India was an intriguing problem for Japan on the verge of war in Southeast Asia. The tentacles of the British empire were athwart most of the sea routes in Southeast Asia, and the British-Dutch- American military and economic agreements in the Indies had created a blockade which Japan had to break through to reach vital sources of oil, tin, and rubber. India was, in addition, the stronghold of Britain's power in Southeast Asia. Geography dictated confrontation.

India lay west of the expanding periphery of Japan's wartime Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. But nowhere in the most extreme versions of the Co-Prosperity Sphere was there any notion of incorporating hundreds of millions of Indians into the Japanese empire. It would not have been militarily feasible or economically advantageous for Japan to have envisioned a Japanese regime in India. Nevertheless, some Indians in the independence movement feared the Japanese were planning the conquest of India, using the INA to soften the blow to Indian opinion.

Instead, the nationalist aspirations of the Indian independence movement became a natural target for a Japanese propaganda offensive, a logical counter against Britain. Anti-British sentiment in India could be converted into a political and hence military asset for Japan. There was no need for Japan to create an Indian independence movement; she could co-operate with and foster the movement which had existed for nearly a century. This co-operation fitted also into Japan's pattern of a drive against Western imperialism in Southeast Asia.

This possibility occurred to some highly placed Japanese by early 1941 when the portents of war in the Pacific were unmistakable. Diplomatic communiques from Calcutta to Foreign Minister Matsuoka described the Indian independence movement, particularly in Bengal. The attention of the Gaimushō was drawn to Subhas Chandra Bose, Indian revolutionary exile in Berlin, by both Calcutta and the Japanese Embassy in Berlin.

Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo also took some notice of the independence movement in 1941. The Japanese military attaché in Berlin was instructed to contact Bose and submit a report on him. At nearly the same time, a young major was sent to Bangkok by the Intelligence Bureau of Headquarters on a three-pronged intelligence mission. He would contact and co-operate with Malay groups, overseas Chinese organizations, and Indians organized for the independence struggle. Beyond this IGHQ took no action and made no concrete plans for India.

FLIGHT TO TOKYO

On 10 March 1942 two planes left the Bangkok airport for Tokyo. Aboard one were Fujiwara, Colonel Iwakuro, Mohan Singh, Lieutenant- Colonel Gill, N. Raghavan, S.C. Goho, and K.P.K. Menon. Fujiwara felt Headquarters had singled out Colonel Iwakuro to succeed him in the expanded and reorganized Kikan. Iwakuro had taken part in the Washington peace talks between Hull and Nomura just prior to Pearl Harbour and was renowned in army circles for his political acumen. He was a powerful figure in the Army High Command, so powerful that some officers believed Töjö had sent him to Malaya in command of an infantry regiment of the Konoe Imperial Guards Division to remove him from the scene in Tokyo. En route to Tokyo Fujiwara told Iwakuro of his hopes and plans for Japan's India policy and for co-operation with the Indian independence movement. Fujiwara was encouraged at the prospect of Iwakuro bringing his influence to bear on the military, the Government, and the Diet to impress on them the importance of India.

Fujiwara's plane left Saigon on 11 March, was delayed two days on Hainan Island, and stopped in Shanghai en route to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Headquarters had arranged for the delegates to be taken to the Sanno Hotel, where the meetings were to be held. Some Indian delegates had already arrived from Shanghai and Hong Kong.

It had been arranged that the second plane carrying the party of Pritam Singh, the Swami, Captain Akram and F Kikan member Otaguro would arrive in Tokyo on the evening of 19 March.

On the morning of 19 March a violent wind swept over Honshu and became increasingly fierce as the afternoon wore on. The sky over Tokyo grew black and toward evening a torrential rain began to fall. Fujiwara assumed the flight from Shanghai would have been cancelled because of the weather, but in the afternoon he received a report that the flight had left Shanghai for Tokyo. The logical course would be then to land in north Kyushu or Osaka and lay over until the weather cleared. Fujiwara had a call from Haneda Airport with word that the plane had reported over Ise Bay headed east. This was the last communication from the plane.

BIRTH OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF AZAD HIND (FIPG)

The next step for Bose in Southeast Asia was the creation of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind. The Japanese had been reluctant to recognize the INA as an allied army, since it represented not a government but an organization, the IIL. The remedy, then, was to establish a government which could deal diplomatically on an equal basis with the Axis powers. The government would, Bose hoped, ultimately replace the British-controlled government in India when India became independent. This new government would gain prestige and status in international law for the independence movement.

