We felt honoured when he (Abe) told Parliament on Wednesday that Japan-Bengal ties go a long way, one of the reasons being Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose," she said.
Abe's office informed her that he would specially visit the Asia Room (in the pictures), which houses photographs of Netaji organising the Indian National Army and how it assaulted India's north-eastern frontier in an attempt to evict the British from the country.
Photographs in the Asia Room depict Netaji's parleys with Japanese leaders, the proclamation of the Azad Hind Fauj's provisional government, the Greater East Asia Conference, which Netaji attended as an observer and where he delivered a rousing speech calling for imperialism to be banished from Asia, his visits to the Andaman islands and the Indo-Burma front.
It also houses Netaji's supreme commander's cap, belt and boots, the desk and chair used by him in Singapore, the garland he received on October 21, 1943 (when a provisional government with him as the head was proclaimed there) and the sword, inset, presented to him in Japan.
One can also see the last photograph taken in Saigon on August 17, 1945, just before Netaji is said to have taken off in an aircraft and subsequently died in an air crash, a facsimile of the last Order of Day and an enlarged photocopy of the impressions of his palms.
Also read: Netaji's daughter speaks!
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