In early 1944, the Japanese 15th Army launched Operation U-Go, an audacious thrust into northeast India aimed at capturing the supply bases at Imphal and Kohima. If they succeeded, the road to the rest of India lay open. The Japanese reached Kohima in April and occupied the strategic heights of Garrison Hill, pressing a small garrison of Commonwealth forces into an ever-shrinking perimeter. For two weeks, the defenders held out against relentless assaults, fighting across the Deputy Commissioner's tennis court in encounters so close that grenades were rolled downhill between opposing trenches. Reinforcements from the 2nd British Division finally broke through, and the Japanese were driven back in a retreat that became a rout. The combined battles of Kohima and Imphal cost Japan over 50,000 casualties and shattered its offensive capability in Southeast Asia. In 2013, the British National Army Museum voted it "Britain's Greatest Battle."

The cemetery occupies the exact slope where the fighting took place, arranged in a series of terraces roughly three meters high that follow the contour of Garrison Hill. Stone markers embedded with bronze plaques carry the names of the 1,420 Commonwealth soldiers buried here, their whitewashed surfaces catching the light against the green hillside. An additional memorial honors 917 Hindu and Sikh soldiers whose remains were cremated according to their faiths. Among the named dead are 64 soldiers of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, though the memorial lists 96 from that regiment alone, the graves of 32 never located. Field Marshal Sir William Slim, who commanded the 14th Army through the Burma campaign, inaugurated the memorial. The cemetery offers a panoramic view of modern Kohima spreading through the valley below, a city that exists in its present form because of what happened on this hillside.

Near the tennis court stands a cherry tree grown from a branch of the original that witnessed the battle. Japanese soldiers had used the first tree for target practice, and it was destroyed in the fighting. A small brass plaque on the replacement reads with quiet understatement, noting the tree's lineage. The tennis court itself, its boundaries now marked in white concrete rather than paint, has become the cemetery's most recognizable feature. The battle fought here was so compressed and savage that it earned its own name: the Battle of the Tennis Court. Walking the few meters between what were opposing positions, the scale of the violence becomes almost incomprehensible. Soldiers on both sides died within throwing distance of each other, in a space where the primary weapons were grenades, bayonets, and bare hands.

The cemetery draws visitors from across the world, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains it with characteristic precision: roses bloom in season, the grass stays clipped, the bronze plaques gleam. On the 60th anniversary of the war's end in 2005, 41 members of the Royal British Legion made the journey to Kohima. Among them was Hildra Martin Smith, 84 years old, who arrived in a wheelchair. He had fought on this ground as a young lieutenant in the British Army. Brigadier John Farmer and Brigadier RL Sharma of the 2nd Assam Rifles laid wreaths at the memorial. A decade later, senior British Army officers returned to mark the 70th anniversary of the battle. These pilgrimages continue, organized by the Royal British Legion, connecting the living to the ground where the outcome of the war in Asia turned on the defense of a hillside in Nagaland.