Inspired by many families and friends of the Kohima Educational Trust who attended the annual service of remembrance in York in 2024, we have collected a number of your stories in order to create a more personal picture of the Burma Campaign from the people who were there.
It is perhaps not what you might expect from a Book of Remembrance, but we can promise you it is unique, containing over 70 personal stories, few of them published in the mainstream before.
We were bowled over by the response to our idea and are delighted to be able to make the stories available for all to read in this year (2025) of the 80th Anniversary of VJ Day.
We wanted to record the campaign from a more personal point of view and, thanks to the many families who have shared their stories, we have been able to create this unique record.
It is not exhaustive, but it contains many fascinating details. The stories come from all ranks and from many different viewpoints including several Naga veterans.
It has been an honour to work on such a project and we are enormously touched by all those who contributed their family histories.
So many of you have stories about your father’s, grandfather’s, great-grandfather’s or other family members’ experiences in the war. These were stories that they may have told you themselves, or you may have heard later from someone else, or you may have discovered after they died. I know there are one or two of you whose mothers or grandmothers were also involved.
We plan to publish an update to the book in early January 2026 and would welcome any new contributions by the end of December this year.
Whether your relative was a private or a general, in Kohima or Schwebo, Imphal or Mandalay, or even involved afterwards in Japan; and whether they were in the army, the RAF or the Navy, a doctor, a nurse or a padre, we would love to hear from you.
The Book of Remembrance is a digital one, located on the KET website here, designed so that we can add more stories as time passes and have them easily accessible by all who are interested to read them. We intend to keep it live into the future so that stories can be added regularly.
If you have photographs, please do send them as well. Ideally, we would like to receive a photograph(s) of the person involved and would be grateful to receive 500 words per article. This should all be sent via email, if at all possible. Due to space constraints, we do reserve the right to make editorial changes.
Please submit any material to us at:
remembrance@kohimaeducationaltrust.org
However, if hard copies are your only option, we would be happy to return material to you after we have taken copies.
