JAPANESE VS. BRITISH

IT REMINDS ME OF MY YOUNGER DAYS.

As some one who is closely associated with Nagaland, It was of great impression for me to listen to the stories we hear from the Pubs, which is local and mostly run by women and we always find some elder man, who is willing to talk about the time of II world war, and while the Japanese ruled them for a while, before British with the help of several Nagas and the “UNKNOWN” soldiers, as was written on the War cemetery of KOHIMA the Capital of Nagaland, a unique and mostly beautiful place on earth. It was written by all those common soldiers, thousands who gave up life for the sake of capturing Nagaland and mainly the Burma Road [Highway], at Imphal to Kohima,which was in depleted state but still was in the hands of Japanese for months, but the only blood line to other Asian countries like Malaysia, COM podia, Korea, china, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Hongkong etc up to Japan. It was crucial that the British had to take over the road and a bloody war ensued with the result of thousands of youngsters, who were killed in their teens, the engraved words, other than that of the British, as their names are still written with DOB & DOD.,was as follows, and can be still witnessed if one goes to Kohima.”FOR YOUR TODAY WE GAVE OUR LIVES/YESTERDAYS. [Hope my memory does not fail me]

That apart, the villagers still remember vividly the time Japanese ruled as that of good times, as they were very liberal with their rations for the tribes, who too have looks as Mongolian features, perhaps making them more attractive as friends rather than foes.

The British on the other side was guilty of free supply of opium to those tribes and made generations of them dump as a side effect of the abuse of such drugs with free alcohol and suppressed those warriors who other wise, would be still a good fight with any one in the world, but seldom goes out as they may feel more safe in their place rather than other places in India, but we do come across the new generation who comes out and studies every where.

The comparison is meant to convey to the world that Japanese were not villainous or ruthless as it was made out to be after Pearl Harbor. Some lapses may have been there but not as sinister as the British those days were. They had to justify their atom bomb drop and lot of publicity and stunts preceded the Nagasaki and Hiroshima carnage for sure.

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