1. Black veterans dictate their experiences of road building
In the '70s, Jesse Green commuted past the James Madison Memorial Building at the Library of Congress (the library's premises consist of the Jefferson Building, the Adams Building, and the James Madison Memorial), worked at the nearby post office, and took a taxi to Capitol Hill. But he never dreamed that his experience would one day be selected by the Library of Congress for the world to read. The Howard County Times revealed his story in detail on February 14.
In view of the advanced age of World War II veterans (many have passed away), the Library of Congress launched the "Veterans History Project" in 2000 to save the living history of these old people. To date, the project has captured 80,000 stories from this group of veterans. In October 2010, the 94-year-old Green was interviewed. He lives in Ellicott City, Maryland. The spirited Green said, "It's so exciting to go to the Library of Congress and give an interview." For years, my daughter and my grandson have been trying to get me to do something similar (to tell people about the experience of World War II). Greene's daughter, Mia, who works at the Library of Congress, was pleased to say she was pleasantly surprised that her father's story was selected for the cover of a Library of Congress publication.
In June 1941, Green was 25 years old, married, with one daughter, and living in Washington. One day, he received a "letter of conscription greeting." After a brief military training and training at a culinary school, he was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, as a sergeant in the Army. He managed 6 people and cooked for a company (150 people).
On December 7, 1941, Green was playing bridge when he suddenly heard the news that the Japanese army had bombed the US military base Pearl Harbor. Once war was declared, he recalled, everything changed. Before the declaration of war, the members of their cooking squad wore civilian clothing, but after the declaration of war, everything was regularized, they all changed to uniforms, and the rules in the army were stricter. At that time, the U.S. military was also practicing apartheid. Apartheid was practiced in the theaters, entertainment halls, and buses of Fort Knox. Fort Knox formed the first black (African-American) tank battalion, the 758th Battalion, where Green served.
In 1944, Green was sent overseas to build the Burma Highway (as it was called by foreign sources). Troop shipments were slow because they had to be transported by train or ship. Green and his comrades took a train from Fort Knox to California in 8 days. Green then sailed with 10,000 officers and men to Mumbai, India, for 32 days. Eight days later, they arrived in Ledo, India, to participate in the construction of the Burma Highway, later known as the Stilwell Highway.
Burma Road boundary monument
Burma Road Map
Green's company was attached to the 45th Mobile Battalion of the 520th Engineer Regiment. This regiment is completely black. Green's company consisted of about 100 black men and owned 100 dump trucks used to build roads. And the U.S. government also continues to ship a large number of machinery and equipment.
Green cooks for the officers and soldiers who build the road. The troops distributed him a truck filled with food and water. The car is about 40 kilometers from the front line of the road construction, and stops at one place for a while, and follows along with it as the newly built road extends forward. Green recalls that the sappers' road through the Himalayas, with the impression that the rain was falling non-stop and the roads were muddy. Their self-dumping trucks were covered in muddy water as they traveled. "It was horribly hot, over 37.7 degrees Celsius. There is also too much rain there. Mosquitoes in India are also super abominable. He mainly made canned and dry food, but also baked some food, and he was also good at making apple pie, which was praised by the officers and soldiers.
Green stayed there for 16 months until the end of the war. After the end of World War II, he returned to Washington to reunite with his wife and daughter. Before retiring, he served for the United States Postal Service for 31 years.
He saw firsthand how people built this path of life. "Every morning, we see women going out to pick fruit. They were followed by a man with an M-1 semi-automatic rifle in his hand to protect them, as tigers and vipers were present in the jungle. They spent the whole day picking fruit and then returned with a large basket of fruit on their heads. I have seen this scene in National Geographic, but witnessing it is a different feeling... I'm proud of what I do. Some say that every mile of Myanmar roads costs $1 million, and every mile eats up a life. ”
Breaking rocks
Laborers building roads
It is clear that Greene's oral history is precious. He lamented: "Many people don't know about Myanmar roads. However, he let his family know about this history of road building. He told his grandson about his military experience. As a child, Green listened to his grandfather, who was a black slave, tell stories about the American Civil War. Green's father was a coal miner, and Greene's mother raised 11 children on the farm his grandfather later purchased. Green grew up attending a Virginia college and took a break from school for surgery. Then came the war, and the army was the university where he was educated. This boy who used to crawl on dirt roads contributed to the construction of the Burma Highway, the most famous highway of World War II. He received a total of 3 "Battle Star" medals.
2. Road builders in one camp speak 200 dialects
In 2005, Donald M. Bishop, Minister of Information and Culture at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, introduced the background of the Stilwell Highway in his article "The United States and China During World War II: A Brief Summary":
In May 1942, the Japanese army attacked northern Burma, cutting off China's last road to the outside world, the Burma Road. China's only open border was with British India (now Pakistan, India, Bhutan, and Bangladesh). However, India and China are separated by the Himalayas, and it is impossible to open up land transportation on the highest peak in the world.
