Operation Dracula - Evacuation of Rangoon

Evacuation of Rangoon

The principal Japanese headquarters in Burma, the Burma Area Army, under Lieutenant General Hyotaro Kimura, was situated in Rangoon. There were no Japanese fighting formations stationed in the city, but there were large numbers of line of communication troops and naval personnel. There was also a substantial contingent of the Indian National Army, a force composed mainly of former Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in Malaya, which sought to overthrow British rule in India. Although some units of the INA had fought tenaciously in the Japanese invasion of India and in central Burma, the morale of most of the INA was low by this point in the war. Many Indian soldiers had only joined the INA in the hope of deserting and rejoining the Allies, and others were convinced by early 1945 that Japanese defeat was inevitable.

Kimura had already decided not to defend Rangoon, but to evacuate the city and withdraw to Moulmein in southern Burma. Although he received orders from Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi, commander-in-chief of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group, to hold Rangoon to the death, he reasoned that this would involve the senseless destruction of his remaining forces. Kimura was opposed by his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Shinichi Tanaka, who had issued orders to fortify positions in Rangoon. Ba Maw, the Prime Minister of the nominally independent Burmese government, dissuaded the Japanese from turning the Shwedagon Pagoda into a gun emplacement.

However, Tanaka flew north with several senior staff officers on 19 April to review the situation around Toungoo. While he was absent, the remaining staff drew up orders for the evacuation, which Kimura signed unhesitatingly. When Tanaka returned on 23 April, he protested, to no avail. Because the Army HQ's radios had already been moved to Moulmein, the Army could no longer control the overall battle for Burma from Rangoon.

As the leading British and Indian troops approached Pegu, many of the Japanese rear-area troops in the Rangoon area and even some hastily mobilised Japanese civilians were formed into the Japanese 105th Independent Mixed Brigade under Major General Hideji Matsui, who had recently been appointed commander of the "Rangoon Defence Force". The units of this brigade (also called Kani Force) included anti-aircraft batteries, airfield construction battalions, naval Anchorage Units, the personnel of NCO schools and other odds and ends. They were dispatched north to defend Pegu, although they were delayed by lack of transport (which had been commandeered for Burma Area Army HQ and other units leaving Rangoon) and arrived only piecemeal.

Major General Matsui was also angered by the evacuation of Rangoon, as he had not been informed of it before finding that Kimura's headquarters had been hastily abandoned on 26 April. After making unsuccessful attempts to evacuate Allied prisoners of war unable to walk, and to demolish the port installations, Matsui then went north to conduct the defence of Pegu.

Many Japanese troops left Rangoon by sea, and nine out of eleven ships of a convoy carrying a thousand soldiers fell victim to British destroyers in the Gulf of Martaban on April 30. Kimura himself left by airplane. Most of Kimura's HQ and the establishments of Ba Maw and Subhash Chandra Bose (commander of the Indian National Army), left overland, covered by the action of Matsui's troops at Pegu, but were attacked several times by Allied aircraft. The Japanese failed to provide transport for Ba Maw's staff, most of whom had to walk to Moulmein. Ba Maw himself began his journey by car accompanied by his wife and pregnant daughter, who gave birth at Kyaikto, 16 miles (26 km) east of the Sittang. He feared that he would be assassinated if he went to Moulmein and instead fled to Tokyo. Bose regarded Ba Maw's flight as dishonourable, and marched on foot with his rearmost troops, having first arranged for lorries to evacuate a women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment.

The only personnel remaining in Rangoon were 5,000 troops of the Indian National Army under Major General A. D. Loganathan, left by Bose to protect the remaining Indian community against attacks by lawless Burmese. Loganathan had no intention of resisting Allied attacks, and intended to hand over his men and responsibility for the city to the British when they arrived.