Publishing to coincide with VJ Day on 10th August 2020.
We are delighted to announce the publication of this new book - the UK edition of "Road to Kohima" by Charles Chasie and Harry Fecitt MBE, TD
ISBN 978-0-9552687-2-4
A unique collaboration between a senior Naga journalist and a British historian, looking at Naga involvement in the Battle of Kohima, which was instrumental in halting the Japanese invasion of India. The book illustrates the ordinary civilian experience, details military events in Kohima, and explains the Naga participation as soldiers. Through personal stories, the book tells how Naga lives were affected and how village life was pieced back together once the war moved on.
In April 1944, while the UK was getting ready to launch D-Day, 6,000 miles away, the Japanese invaded the jewel in the British crown – India. Approximately 15,000 Japanese soldiers travelled over the hills of Nagaland to be met by a small garrison of 1,500 British and Indian soldiers who held out for fifteen days, before the British 2nd Division arrived to help push the Japanese into retreat. Over 3,000 soldiers died during the Battle of Kohima and no house was left standing when the armies left.
Now, for the first time, we can hear this story from the Naga perspective. The people whose home was Kohima, the capital of Nagaland. They acted as porters, stretcher bearers and combatants, and many British said afterwards that they owed their victory to the Nagas.
This edition has a foreword by our trustee, historian & author Dr Robert Lyman, who talks about the book in the below video, and an introduction by award-winning Naga novelist Easterine Kire.
CHARLES CHASIE is a Kohima-based author and independent researcher. A former editor and journalist in Nagaland, he is a past winner of the prestigious Assam Media Trust award. He has contributed to various journals and publications, both in India and overseas, for over three decades. Charles is the Honorary President of the Kohima Educational Society based in Kohima. He is also the author or co-author of books on media and the Naga situation, including The Naga Imbroglio: A personal perspective and The State Strikes Back: India and the Naga insurgency.
HARRY FECITT MBE, TD is a former British Army infantry officer who has also served in the armies of Zambia, the Sultanate of Oman and Dubai. In retirement he takes a keen interest in the less well-known incidents in British colonial military history, researching and writing for several military journals. His aim is to emphasise the forgotten contributions and sacrifices made by the soldiers of former British Imperial territories who volunteered to serve the British Crown. He has visited the Second World War battlefields of north-east India, where he and Charles met. Harry is the author of two books concerning the army of undivided India in both World Wars: Sideshows of the Indian Army in World War I and Distant Battlefields: The Indian Army in the Second World War.
It is the authors' wish that all royalties from the sale of this book go towards the work of the Kohima Educational Trust (KET)
ISBN 978-0-9552687-2-4
Price £12.99 (plus P&P £3.10)
Publication Date: 10th August 2020
It is available to order via our online shop.
Key Words is a multi-lingual glossary designed to help the tribes of Nagaland to communicate in each other’s languages in everyday life.
Researched and produced by both international and local linguistic experts:
● it features over 2,900 commonly used words and phrases
● their equivalents in the sixteen Nagaland Languages recognised by the Government of Nagaland: Angami, Ao, Chakhesang, Chang, Kachari, Khiamniungan, Konyak, Kuki, Lotha, Phom, Pochury, Rengma, Sangtam, Sema, Yimchunger, Zeliang
● and is compiled by reference to English headwords.
This pioneering glossary is designed to contribute to better communication among the Naga peoples. It features words and phrases used in everyday life, with their equivalents in the sixteen tribe languages recognised by the Government of Nagaland.
Researched and produced with the help of international and local linguistic experts, including those from the Departments of Information and Public Relations, and School Education, Government of Nagaland, this work has been many years in the making.
Dr Robert Lyman is a trustee of the Kohima Educational Trust. In 2024 Rob was awarded an MBE for his services to military history and charitable work in Nagaland, Northeast India. He is an author and military historian, publishing books in particular on the war in the Far East. The titles pictured below are all available on the KET website shop.
In this memoir, Gordon Graham takes the reader on a journey from a quiet, respectable boyhood and adolescence in Scotland to the sudden brutality of jungle warfare in Assam and Burma, and afterwards through the twilight of empire in India to his later life as an international publishing executive doing business with his former Japanese enemies.
Drawing not only on personal sources, but on his extensive reading and on official records including war diaries of his battalion, the author blends an objective account of great events with a soldier's spontaneous and candid reactions to them. Episodes of drama and intense emotion are punctuated by moments of both poignancy and humour, leavened by mature reflection on the meaning and meaninglessness of war.
The narrative is accompanied by excerpts from the diary of the author's daughter, Sylvia, who in 2002 embarked with her husband Rob on a pilgrimage to retrace the steps of her father and the Cameron Highlanders from Kohima in Nagaland to Mount Popa in central Burma.
First edition copies in good used condition are available on our website shop
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