African soldiers were pivotal to the Allies WWII victory
Today is the beginning of the Black History Month 2025. October also was the month when in 1942 the Allies desperately needed Africans as combatants in the World War II.
Members of the Yoruba Party in the UK (YPUK), the political voice of the UK Yoruba community, acknowledge the pivotal role that African soldiers played in the defeat of the Japanese Imperial Army and the liberation of Burma in 1943. The Africans were soldiers in the British 14th Army led by Lieutenant-General William Slim.
Britain deployed over 90,000 men from East and West Africa to Burma in the longest battle line of the war, which stretched from the Bay of Bengal to China. Yet their sacrifices and achievements have been largely ignored, forgotten, or under-acknowledged in the post-war historical narrative. There is no public appreciation of the sacrifices that African soldiers made in the Burma campaign in World War II. YPUK seeks to correct that.
The African soldiers were very highly effective in the jungles and mountainous terrain of Burma. They were engaged in some of the toughest fighting of the entire conflict as they resisted and then pushed back the Japanese soldiers. The African soldiers made the Allied victory possible for neither the British nor the Indian units could muster any success against the Japanese army.