Ursula Betts (nee Graham Bower) interviewed by Alan Macfarlane  4^th November 1985 – Part 2.

[slight damage to tape at start]

0:00:05 Japanese advance and reaction of the Nagas; acts of heroism; future husband saved by Nagas while retreating from Burma to Kohima; own part in the fight against the Japanese; ‘V Force’; relief of Kohima brought help from Gurkhas; Japanese retreat

0:15:24 Interview with Field-Marshall Slim; Assam Regiment; Naga spies in Japanese H.Q.; Japanese battle plan stolen and presented to Slim

0:22:30 Naga agriculture – slash and burn; thirty year cycle; Nzemi land scarcity resulted in Gaidiliu trouble; Kuki immigrants allowed to settle on fallow Nzemi land;

hunting and fishing; filmed fish poisoning; mithan sacrificial animal; pigs; rice and rice beer; little meat in diet

0:23:00 Own entourage: interpreter, cook, dog boy, mail man, gardener, and kitchen boy; lived on small personal income of 450rs per month of which 50rs went for medicine; set aside £50 a year for annual leave in Calcutta

0:35:15 With Leica camera took about 4,000 photos; after 1941-2 practically impossible to get film until late 1944; very little taken during war years because of this; took about 2,000 ft. of film on Nzemi; Bell & Howell camera had no zoom lens; women sometimes objected to being filmed but not men; filming stone dragging became involved in preventing a serious accident; gravestones

0:44:50 Feasts of Merit; way of redistributing wealth; display and sexual prowess; head-hunters’ shields tufted with human hair; Magulong; only a head-hunter could carry shield now in Pitt-Rivers Museum

0:51:50 Meeting with future husband, Col. Tim Betts; reputation among ‘V Force’; June 1945 wanted to meet “Naga Queen”; butterfly hunting; proposal of marriage; cold feet: went to Shillong and met Mills who approved