as soldiers of the Indian National Army (INA). This book is the first battlefield guide for Imphal and Kohima and makes extensive use of maps and present-day photographs of the sites to tell the thrilling, tragic story of the historic battle of Imphal-Kohima, 1944.</p><div><br></div>