The Provisional Government of Free India came into being at an inaugural meeting on 21 October 1943 in the Cathay cinema building, where the IIL had welcomed Bose to Singapore. Again Indians from all parts of Southeast Asia assembled. There was a capacity audience. Chatterji as general-secretary for the IIL read a brief history of the League.

Netaji next rose to speak. He announced the formation of the government and the composition of its first cabinet. “It will be the task of the Provisional Government of Azad Hind to launch and conduct the struggle that will bring about the expulsion of the British and of their allies from the soil of India. It will then be the task of the Provisional Government to bring about the establishment of the Permanent National Government of Azad Hind constituted in accordance with the will of the Indian people and enjoying their confidence,”

he proclaimed.

Bose read a Proclamation of Independence on behalf of the cabinet of the new government. He praised the heroes of the independence movement, tracing their deeds back to 1757 when they first fought British power in Bengal. “British rule in India has forfeited the good will of the Indian people altogether and is now living a precarious existence. It needs but a flame to destroy the last vestige of that unhappy rule. To light that flame is the task of India's Army of Liberation,” Bose exhorted his audience. “The Provisional Government is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Indian. It guarantees religious liberty as well as equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens.”

DEPARTURE FROM BURMA AND THAILAND

Bose and his INA party arrived at Moulmein by car on 1 May. Bose's plan was to move the FIPG and INA headquarters to Bangkok. He wanted to see General Kimura of the BAA, whose headquarters was temporarily at Moulmein, but was refused on grounds of security precautions. Bose then endeavoured through Isoda to arrange rail and steamship transport for everyone to Bangkok. When arrangements were completed Bose went on by car, arriving in Bangkok on 12 May.

Bose had in the back of his mind the old plan to contact the Soviet Ambassador and arrange for transportation to the Soviet Union to get help for the liberation of India from the north. Field-Marshal Terauchi, who was also in Bangkok, hoped Bose would consent to follow headquarters of the Southern Army to Saigon. But Bose was hoping to move headquarters north to China with INA units, and ultimately to the Soviet Union. At length Bose agreed to go with the Japanese Army, meanwhile ordering the strengthening of the INAIIL in Shanghai preparatory to going to Soviet Russia.

But first Bose wanted to go to Singapore, last headquarters of the FIPG and INA. In Singapore Bose got news of the offer of the British Government through Lord Wavell to reorganize his Viceroy's Executive Council, adding Indians to it. Bose broadcast his opposition to the offer from Singapore on 18 June, saying, “It is crystal clear that any acceptance of Wavell's offer will be tantamount to a voluntary shedding of precious Indian blood and draining our resources in fighting Britain's imperialistic war. But what would India gain in return? Nothing, except a few jobs on the Viceroy's Executive Council.” He appealed to Indians inside and outside India not to give up the struggle, never to compromise.

By this time it was early August. Isoda cabled Bose urging him to hurry to Saigon. Chief of Staff Bhonsle also advised Bose of the urgency of completing preparations to move to Saigon. After Bose received a final telegram on 16 August with news of Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation, he returned to Saigon.

Not to be distracted from his single-minded purpose, Bose immediately visited Field-Marshal Terauchi and requested transport to Soviet Russia. Terauchi cabled IGHQ for instructions. The reply came back—negative.

THE ASSIGNMENT

1 October 1941 was a hot, muggy day in Thailand. A young Japanese major stepped from a Douglas Dakota and was momentarily blinded by the rays of the Bangkok sun. He was tense and, in his nervousness, felt certain the eyes of the airport employees were fixed on him—curious about the nature of his mission. His shirt had wilted in the humidity, and he thought briefly of the autumn air of Tokyo. As he sank into the back seat of the Embassy car which drove him to the Thailand Hotel he worried about his lack of experience in international intelligence. Although the hotel was Japanese managed, the major, travelling under the civilian alias Yamashita Hiro-kazu, was unable to relax—it would be better, he thought, to avoid questions from inquisitive Japanese. At the same time he was lonely and thought of the lieutenant assigned to him who was forced to remain in Taiwan with an attack of acute appendicitis.

In the solitude of his room Yamashita—in reality Major Fujiwara Iwaichi—was awed by the importance of his mission and his own lack of experience for it. Of course, a young major in the 8th Section, Second Bureau, Imperial General Headquarters had no choice. This was his duty and he would do his best. The Imperial Japanese Army assigned important missions to middle-ranking officers and gave them plenty of leeway to use their own initiative in executing their tasks. In this respect the Japanese Army differed from the British or American armies and the army of the Third Reich. And because of this difference Fujiwara was now involved in ideological warfare in Bangkok, unable to speak any Malay or Hindi and with only a smattering of English remembered from high school.

