Editorial Response to Washington Post: On WWII anniversary, China seeks to erase U.S. role in victory (September 2, 2025)

September 4, 2025

Editorial Response to Washington Post: On WWII anniversary, China seeks to erase U.S. role in victory (September 2, 2025)

Americans played a crucial role in the World War II effort in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater. China had no indigenous arms capability save clubs and stones. American railway operating battalions, like my father’s unit, the 721st, took charge of the rail link from Calcutta to Ledo, India, and ran freight to an eleven-mile-long depot. From there, U.S. Army Air Corps crews made the unforgiving flight over the Himalayas into China in overfilled C-46s and 47s. All told, 225,000 Americans served in CBI, and the American armed forces employed even more local civilians.

In 1943, U.S. Army construction units began building and operating the 1,100-mile-long Stilwell Road (also known as the Ledo Road) through the treacherous mountains of Japanese-occupied Burma to Kunming, China, to support Chiang Kai-shek and his warlords in the fight. These 15,000 U.S. Army construction units were African-American enlisted men with white officers, and they died from enemy attacks, disease, and accidents at the rate of a man a mile. When black truck drivers arrived in Kunming, China, in January 1945, Chiang ordered that they switch with white drivers, so as not to upset his racial sensitivities. General Stilwell intervened, pairing white and black drivers.

The Allies saw China as a land-based aircraft carrier from which to bomb the Japanese Home Islands until May of 1945, when the atomic bomb campaign took shape on Tinian. Strategically, the Allies needed China in the war on their side to tie down two million Japanese troops. This was never a foregone alliance with Chiang Kai-shek in charge.

China’s contribution to the war was significant, yes, and they lost untold millions to the Japanese. However, the Allies, particularly the Americans and British, bore the heavier burden and made Chinese resistance possible.

Steven James Hantzis, Author

Alexandria, VA

Rails of War: Supplying the Americans and Their Allies in China-Burma-India (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)