What did the Congress think of the threat of a Japanese attract on India in 1942
Answers
In December 1941, nearly a decade before the start of the Korean War, the Japanese invaded Burma with a well armed, well supplied, and well equipped contingent of 35,000 troops backed up by basically unfettered air support. They advanced northward into the interior almost unimpeded, with the capitol, Rangoon, falling March 6-7, 1942. They were also successful in shutting down the Allies' life-line into China, the Burma Road. During that period, on December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor opening the door for the U.S. entry into World War II. Two days later, December 9, 1941, China declared war on Japan.
China, had however, been in a full-scale war with Japan since at least July 1937 when the Japanese claimed they were fired upon by Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing. From that the Japanese retaliated by launching an invasion from Manchuria. By November 1937 Shanghai, China's most important sea port fell followed by Nanking, Chiang Kai-shek’s capital, in December 1937.
On February 4, 1942, close on the heels of the Japanese invasion of Burma and just before the fall of Rangoon, Chiang Kai-shek, the fully recognized military and political leader for the Chinese Nationalist Party (known as the Kuomintang, or KMT), flew over the Hump on a secret mission into India in an effort to convince British and Indian leaders, military and otherwise, that as soon as Japan solidified their positions in Burma they would be setting their sights on India and anything that could be done in the meantime to impact that solidification adversely would impede or possibly stop any of their designs on India.
True to Chiang's words, soon as 1944 rolled around, with Burma mostly under control, the Japanese began formulating invasion plans which, even in those early stages, had been given a codename, Operation U Go. Part of the U Go plan included soldiers of the Indian National Army joining the Japanese and fighting along side Imperial Army troops as they entered India, with the idea being for Japan to be viewed by the Indian populace more as a liberation force rather than an invasion force. The Indian National Army, whose only reason for existence was to remove the yoke of their British overlords, had been convinced by Japan that by combining forces they could in fact overthrow British and European rule just as the Japanese had, up to that point, all over Asia.
On April 5. 1944, Japanese troops, under the command of Major-General Shigesaburo, with a low-profile assist by the Indian National Army, launched an attack into India against Kohima. However, although initially Japanese advances met a certain amount of success in the early stages, in the end it didn't work out so hot as the following quote will attest to:
"Fifteen hundred miles east across the sub-continent edging up along the Burmese border the Japanese launched a three division invasion into India. Quickly outstretching their supply lines and hoping to replenish their local needs by overtaking British, American and Indian garrisons, etc. while their lifelines caught up, didn't happen. For the most part, three months later, met by stronger than expected Allied response and caught in the monsoons, the Japanese were forced into retreat dying of malaria and starving to death --- in the end losing over 80,000 men."
The above quote as it is written was researched by me. Because of the strength and accuracy of the sources so used in the research, as cited elsewhere down the page, it carries within itself a sizable amount of both validity and integrity, quickly summing up the results of the Japanese efforts. Even so, in the process, I do not hold myself up as being the major historian of all things into the Japanese invasion of India. Actually, the reason behind any heightened interest is primarily personal, based on the fact that at the time of the invasion, as a very, very young boy, I was traveling in India, and if the fortunes of the Japanese had fallen right, within easy striking distance of their up to then nearly invincible war machine.(see)