Fujiwara was not a complete stranger to Bangkok. He had been sent down on a brief secret mission about eight months ago in late March. He was, after all, in propaganda broadcasting affairs in the 8th Section at Headquarters. Even earlier, in December 1940, Fujiwara had been responsible for three Indian escapees from a British prison in Hong Kong who were given safe passage on a Japanese ship bound for Bangkok. Once there, the exiles contacted leaders of the Indian independence movement in Southeast Asia and the Japanese military attaché.

POLICY-MAKERS IN TOKYO

Japan's wartime aims in India were never as clearly defined as her aims in Southeast Asia. India was not embraced in the grand design for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere first conceived in 1940. Greater East Asia would sweep through Southeast Asia westward to the Indo- Burmese border. Everywhere in Asia Western colonial rule would be driven out and independence movements encouraged. Asia for Asians became the goal and shibboleth. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would constitute an economically self-sufficient entity under Japanese tutelage. Both diplomatic and military means would be employed to realize the blueprint. But Japanese military administration would respect existing local organizations and customs. By late 1941 control of resources necessary for the war effort became a focal point of the plan.

Still, India bordered the western perimeter of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. And Japan was at war with the colonial power occupying India; Britain must be expelled from India. As Japan wished to see Britain purged from Asia so also Indian nationalists aspired to free India. Japan had to reckon with India for the mutual advantage of both Japan and India.

What agencies or individuals in Tokyo would do the reckoning? The Foreign Ministry was one obvious possibility. Japan had no ambassador in India under Britain, but there were consuls in the major Indian cities. In April 1941, Consul-General Okazaki in Calcutta, in a secret communiqué to Foreign Minister Matsuoka, described the independence movement of the Forward Bloc, a radical party in Bengal. Okazaki suggested establishing contact with this leftwing party in India and also with its leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, then in exile in Berlin. Going even further, he suggested, “We should secretly transport large quantities of weapons and substantially increase the actual strength of the Forward Bloc.” While Okazaki felt the movement would burgeon into a genuinely popular revolt, he felt Japan should do her part by establishing contact with Bose and aiding his party. This early Japanese notice of Bose preceded by several months Major Fujiwara's remarks about Bose to the 8th Section, Second Bureau, IGHQ.

CAPTAIN MOHAN SINGH

In 1941 Mohan Singh was a captain, aged thirty-three, second in command of a battalion of the 15th Brigade, 1/14 Punjab Regiment of the British-Indian Army. Like many Indian officers, Mohan Singh felt a mixture of pride at being a viceroy commissioned officer and annoyance at British discrimination against Indian officers. In March the brigade landed at Penang Island and from there pushed inland to Ipoh in Perak state, Malaya. After two months the brigade moved to Sungei Patani, seventy miles south of the Malayan-Thai border. Then in September the brigade advanced to Jitra, north of the Alor Star defences and just sixteen miles south of the Malayan-Thai border. It was marshy jungle country and the going was painfully slow. The British strategy was defensive; there was little eagerness to fight the Japanese in Malaya.

Captain Mohan Singh got three weeks’ leave in late November, but the situation became tense and he was recalled to his battalion in early December. He celebrated the last night of his leave at a party where libations flowed. Before the party broke up Mohan Singh surprised his friends and himself when, with Punjabi ebullience, he cried, “I don't know what will happen, but one thing is certain: I'm not going to die, and mind you, don't be surprised if you see me as your liberator coming down fighting the very British whom I'm going now to defend.” Everyone was surprised because Mohan Singh was actually a rather apolitical young man; later he could not explain to his friends what had prompted these words.

On 4 December Mohan Singh rejoined his battalion near Alor Star. They were digging in for a Japanese landing at Singora. The 15th Brigade was to spearhead the British advance into Thailand from Malaya. On the night of 7 December orders came for the brigade to occupy Singora; but, according to intelligence reports, the Japanese already had Singora. On 8 December twenty-seven Japanese bombers bombed the Alor Star airport and rail lines to Thailand. This became a pattern of Japanese attack: bomb the rail lines, then take the airport. The British defences became confused. The 15th Brigade was ordered to dash from Jitra to the Thai border. They reached the border just before Japanese troops rushed in from the opposite direction across Thailand.

THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTIONARY

On 23 January 1897 at Cuttack, Orissa, was born Subhas Chandra Bose, ninth child of Janakinath and Prabhavati Bose. Janakinath was a lawyer of a Kayastha family, and was wealthy enough to educate all his children well. By Indian standards this family of Bengali origin was well-to-do. Janakinath was raised in the atmosphere of the nineteenth century reform movements of Bengal through which English social reformist thought filtered into India. He had resigned posts within the bureaucracy of the British Raj in protest against its repressive policies. Bengal was at the same time the funnel for new ideas from the West and the province which felt most keenly the oppressive hand of the British. It was natural that Bengal nurtured leaders of the stature of Rammohan Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen, Rabindranath and Debendranath Tagore, and Bankim Chandra Chatterji.

At the age of five Subhas was enrolled in a school for European and Anglo-Indian boys run by the Baptist Mission. Subhas and his brothers and sisters were all admitted as part of a small quota for Indians. For a Bengali child of the late nineteenth century learning English was one of the first requisites of life. The curriculum also included Latin and the Bible. The school might almost have been in London rather than Cuttack, for the teachers were also British. Sanskrit, India's classical language, and Bengali, the language of Bose's family, were neglected. Subhas spent seven years of his life in this English public school.

In 1909 Subhas entered a public school in Cuttack, Ravenshaw Collegiate School. Here he recalls being laughed at by his fellow students because he knew so little Bengali. At the age of fifteen Subhas first read the works of Vivekananda and found a goal for his life —spiritual salvation for oneself and service to humanity. Subhas began to practise yoga. From Vivekananda Subhas's quest took him to Ramakrishna and the ideal of renunciation. He continued his meditations. Subhas felt his religious life was more important than his studies.

At the age of sixteen Subhas was sent off to the Presidency College in Calcutta and began to make decisions apart from his family. He joined a group of students who wanted to bring about a fusion between religion and nationalism.

OPERATION U IS LAUNCHED

On 7 January 1944, IGHQ Army Directive no. 1776 was issued to the Southern Army “to capture strategic areas near Imphal and in north-eastern India, for the defence of Burma”. One of Mutaguchi's divisions, the 15th, was late in arriving, and the launching of the offensive was postponed until March. On 8 March all divisions were deployed according to plan. In mid-April the 31st Division occupied Kohima and the 33rd and 15th Divisions fell on the bottlenecks north and south of the Imphal basin respectively. Among the Japanese troops a mood of optimism prevailed.

THE INA IN ACTION AT LAST

On 24 January 1944, Colonel Katakura, staff officer of the Burma Area Army, met with Netaji to outline campaign strategy and the role of the INA in it. Colonel Shah Nawaz Khan was the third person at the secret meeting. When Katakura revealed the Japanese plan for a heavy bombardment of Calcutta simultaneous with the ground offensive, Netaji forcefully objected. Discussions finally yielded Bose's consent to the general plan, but not to the bombing. Bose gained his point that the INA fight in units of regimental size, not only in espionage and intelligence units attached to the Japanese Army.

Bose three days later called in Shah Nawaz and told him that as his guerrilla regiment, the Nehru Regiment, would be the first INA unit to see action, it would be closely watched. Shah Nawaz would have to be the model for the whole INA. Bose briefed Shah Nawaz on the deployment of battalions and told him detailed orders would come from 15th Army Headquarters at Maimyo. Japanese officers would be attached to each battalion for liaison and to arrange for supplies and transport. INA intelligence units of eight to ten men would also be attached to various Japanese forces for intelligence, propaganda and interrogation of POWs.

On 10 February Shah Nawaz met Mutaguchi at Maimyo for orders. Mutaguchi told Shah Nawaz his regiment was in charge of defence of the Haka-Falam sector in the Chin Hills against two British brigades (including Chins and Gurkhas) which might threaten Japanese supply lines. The object of the Shah Nawaz operation was to divert British attention from the main point of attack.

BRITISH BASTION

In 1824 Sir Stamford Raffles succeeded in effecting the transfer of the island of Singapore to the British East India Company. From that time on Singapore became the bastion of British domination of Asia. Fortification of the island had not been restricted by the Washington Naval Conference quotas of 1921-2, and Britain had subsequently spent many millions of pounds sterling making the defences “impregnable”. Since the outbreak of fighting in China in 1937 Britain had completed the naval port and further consolidated its strength with Australian and Indian soldiers. As an island, Singapore had natural defences as well. Britain boasted the fortress could never be captured by sea. There was, however, an Achilles heel noted by Japanese intelligence: the rear defences near Johore Bahru across the strait to the north. The British discounted the possibility of the Japanese Army reaching Singapore overland through the jungles of Thailand to approach from the rear. British military intelligence reports failed even to mention the lack of fortifications for the defence of Singapore to the rear until 19 January 1941. British strategy relied entirely on the defence of the sea-front, counting on Britain's traditional naval supremacy.

