“That night was the most horrible that any member of the Motor Launch crews ever experienced.” – Bruce Stanley Wright
Ramree island was in control of the Japanese army in 1945. They had captured the island as part of the Japanese invasion of Burma (now Myanmar) the same year. It is 80km long and 32km wide, it’s mostly flat and perfect for airfields. The British wanted it and General William Slim set up a plan to take it by force on the 14th of January 1945. The British wanted the island to create landing spots for their planes in order to supply their military bases nearby. However, the Japanese knew the strategic importance of the island and did not relinquish rights to it easily. The British army landed on its shores on the morning of January 14th, the battle lasted until 22 February 1945, in the Second World War as part of the offensive on the Southern Front in the Burma campaign and was conducted by the XV Indian Corps.
The British effort in Burma was a masterstroke for Gen. William Slim. Attacking Burma’s Japanese garrison of 100,000 men with just 21,000 of his own, he used superior logistics and mobility to reduce the Japanese to pockets of resistance. These pockets became undersupplied and because of this the Japanese soldiers were starved. Concentrated forces were attacked and the British stayed on the offensive. His plan required the ability to reinforce and supply pockets of his own men via the air, even when they might be surrounded. Ramree Island’s port, airfield, and proximity to the mainland would give his air forces range over nearly the entire country, including Mandalay, the central plains and the capital of Yangon. The fighting on both sides of the campaign was brutal. The British and Indian forces matched the Japanese brutality in conquering the country.
Japanese forces took no prisoners and those that were wounded were killed by their comrades in line with the bushido code. Bushido translates as ‘way of the warrior’ and it was an ancient system followed in Japan by Samurais. This became the code that soldiers followed in war. Bushido was an integral part of Japan’s plan to gain victory over the West, it taught Japanese soldiers to maintain their honour and to give their lives for the Emperor and nation during World War II. Surrender was not an option under the Bushido code and was seen as cowardice. The principles of bushido emphasized honour, courage, skill in the martial arts, and loyalty to a warrior's master (daimyo) above all else. It is somewhat similar to the ideas of chivalry that knights followed in feudal Europe. The ideal samurai warrior was supposed to be immune from the fear of death. Only the fear of dishonour and loyalty to his daimyo motivated the true samurai. If a samurai felt that he had lost his honour (or was about to lose it) according to the rules of bushido, he could regain his standing by committing a rather painful form of ritual suicide, called "seppuku." This made the Japanese soldiers incredibly difficult to beat.
On Ramree Island, the British were able to fight the Japanese into another pocket, a pocket that looked as if it might collapse at any moment. The two sides were stuck in a standoff until the British Royal Marines along with the 36th Indian Infantry Brigade outflanked a Japanese position. The manoeuvre split the enemy group in two and isolated about 1,000 Japanese soldiers. The British then sent word that the smaller, isolated Japanese group should surrender.
The unit was trapped and had no way to reach the safety of the larger battalion. But rather than accept surrender, the Japanese chose to make an eight-mile journey through a mangrove swamp. In the dark, with no boats and through waist-deep water and mud, the Japanese garrison attempted its escape. The deep mud and tangles of mangrove roots kept the force moving at a snail’s pace. On top of that, they had to deal with scorpions, clouds of mosquitoes, and the most important factor they hadn’t considered: saltwater crocodiles. Saltwater crocodiles can grow to 8 metres long and weigh as much as 1,000kg. The crocodiles in this particular swamp had been starved for vast periods of time dur to the war as the noise meant no animals came close to their watering holes to drink. The Japanese soldiers would have known there were crocodiles present but made the decision to attempt to cross the swamp instead of surrendering, falling in line with their Bushido code.
Saltwater crocodiles are the largest reptiles on earth, have the strongest biteforce of any animal alive and are indiscriminate in what they will attack and eat. British troops followed the Japanese column in motor launches and in the night, they could hear the crocodile massacre that unfolded.
Bruce Stanley Wright a Royal Canadian Lieutenant Commander credited with inventing the idea of "frogmen units," SCUBA-diving soldiers who could spy on the enemy from the water was at Ramree for the invasion of the island and he wrote in his book "Wildlife Sketches: Near and Far" the following paragraph:
“The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn, the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left... Of about one thousand Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about twenty were found alive.” The story of the Ramree Island massacre was incorporated into the Guinness Book of World Records as the worst animal attack ever recorded. It was corroborated by Lieutenant-General Jack Jacob in his memoir, ‘An Odyssey in War and Peace’ when he recounted his experiences during the battle:
“Over a 1,000 soldiers of the Japanese garrison retreated into the crocodile-infested mangrove swamps. We went in with boats and interpreters using loudhailers asking them to come out. Not a single one did. Salt-water crocodiles, some of them well over 6m long frequented these waters. It is not difficult to imagine what happened to the Japanese who took refuge in the mangroves!”
However, it is important to note that the assertion that 1,000 men were killed by crocodiles has also been disputed. In 1974, a journalist, George Frazier, reported having asked the Japanese War Office about the crocodile attack and being told that they could not confirm that it had happened. Sam Willis, a historian, reported that he had found documents indicating that the Japanese soldiers mostly drowned and/or were shot and that crocodiles scavenged on their corpses afterwards. The exact amount of Japanese soldiers killed by crocodiles is still slightly ambiguous and is up for debate. However, that night that the Japanese retreated into the mangrove swamps and the resulting casualties signalled the end of the invasion. The British army encountering no more resistance were able to take control of Ramree Island.