War in the Tenasserim

Download or read book War in the Tenasserim written by Alastair Shephard and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The entry of Japan into the Second World War with its attack on Pearl Harbour found the British defense of Burma very much unprepared. No invasion threat from the east had been envisaged. The British deemed the jungle and precipitous mountain ranges surrounding three sides of Burma to be impassable by any invader. At that time Britain was more concerned with the war against Hitler in Europe. The Japanese invaded southern Burma - "the Tenasserim" - in order to protect the flank of their invasion of Malaya. And they subsequently occupied the rest of the country because they viewed it as the western bastion of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", their name for their conquered territories... The book begins by tracing the initial Japanese thrust by two relatively small forces to tak the key airfields of southern Burma. The book then follows the advance of the main invasion force under Lt-General Shojiro Iida which crossed the border of Myawaddy. The arrival of the newly-formed 17th Indian Division under Major-General "Jackie" Smyth did little to arrest the momentum of the Japanese advance, culminating at the Sittang bridge. The author has recently visited many of the battle sites of southern Burma, places where numerous British, Indian, Burmese and Japanese soldiers lost their lives and which today sadly have been largely forgotten. His colour photographs along with rarely seen black and white images of wartime Burma - both British and Japanese - vividly augment the story of the first phase of the Burma Campaign."--Book cover.