A Hard Road to Buthidaung

Second Lieutenant Satoru Inazawa, 1st Company, 1st Battalion, 112 Infantry Regiment, 55 Division

We kept walking from 3 a.m. on 3 February 1944 and arrived at Point 1070 around noon on 6 February, where my platoon was ordered to block the Ngakyedauk Pass on its south together with a half platoon of Engineers.

Early in the morning of 7 February the Engineers blasted the road leading to Sinzweya and we dug foxholes on small hills, painstaking work as the earth was very hard. At 10 a.m. to my great surprise, five tanks came down from Point 935 towards us, followed by twenty foot soldiers. They stopped at the blast and the men looked down the blast hole. Lance Corporal Ohno sniped and killed one Indian and wounded one. They did not know from where they were shot. Tanks shelled here and there on the hill not knowing our position, and withdrew after firing all their shells. None of us was injured.

Our positions were shelled by tank guns every day for fourteen days until 20 February, a terrible experience. One man kept watch on the enemy and others hid low in their holes. We did not fire unless the enemy came over the blast hole.

On 18 February a bridge-laying tank came and laid a bridge over the blast hole. On 20 February about ten tanks came and shelled our position, heavily aided by machine guns. My hole was half blasted and my rucksack was blown to pieces. Shelling continued all day, so after dark I moved our positions 500 metres east on the road.

On 21 February tanks were still shelling our former positions. I thought it was lucky we had retreated a little. At 3 p.m. we could contact our company and were ordered to go to the south slope of Point 1033 where the major part of the 1st Company was in position. We were told that Division had ordered Sakurai Column to retreat on 26 February and hence we went down mountain tracks counter-attacking after British assaults. Before dawn on 1 March we crossed the Buthidaung-Maungdaw road undetected by the enemy, and arrived at the Japanese position 2 kilometres west of Buthidaung, where we felt relieved and talked out loud with friends. Until now we had only whispered, as we had to be very careful not to be detected by the enemy.