"For a war with "World" in its title, we mostly tend to think about Europe, the Pacific, and of course, the infamous Australian Front. One of the forgotten theaters was the CBI (China, Burma, India, and a couple other countries that apparently would've ruined the acronym), where troops had to deal with monsoons, malaria, and being a low budget priority. Have you ever have an underfunded project at your job? Now imagine that project was to stay alive while fighting the Japanese army.
But while Allied soldiers tried to adjust to life on the other side of the world, Ursula Graham Bower was already experienced. In 1937, the 23-year-old Englishwoman went to visit her brother in India. Her mother encouraged her to pick up a good husband while she was there, but she instead became fascinated by the indigenous Naga culture. By 1939 she was living in remote Naga villages as an amateur anthropologist, winning their trust with modern medicine, the fact that she wasn't a government official and, conveniently, some Naga deciding that she was the reincarnation of a beloved Naga prophet.
The Naga had a complicated relationship with the British. In a classic frenemies situation, sometimes they were happy to receive traders and missionaries, and sometimes they killed outsiders in a ritualized headhunting ceremony. So while the British ostensibly considered the Naga to be under their jurisdiction, they mostly left them alone. Then, in 1942, Japan swept through Burma and threatened to push into India, starting with the mountainous Naga border territory…"
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