The Imphal War Cemetery is located in Imphal, in a small locality of Deulahland 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away from the Imphal International Airport, in Manipur, in Northeast India. The cemetery has 1,600 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War and is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Manipur was the scene of the Second World War in the spring of 1944. After the defeat in Burma, the British army divisions had retreated to Imphal in India as it was the easiest route from Burma. For the Japanese army the control over Imphal, in the “bloody plains” was very expensive in terms of casualties as nearly 50,000 of their soldiers died here. This battle has been termed as the “Normandy of the east”. The battle ended on 22 June 1944. It is reported that during this War, the number of dead in the Kohima and Imphal sectors in India, put together, was 65,000 Japanese troops and 18,000 British and Indian soldiers. Earl Louis Mountbatten described the battle fought at Imphal and Kohima as “probably one of the greatest battles in history”.
Initially, the cemetery had 950 burials of war dead. Following the end of the Second World War, the burials in two other smaller cemeteries in Imphal and in other isolated locations were also shifted to this cemetery taking the total war burials at the cemetery to 1,600. The memorial has markers with brass plaques with the name of each of the fallen.
The war dead commemorated are from many commonwealth countries, such as 1300 from the United Kingdom, 10 from Canada, 5 from Australia, 220 from India, 40 from East Africa, 10 from West Africa and 10 from Burma.
