The prologue to this stupendous book opens in Yamagata, where a Japanese general from World War II is struggling to atone for the deaths of soldiers who lost their lives under his command in India. They had been trying to mount an assault from Burma, which Japan had already conquered.

The book recounts the story of the tremendous battle in which the Japanese were finally defeated, "held off by a British and Indian garrison which they outnumbered ten to one."

It is the battle of Thermopylae for modern times.