The Burma campaign was a series of battles fought in the British colony of Burma. It was part of the South-East Asian theatre of World War II and primarily involved forces of the Allies against the invading forces of the Empire of Japan. Imperial Japan was supported by the Thai Phayap Army, as well as two collaborationist independence movements and armies. Nominally independent puppet states were established in the conquered areas and some territories were annexed by Thailand. In 1942 and 1943, the international Allied force in British India launched several failed offensives to retake lost territories. Fighting intensified in 1944, and British Empire forces peaked at around 1 million land and air forces. These forces were drawn primarily from British India, with British Army forces, 100,000 East and West African colonial troops, and smaller numbers of land and air forces from several other Dominions and Colonies. These additional forces allowed the Allied recapture of Burma in 1945.
Sikh soldiers of the 7th Indian Infantry Division at an observation post in the Ngakyedauk Pass, February 1944
Indian troops move ammunition in very muddy conditions whilst on the road to Tamu, 1943.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, seen during his tour of the Arakan Front in February 1944
Lieutenant General Kawabe, commander of the Japanese Burma Area Army
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during World War II (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers. Its principal members by the end of 1941 were the "Big Four" – United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China.
The Allied leaders of the European theatre (left to right): Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meeting at the Tehran Conference in 1943
The Allied leaders of the Asian and Pacific Theater: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill meeting at the Cairo Conference in 1943
French postcard illustrating the alliance between Poland, France and the United Kingdom (1939)
"Long live the victory of the Anglo-Soviet-American military alliance!" – USSR stamp of 1943, quoting Stalin