About
The Kohima Museum in York is dedicated to one of the most extraordinary and decisive battles of the Second World War — the Battle of Kohima, fought in Assam, India, between April and June 1944, and long described as 'the Stalingrad of the East' and 'the greatest battle in British military history.' The museum focuses specifically on the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment, whose role in the battle — particularly in the desperate fighting around the Deputy Commissioner's tennis court — became one of the defining stories of British arms in the Far East theatre.
By April 1944, Imperial Japan had launched Operation U-Go, an offensive aimed at breaking through the Assam hills into India and cutting the Allied supply lines. The small garrison town of Kohima, perched on a ridge at 5,000 feet in the Naga Hills, became the pivot on which the battle turned. Outnumbered and surrounded, British and Indian forces held the town against overwhelming Japanese pressure for thirteen days before relief arrived. The fighting was extraordinary in its ferocity and intimacy — at the DC's tennis court, the opposing lines were so close that men threw grenades across the net at each other. Had Kohima fallen, the Japanese advance into India might have succeeded, and the outcome of the war in the East could have been very different.
The 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment was at the centre of this fighting, and their story — of ordinary men from the English counties holding an impossible position through courage, discipline, and dogged determination — is told in the museum's collections with the directness and emotional honesty that only a regimental museum can achieve. Personal letters, photographs, weapons, equipment, and the testimonies of veterans who survived bring the battle to life in ways that purely operational histories cannot.
The Kohima epitaph — 'When you go home, tell them of us and say: for your tomorrow, we gave our today' — originated at the cemetery on Garrison Hill and has become one of the most widely quoted and deeply moving inscriptions in all of British military history. The museum gives context to these words and to the men whose sacrifice they commemorate.
Operated under the Army Museums Ogilby Trust and located at 3 Tower Street in York, the museum is small, focused, and profoundly moving — a memorial as much as a museum, and one of York's most significant heritage sites.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Busiest: Saturday
💡 Weekday mornings when York's tourist crowds are smallest and the atmosphere is most contemplative
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum is small but extraordinarily concentrated — allow at least an hour and a quarter to do justice to the displays, and approach it in a contemplative frame of mind. The subject matter rewards slow, careful engagement rather than a quick pass through.
- Tower Street is one of York's richest heritage streets. Combine the Kohima Museum with Clifford's Tower (English Heritage, immediately next door), the York Castle Museum (five minutes' walk), and the nearby Jorvik Viking Centre for a full day of York history.
- The Kohima epitaph — 'When you go home, tell them of us and say: for your tomorrow, we gave our today' — is read at every Remembrance Day service by the Royal British Legion. Visiting the museum gives a depth of understanding to these words that makes subsequent hearings at services genuinely moving.
- If you have a family connection to the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment or the Burma Campaign more broadly, contact the museum in advance. The staff can often assist with research into individual soldiers' records and regimental history.
- York is a major tourist city and its centre can be very crowded in summer, particularly at weekends. The Kohima Museum is slightly off the main tourist circuits and tends to be quieter than the headline attractions even in peak season.
- The Battle of Kohima is often called the most important battle of the Burma Campaign and arguably one of the decisive battles of the Second World War in Asia, yet it remains far less well known than its significance warrants. The museum provides context that most visitors find genuinely revelatory.
- Parking in York city centre is difficult and expensive. Use the park-and-ride services from the outskirts of the city — these are efficient, frequent, and drop you near the city walls, from where it is a pleasant walk to Tower Street.
- The museum staff and trustees are often veterans' descendants or military historians with deep personal and scholarly knowledge of the Burma Campaign. If the museum is quiet, a conversation with the staff can significantly enrich what you take away from the visit.
Highlights
The Tennis Court Battle
The defining image of Kohima — and one of the most extraordinary episodes in British military history — is the fighting around the Deputy Commissioner's tennis court, where the opposing lines were so close that the two sides threw grenades across the net at each other. This display recreates the layout of the DC's compound, showing the precise geography of the battle using maps, aerial photographs, and three-dimensional models.
The accounts of soldiers who fought here — their testimonies of fear, exhaustion, courage, and comradeship — make this one of the most viscerally immediate military history displays in any British museum.
The Kohima Epitaph
'When you go home, tell them of us and say: for your tomorrow, we gave our today. ' These words, inscribed on the memorial at the Kohima War Cemetery on Garrison Hill, have become the most famous epitaph in all of British military commemoration — read at every Remembrance Day service by the Royal British Legion, quoted in Parliament, and recognised across the English-speaking world.
This display gives the full context of the epitaph, its origins in a poem by John Maxwell Edmonds, and its adoption by those who fought at Kohima.
The emotional power of the words is set against the reality of what the men endured to earn them.
2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment at Kohima
The 2nd Battalion's role in the Battle of Kohima is the heart of the museum's narrative. From their arrival in Assam to the intense fighting on the Ridge, the battalion's story is told through documents, photographs, personal letters, and the medals and equipment of individual soldiers. The commanding officer's diaries and operational reports give the strategic picture, while the letters home and the oral testimony of veterans give the human one.
The tension between official military language — objective, measured, professional — and the raw personal accounts of men fighting for survival is one of the most revealing aspects of the museum's presentation.
Operation U-Go: Japan's Last Gamble in Burma
The Battle of Kohima cannot be understood without the strategic context of Operation U-Go — the Japanese offensive of 1944 aimed at cutting Allied supply lines and breaking into India. This display explains the Japanese commander General Mutaguchi's plan, the extraordinary logistical challenges of moving an army through the Naga Hills, and the Japanese expectation of a rapid victory.
Maps trace the advance of the 31st Division to Kohima, the encirclement of the garrison, and the subsequent Allied counter-offensive.
Understanding why Kohima mattered strategically makes the tactical details of the battle — the individual acts of courage, the desperate holding actions — resonate at a deeper level.
Collections
The Kohima Museum holds one of Britain's most focused and significant collections relating to the Battle of Kohima (April–June 1944) and the Burma Campaign of the Second World War. The core of the collection comprises regimental material of the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment — documents, photographs, diaries, letters, medals, and personal effects of soldiers who fought at Kohima — supplemented by weapons, equipment, and material from both Allied and Japanese forces.
Strategic and operational materials — maps, orders, intelligence summaries — give the broader military context for the personal testimonies.
The museum also holds significant commemoration and memorial material relating to the Kohima War Cemetery and the famous Kohima epitaph, together with material relating to the Naga people in whose homeland the battle was fought.
The Battle of Kohima: April–June 1944
Comprehensive account of the battle from the Japanese encirclement through the fighting on the Ridge to the relief and Allied counter-offensive
2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment: Courage and Sacrifice
The regimental story of the Norfolk battalions at Kohima and in the wider Burma Campaign, told through personal collections and regimental archives
The Burma Campaign: Strategy and Consequence
The strategic context of the Battle of Kohima within the Allied war effort in South-East Asia, 1942–45
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.