China-Burma-India WWII

In September 1931, following up on the defeat of local Chinese forces in Manchuria after the Mukden Incident, Japan invaded and occupied all of Manchuria, turning it into the puppet republic of Manchukuo. Japanese forces later used the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, as an excuse to invade and occupy large parts of the Chinese mainland. Japan's attacks forced Chinese industry to move inland, away from the coasts, and cut off coastal commerce and lines of communication that would support the Nationalist government and a war effort against Japan.

 China depended on three major supply lines to bring in aid and supplies for the war against the Japanese military in the early part of World War II. Across the Pacific Ocean, supplies could reach China over rail lines leading from Haiphong, Vietnam (Indochina), crossing through Hanoi, and branching to reach Nanning, Guangxi Province, in southeast China, and Kunming, Yunnan Province, in southwest China. From the northwest, through the Soviet Union, supplies moved into China from the trans-Siberian railroad and Turkestan, where they were then moved by road through Xinjiang to Lanzhou, Gansu Province. From Lanzhou, supplies could be moved by rail through Sichuan Province to southwest China, where the Nationalists had moved the government to Chongqing. The third main supply route (MSR) for war materials destined to support the Chinese war effort against Japan ran from Rangoon, Burma, where material entered at the port, to Lashio, Burma, by rail. Finally, at the end of the rail line in Lashio, the supplies flowed into southwest China along the 700-mile Burma Road to Kunming.

 With the assistance of its Axis ally Germany, after Germany occupied France in June 1940, Japan pressured the Vichy French government, which controlled Vietnam and Indochina, to close the Haiphong-Kunming and Haiphong-Nanning rail links to China. This shut down one of the three main MSRs available to China. Then, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, all Soviet supplies coming into China were diverted to the Eastern Front to support the Soviet war effort against the Nazis. The effect was that, even though the MSR was open, no materiel flowed from the Soviet Union to China from the far West. The consequence of these two German military campaigns was that China was left with only one MSR available to transport war materiel—the Burma Road.

The basic plan to construct a road and rail link between Kunming and Rangoon as a means to develop southwest China was conceived by Sun Yat-sen at the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911. By 1938, after the Japanese main attack into China closed coastal commerce, the highway between Kunming and Lashio, Burma, was still not complete. Between early 1938 and late 1939, however, a workforce of over 200,000 Chinese, working mostly by hand, carved a usable road into 688 miles of mountainous slopes and valleys. Because of the U.S. neutrality act, American aid to China had to come in from "nongovernmental sources." The Nationalist government, therefore, established the Southwest Transport Corporation to manage the road and the supply line through it that began to flow from the United States. The average transit time on the road from Lashio, Burma, to Kunming, China, was about five days.

When the U.S. Congress approved Lend-Lease aid for China in March 1941, American transport specialists working in China studied how to improve the traffic flow on the road. The foremost of these specialists were David Arnstein, a trucking expert from Chicago, and John Baker, who already had considerable experience working in China in the transportation industry. However, Japanese air attacks on the Burma Road proved to be a significant factor limiting the resupply effort. To defend against the Japanese air forces, the Nationalist government recruited U.S. aviators, who formed the Flying Tigers (formally called the American Volunteer Group, or AVG), led by Claire Lee Chennault. For the entire period of World War II, the Allied war effort in the China-Burma- India Theater depended on maintaining a free flow of traffic on the Burma Road. The flow of supplies on the road was also supplemented by flights over the "Hump," which crossed the mountains between Burma and China.

REFERENCES Charles R. Bond, A Flying Tiger's Diary (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1984); Eric R. Craine, Burma Roadsters (Tucson, AZ: Western Research, 1992); Lincoln Li, The Japanese Army in North China, 1937-1941: Problems of Political and Economic Control (London: Oxford University Press, 1975); F. F. Liu, A Military History of Modern China, 1924-1949 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956); Charles F. Romanus, Time Runs Out in the CBI (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1959); Barbara W. Tuchman, Stillwell and the Americal Experience in China, 1911-45 (New York: Macmillan, 1971).