On December 21, 1941, a Japanese radio announcement “promised” to shower Rangoon (Yangon) with “Christmas gifts”. Though the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour had taken place just a fortnight ago, few people in Burma took it seriously. The Japanese kept their word and aerial bombing started two days later, on December 23. The air raids killed 2,500 people and wounded another 2,500.

The British rulers were totally unprepared for the swift and well-planned attack. Rangoon fell on March 8, 1942. There was utter chaos in the city. The invaders forced leprosy patients and inmates of mental asylums out onto the streets. Prisons were emptied of criminals, who went on a looting spree and added to the prevailing confusion.

There were four-lakh foreigners in Burma at that time, most of them Indians. Before Rangoon fell, about 70,000 were lucky to leave the country by air and by sea. As the exit routes were sealed the option left for the rest was to set out on foot, through the jungles, hundreds of miles to the Indo-Burma borders with the Japanese on their heels.

The trek was slow and painful, made worse by the lashing monsoon rains. Not only was the terrain inadequately mapped, but the jungle was also malarial and full of leeches, snakes and wild animals. Fear, hunger and sickness stalked the trekkers and hundreds perished along the way. Their bodies were left lying beside the tracks, with no facilities for proper burial. Survivors had to trek through the stench of bloated, decaying bodies.

Most of the people who undertook the trek were Europeans, Anglo-Indians, Anglo-Burmese and Indian labourers; but this book is essentially about Goans. Goa was a neutral colony under Portuguese rule during the war. Most of the authors who contributed to the book were quite young at the time but starkly recall the ordeal they and their families went through.

Three of the chapters are about families that sat through the Japanese occupation and survived to tell their stories. Those who stayed back had equally horrifying tales to tell. During the three years of Japanese occupation, the people who previously lived comfortable lives were reduced to penury. The ruthlessness of the Japanese imperial forces is well-documented, but there were also some who learnt to live with their ways and came out unscathed.

The editor of the book Yvonne Vaz Ezdani was born in Burma a few years after the war. In the final chapter of the book, she recounts the life of a large Goan family living in independent Burma. Yvonne also offers an exhaustive and well-researched introduction, complete with maps and rare pictures of old Burma. The book is dedicated to ‘All those who did not survive the great Burma trek’.

Though the book is about Goans in wartime Burma, it’s of universal interest as inspiring tales of war and migration, courage and survival. On a personal note, as someone who escaped the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait via Amman, it was with a sense of déjÀ vu that I read these stories of pathos and fear, despair and hope.

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