The opening of the Stilwell Road

In the last days of January 1945 the overland link between India and China, cut in 1942, began to work again. The Ledo Road, under construction since late 1942 from Assam in India through northern Burma, joined the old Burma Road, and the first convoy from India, which had set out from Ledo in the middle of the month, crossed the Chinese border and drove on through Yunnan towards Kunming.

Some war chronologies record under 31 January that “the whole Burma Road is now open” because the link with the Ledo Road had been completed. This needs qualifying. The decisive events took place a few days earlier: on 27 January Chinese troops advancing from Burma and from Yunnan met near Mong Yu, and on 28 January the first convoy drove onto the Burma Road and into China. It did not reach Kunming until 4 February. Nothing in particular marks out 31 January – the convoy was then making its way through the mountains of Yunnan – and the route itself would long require widening, surfacing and bridge-building.

The blockade of China

From the spring of 1942, when the Japanese occupied Burma and cut the Burma Road, China had been almost completely cut off from the outside world. American aid under Lend-Lease arrived only by air, on flights from Assam over the eastern Himalayas. The airlift over “the Hump” grew month by month, but every ton of fuel, ammunition and weapons had to be flown over the mountains in difficult conditions and at the cost of hundreds of wrecked aircraft. For three years the building of an overland road from India, linked to the old Burma Road, was the principal aim of American strategy in the theatre.

The importance of the route was underlined by events in China itself. In 1944 the Japanese Ichi-Go offensive had shattered large concentrations of Chinese troops, and at the end of the year Japanese columns even threatened Kunming, the road’s destination and a base of the American air force. The opening of an overland link was meant to give the Chinese army the weapons, lorries and fuel it needed to rebuild.

The two fronts meet

The road to China was opened by two Chinese forces trained and equipped by the Americans. From the west, out of India, the divisions of the Chinese Army in India – called “X Force” by the Americans – advanced through the Hukawng Valley, Myitkyina and Bhamo, led by the New 1st Army of General Sun Liren. From the east, from May 1944, came the troops from Yunnan – General Wei Lihuang’s “Y Force” – which had crossed the Salween and, in heavy fighting in the mountains, taken Song Shan, Tengchong, Longling and Mangshi.

In mid-January 1945 the Japanese 33rd Army, whose command no longer attached much importance to keeping up the blockade of China, began to withdraw from the border area. On 19 January the Chinese from Yunnan took the mountain above Wanding (Wanting), the last town on the Chinese side of the border, and on 20 January their patrols found the town abandoned; the same day the first patrols of the two forces made contact between Wanding and Muse. From 23 January the Japanese pulled their 56th Division back southwards towards Lashio. On 24 January Brigadier General Robert M. Cannon, chief of staff of the American command in northern Burma, agreed with General Sun that the road would be cleared by 27 January; according to the American official history, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Yunnan troops that same day to halt at the border.

On 27 January tanks and infantry of the New 1st Army took the last Japanese position, in the village of Pinghai near the Mong Yu road junction, where the Ledo Road met the Burma Road. This brought the Salween offensive to an end, and the troops from India and from Yunnan joined hands. The next day, 28 January, ceremonies attended by Chinese and American commanders were held at Mong Yu and Muse.

The convoy enters China

The first convoy, led by the American General Lewis A. Pick, the builder of the Ledo Road, had been waiting for several days near Namhkam for word that the road was clear. On the morning of 28 January it moved on. After a two-hour ceremony at Muse the lorries turned onto the metalled surface of the Burma Road. As the American official history describes it, word quickly spread along the column that they were at last on the Burma Road and in China.

On 30 January the convoy crossed the Salween, with an air-raid alarm giving the drivers a moment of excitement, and set off on the long journey through the dry brown hills of Yunnan. It spent its last night, 3/4 February, by Lake Dian, and on 4 February 1945, with Chinese drivers at the wheel and Pick standing in a jeep at its head, it drove into Kunming to the crackle of firecrackers and the sound of bands. The lorries and howitzers stayed in China.

Pick’s convoy was not, in fact, the first vehicle to travel from Burma to China. As early as 20 January a small column under Lieutenant Hugh A. Pock – two lorries and a heavy wrecker – had reached Kunming after driving from Myitkyina along a primitive route through Tengchong. Its arrival was announced by Chinese sources and the BBC before the official convoy had crossed the border.

The Stilwell Road

Soon after the road opened, Chiang Kai-shek proposed naming it after General Joseph Stilwell. Some sources link this decision to the ceremonies of 28 January; the American official history says only that it happened “soon after the road was opened”. The gesture was an odd one. Stilwell had been the most ardent advocate of building the road and recovering northern Burma, but his conflict with Chiang, growing since 1943, had ended in October 1944 with the American’s recall from China. By the time the convoy drove into Kunming, Stilwell was already back in the United States. The soldiers themselves went on speaking of the Ledo Road or of “Pick’s Pike”.

The whole route from Ledo to Kunming was about 1,730 kilometres long, more than a thousand of them in Burma. A fuel pipeline ran alongside it; according to the official history, it then reached as far as Bhamo and was to be extended into China.

Place in the war

The opening of the road ended the land blockade of China that had lasted since 1942. China no longer depended solely on air transport, and American propaganda and the press presented it as a great victory. Its practical effects, however, were limited. The airlift over the Himalayas, across “the Hump”, had grown so large that it carried many times more than the lorries: according to American figures, in July 1945 aircraft delivered some 71,000 tons to China and the road about 6,000 tons. Over the whole war about 147,000 tons were carried by road and about 650,000 by air. General William Slim and other critics had doubted the strategic sense of the undertaking from the start.

The military consequence proved more important. The junction of the fronts freed the American-trained Chinese divisions; in the following months some of them were flown to China to defend Kunming and prepare a counter-offensive. Meanwhile the main weight of the war in Burma shifted to the front of the British Fourteenth Army, which was closing on Mandalay and in May 1945 took Rangoon. After Japan’s surrender the Stilwell Road quickly lost its importance and much of it was swallowed by the jungle.