Prime Minister Churchill was dumbfounded to hear of the vulnerability of Singapore to the north. He telegraphed General Wavell, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific, on 20 January 1942, a month after the invasion of Malaya: “I want to make it absolutely clear that I expect every inch of ground to be defended, every scrap of material or defences to be blown to pieces to prevent capture by the enemy, and no question of surrender to be entertained until after protracted fighting among the ruins of Singapore City.” But for Churchill there was an even more critical objective than holding Singapore, as he indicated in a communiqué to General Ismay the same day: keeping open the Burma Road as the avenue to Chinese troops, who had been more effective than any others against the Japanese. Despite Churchill's belated concern, however, little was done to strengthen the defences of Singapore to the north between 20 January and the night of 7 February when the first Japanese landing barges wove their way through dense mangrove swamps across the Johore Strait.

The pivotal point of the defences was the narrow causeway connecting Singapore with Johore Bahru to the rear.

BANGKOK CONFERENCE

On 15 June 1942 over a hundred delegates of the Indian Independence League all over Asia assembled in Bangkok, as had been agreed at the Sanno Conference in Tokyo. Representatives of the two million Indians in East Asia came from Malaya, Burma, Thailand, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, Japan, Manchukuo, Nanking, Shanghai, Canton and Hong Kong. For nine days they discussed plans for organizing the independence movement on an Asia-wide scale and for co-operating with the Japanese. Thai Premier Marshal Phibun Songgram opened the conference with a welcome in which he referred to the close cultural ties which bound India and Thailand. He paid his respects especially to Swami Satyananda Puri, who had worked in Bangkok for closer cultural and spiritual relations between the two nations.

Rash Behari Bose from Tokyo was elected presiding chairman by the delegates. Despite the feelings of antipathy and mutual suspicion between Indians in Southeast Asia and those in Tokyo that had come to light during the Sanno Conference, Bose had after all instigated the Tokyo meeting. Mohan Singh, who proposed Bose's name as chairman, felt Bose would be most influential with the Japanese. Mohan Singh's judgement was shared by most Indian delegates. No other candidate for president of the League was proposed, since there was unanimous recognition of Bose's long record as a revolutionary and his working relationship with many Japanese leaders. Furthermore, he seemed lacking in personal ambition. From this point on, however, it seemed to some Bangkok Indians that the meeting was in the hands of a small group including Mohan Singh and N. Raghavan but headed by Bose. As one Bangkok businessman put it, “There were two groups, one pro-Japanese and the other not. We didn't participate, as we knew everything was being done as they wanted; we only attended.”

Bose in his presidential address portrayed Japan as liberator of all Asia from Western imperialism:

Overview

This is a reprint of Jungle Alliance: Japan and the Indian National Army, which was originally published in 1971 by Donald Moore for Asia/Pacific Press. It has long since been out of print and is unavailable. It covers the beginnings of the Indian National Army, as part of a Japanese military intelligence operation under Major Iwaichi Fujiwara, and moves forward to the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose and the enlarged INA and Free India Provisional Government under his direction from 1943 until the collapse of Japan and the INA in August 1945.

Specific Aspects

Chapters relating to the origins of the INA in the interaction between Fujiwara and a young Sikh Major, Mohan Singh, are covered here as critical to the birth of the INA. The book also deals with the earlier career of Subhas Chandra Bose, including his stay in Berlin and the Indian Legion there.

How This Book Differs From Others

This is still the only volume dealing with the interaction between the Japanese Army and the Indian National Army that also deals with Japanese sources. No other book in English has replaced this book, which is why a reprint edition is required at this time.

In the decades intervening between the publication of the first edition of this book in 1971 (Jungle Alliance: Japan and the Indian National Army, Singapore: Asia/Pacific Press) and this present edition, the outpouring of volumes on Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army has continued. None of these studies in English focuses on the relationship between the Imperial Japanese Army and the INA and also uses Japanese sources. For this reason this work is being reprinted.

With the exception of the book by Peter Fay (The Forgotten Army, 1993), most of these studies of the INA contain no more than a passing mention of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, if that. This women's regiment, part of the Indian National Army, was composed primarily of teenage girls from Malaya and Burma who had never seen India, yet were eager to volunteer in response to Bose's summons, to donate not only their jewellery but also their lives in the struggle to liberate India.

A companion volume to this new edition of the 1971 publication will therefore be published, Women Against the Raj: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment. It is designed to address the academic vacuum on the subject.