A VETERAN'S RETURN TO RANGOON

Ken Joyce was bracing for a fight when his gunboat powered up the Yangon River on May 2, 1945.

The longest British campaign of World War II was drawing to a close. After years of retreat, General William Slim’s 14th Army was streaming south through central Myanmar, and the Japanese defeat seemed all but assured. Bogyoke Aung San’s Burma National Army had recently defected to the British side, and the race was on to capture Rangoon before the monsoon rains began.

But as the invasion force approached the city, in what was known as Operation Dracula, the ferocity and tenacity of the Japanese troops was never far from their mind. Few expected them to completely abandon the prized capital of then-Burma. (Courtesy of frontiermyanmar.net)