In 1943, American supplies arrived in Assam, northeastern India, by rail. Next, supplies could only be shipped to China via the Himalayan air route (aka the "Hump Route"). However, for every 1 gallon of gasoline flown to China, the plane consumes 6 gallons of gasoline. Both Lord Louis Mountbatten of India and General Joseph Stilwell of the Chinese theater of operations believed that it was necessary to open a land transport line between China and India.
Burma Road signs
On December 16, 1942, the road from Ledo to Burma began. Ledo is a village in the Indian state of Assam. The two-lane, climate-friendly highway cost $150 million and was hailed as one of the greatest engineering marvels of World War II.
In the process of building the road, the Allies also had to free up their hands to fight the Japanese.
American soldiers killed in battle with the Japanese for the right of way
Participating in the road construction are Chinese, Chin, Kachin, Indians, Nepalese, Naga and others. Typically, there is a camp of 2,000 laborers who speak 200 completely different dialects.
Han women building roads
Later, two Chinese units, the 10th and 12th Independent Combat Engineering Regiments, joined the construction. From October 1943, U.S. Brigadier General Lewis Peake served as commander of the project. Pique acknowledged that building the road was "the toughest task American engineers have ever undertaken in wartime." The road crosses 10 large rivers and 155 creeks, and a total of 700 bridges are built. On both sides of the new highway from India to China, fuel pipelines and telephone lines are also laid. Most of the road is in the complex and uninhabited areas of Myanmar, passing through tropical rainforests, rushing rivers, riparian slopes and valleys, mountainous areas covered with primary forests and swampy valleys.
Highway bridge
About 15,000 Americans were involved in building the roads, 9,000 of whom were black. Local workers, on the other hand, numbered 35,000, endured all kinds of hardships: heat, dangerous forests, muddy swamps and raging floods. During the construction of roads, at one point, 80% of workers suffered from diseases common in the tropics: malaria, diarrhoea, typhoid fever, etc. 1,133 Americans died in the construction of the road, and the number of local deaths is no less.
3. Stilwell did not attend the opening ceremony
An unknown U.S. soldier wrote in his diary while building roads in Burma: "There are many women and children here who are also building roads with adult men, all from nearby villages, and these women and children do whatever they can." I can feel the pain these people are going through. I should be ashamed that I complain so much. ”
Ethnic minority women involved in road construction
In fact, the road was completed in 1944, but heavy rains in northern Myanmar destroyed the road to pieces. Mountbatten once flew to see Stilwell, and when he flew over the Hukang Valley, he asked what the name of the "river below" was, and an American official accompanying him replied: "That's not a river, it's the Ledo Highway." "It turned out that heavy rainfall flooded the road.
It was restored to traffic while rushing to repair
On January 12, 1945, the entire line was opened. On January 12, 1945, Pique led the first convoy out of Ledo for Kunming, consisting of 113 vehicles (heavy trucks, jeeps and ambulances). The convoy entered China on January 28. They were greeted by Chinese Foreign Minister Song Ziwen. On February 4, the convoy arrived in Kunming amid the sound of firecrackers.
On February 12, 1945, the American magazine Life published an article saying that the convoy had arrived in China for the first time since the Burma Road was cut off by the Japanese army in 1942. The convoy traveled on the Stilwell Highway, Chiang Kai-shek's name in 1945, in honor of Stilwell. The road includes the newly constructed Ledo Highway as well as the original Myanmar Highway. It has only a short section in India, with 1,033 km in Myanmar and 632 km in China. At the opening celebration of the road, Stilwell, who should be the most present, was in Washington, D.C., and he had left China because of his feud with Chiang Kai-shek.
4. Is it worth building this road?
However, Winston Churchill, who was once British prime minister, was not optimistic about this path. "[The path is] a huge, laborious task that can't be done before it's needed," he said. ”
General Stilwell's staff had estimated that the road could transport 65,000 tons of supplies per month, far more than the Hump Route could transport by air. But Gen. Chennault, commander of the U.S. 14th Air Force, believes the estimate of 65,000 tons per month is overestimated. Chennault believes that instead of painstakingly opening the road through the jungle, it is better to use modern air transportation.
Within six months of opening, trucks loaded a total of 129,000 tonnes of supplies from India to China. 26,000 trucks and 6,500 trailers (one way) carrying goods to China. As General Chennault predicted, the volume of cargo transported by this road was simply not as large as that of the "Hump Route". In the month of July 1945, 71,000 tons of goods were flown to China, compared with only 6,000 tons transported by this road. During the war, air cargo totalled 650,000 tons, while road cargo was only 147,000 tons.
Nanqiao Mechanical Transportation Team
However, it should be pointed out that the reason why the land transportation volume is so small is that the Japanese army surrendered shortly after the road was opened to traffic, and the Stilwell Highway fulfilled its historical mission.
Yunnan section of the famous "24 turns"
The mountain road is rough
Extremely complex road conditions
Huitong Bridge under construction
Status of Huitong Bridge
Sculpture of migrant workers building the Burma Road in the National Cemetery in Yunnan