On the Front Line in Burma

Abstract

After the Japanese invasion of Burma, the British and Indian armies were forced to retreat to India, where they finally held their ground at Imphal and then began to turn the tables and force the Japanese armies to retreat. The long Burma Campaign which involved grueling jungle warfare required up-to-date intelligence and that depended upon linguists and codebreakers. The Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (India) sent out Mobile Sections following the troops: their job was to scour the battlefields for documents, diaries and battle orders, often found on corpses, translate them and convey the intelligence they contained as quickly as possible. Later in the war the South-East Asia Translation and Interrogation Center was formed under Admiral Mountbatten to bring together all the Japanese linguists and intelligence officers, including some who had been trained at the School of Japanese Instruction in Simla, which later moved to Karachi.