AP PHOTOS: Northeast India recalls 'Stalingrad of the East'

To Kuozeu Vizo, the landscape was as spellbinding as a rice field, golden and ripe for harvest, but it was her village burned black. “I still wonder how they even knew which land belonged to whom when they started rebuilding the village,” said Vizo, 98. She and fellow Naga people in northeastern India recalled the end of World War II ahead of the anniversary of Japan's surrender on Sept. 2. In April 1944, 15,000 men from the 31st Division of Japan’s Imperial Army commanded by Lt. Gen. Kotoku Sato arrived with the aim of taking over Kohima, a hill town that was also the British headquarters in the Naga Hills. The station, on the Indian border with Myanmar, was considered strategically important for Japanese advancement into British-held India. The face-off that ensued earned nicknames like the “Stalingrad of the East” — it was a decisive turn in the war — and “The Battle of the Tennis Court,” referring to the setting around which heavy fighting went on for days, at times...

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