World War II was a turning point in world history. Theaters in Europe and the Pacific are well known, but there is one forgotten theater often referred to as the CBI (China-Burma-India) theater that doesn’t get as much publicity.
In 1942, the Japanese invaded and occupied Burma, driving British-Indian forces out of Burma. The result was that the Burma Highway was closed. There was an urgent need for a second road to bring supplies to China during the war. Thus the concept of the Ledo road was born. The Ledo Highway started from Ledo in Assam, India, and wound its way from the tea gardens to the jungles and mountains of northern Burma until it joined the Burma Highway.
Ledo Road was the work of US Army engineers and Indian labor from Assam.
The road was a marvel of engineering and traversed some of the toughest mountains and dense jungles anywhere. Add in the strong monsoon for 5 months in a year and one can see that Ledo’s path was no ordinary engineering feat.
The man who commanded the construction of the highway was General Lewis A. Pick (1890-56). He commented that it was the toughest job ever given to US Army engineers in wartime.
Construction of the highway began on December 16, 1942 and continued unabated for 3 years. Finally, the Ledo road was declared operational on May 20, 1945. Although it was completed towards the end of the war, it still carried some 35,000 tons of supplies to China. The highway ran 465 miles from Ledo in Assam, India, to Mongyu, Burma, near Wanting, China.
Military planners discussed the usefulness of the highway compared to the airlift from Assam to Burma by elements of the USAF. But its importance was strategic, and although it was not built to original specifications as a two-lane highway, it did serve a specific purpose. The road as it was built served as a combat road and supported an oil pipeline that ran parallel to it.
The Ledo highway and its construction is basically an American effort, but it was never given due importance. This was due to the low priority of the CBI Theater. This sector was declared open on March 3, 1942 and is often referred to as theforgotten theater of the Second World War.
Not many know that at the height of the war, the United States had mobilized 12.3 million Americans for the war effort. Of this gargantuan number, only 250,000 (two percent) were assigned to the CBI theater. Therefore, it was inevitable that the IWC would not figure in the minds of the American people at home. But the 12,000-mile supply line was the longest of the war and also had the lowest priority.
American service men, though small in number, served in the CBI Theater. Ledo’s path is a testament to his indomitable courage. These men, along with Indian and British troops, tied down many Japanese divisions. The USAF also carried out a massive airlift’over the hump” to China from Assam. The Ledo road was a complement to that supply elevator. Ledo was chosen because it was close to the northern terminus of a railway line that had a direct connection to the ports of Calcutta and Bombay. Construction of Ledo Road was completed in early 1945.
The American role was to support China by providing war material. United States Air Forces flying tigers fought the Japanese in the air over China and Burma and the Army Air Forces flew supplies over the hump from India to China. US Army engineers built Ledo Road to open up the overland supply route. It was a supreme engineering achievement.
What about the human and material cost? The total number of fatalities on the Ledo road was 1,133, of which 261 were from the engineering group.
