1943
A little background:
The Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942 swamped the country like a tsunami. Yet, as these destructive waters flowed into Burma’s hilly periphery, especially in the north – which was the territory from Myitkyina and above the pro-British Kachins – Japanese influence, due to the wide spread of their resources, became weaker. However, this weakening did not matter to the Japanese army. Its primary task – were it ever to be necessary – was to protect Burma from counterattack by the British from India to the east and from the Chinese in Yunnan to the west as well as to suppress any hint of local rebellion by the hill people of the mountainous peripheries of the country: the Chin, Lushai, Kuki, Kachin, Karen, and Shan.
In the north this rebellion began almost immediately, with the British-led Kachin rebels laying ambushes, killing small groups of soldiers, and taking enemy patrols, although for much of 1943 these actions caused less harm to the Japanese than did casualties from tiger attacks and malaria. But as commander Tanaka’s forces advanced through Burma in 1942 they had enjoyed the support of large numbers of anti-British nationalists who did what they could to assist the Japanese, even to the extent of taking up arms against the hated British and harrying the exodus of soldiers and civilians as it made its [gruesome death] march to sanctuary in India.
The leadership of the anti-British movement was held by Aung San, a student leader who had thrown in his lot with the Japanese in 1940 and who is best remembered outside Burma today for his Nobel Peace-Prize winning daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi. However, as the Japanese moved into the hill country that made up almost the entirety of Burma’s periphery, the situation changed. The people of the hills held much less animus against the British colonialists and their Indian lackeys than did the Burmese of the plains; many in fact preferred them to the Japanese.
Aung San’s Burma Independence Army made limited, if any, progress in the Kachin Hills of north Burma despite the fact that in the early months of the invasion its numbers swelled as the Japanese fanned out across the country and excited nationalists and young hotheads alike joined the movement. In the east the hostility of the ethnic Burmese movement to the pro-British Karens resulted in widespread bloodshed. Indeed, the war that erupted between the Buddhist pro-Japanese ethnic Burmans and the pro-British Christian Karens precipitated a civil war that continues to this day.
A little background:
The Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942 swamped the country like a tsunami. Yet, as these destructive waters flowed into Burma’s hilly periphery, especially in the north – which was the territory from Myitkyina and above the pro-British Kachins – Japanese influence, due to the wide spread of their resources, became weaker. However, this weakening did not matter to the Japanese army. Its primary task – were it ever to be necessary – was to protect Burma from counterattack by the British from India to the east and from the Chinese in Yunnan to the west as well as to suppress any hint of local rebellion by the hill people of the mountainous peripheries of the country: the Chin, Lushai, Kuki, Kachin, Karen, and Shan.
In the north this rebellion began almost immediately, with the British-led Kachin rebels laying ambushes, killing small groups of soldiers, and taking enemy patrols, although for much of 1943 these actions caused less harm to the Japanese than did casualties from tiger attacks and malaria. But as commander Tanaka’s forces advanced through Burma in 1942 they had enjoyed the support of large numbers of anti-British nationalists who did what they could to assist the Japanese, even to the extent of taking up arms against the hated British and harrying the exodus of soldiers and civilians as it made its [gruesome death] march to sanctuary in India.
The leadership of the anti-British movement was held by Aung San, a student leader who had thrown in his lot with the Japanese in 1940 and who is best remembered outside Burma today for his Nobel Peace-Prize winning daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi. However, as the Japanese moved into the hill country that made up almost the entirety of Burma’s periphery, the situation changed. The people of the hills held much less animus against the British colonialists and their Indian lackeys than did the Burmese of the plains; many in fact preferred them to the Japanese.
Aung San’s Burma Independence Army made limited, if any, progress in the Kachin Hills of north Burma despite the fact that in the early months of the invasion its numbers swelled as the Japanese fanned out across the country and excited nationalists and young hotheads alike joined the movement. In the east the hostility of the ethnic Burmese movement to the pro-British Karens resulted in widespread bloodshed. Indeed, the war that erupted between the Buddhist pro-Japanese ethnic Burmans and the pro-British Christian Karens precipitated a civil war that continues to this day.
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[The survival saga of downed American and Chinese service men and journalists ( including Eric Sevareid) in the jungle of Northern Burma, began at the ramshackle US Army Air Forces base at Chabua in northern India. They were headed out on ‘The Hump’, the supply route over dense jungle and high mountain passes into China.]
When he first set eyes on Chabua, aka ‘Dumbastapur’ (or ‘take cover you dumb bastards’) Eric Sevareid was appalled- it was hardly a fit place for young Americans to live and work, particularly when they were sacrificing so much to support the unscrupulous and corrupt Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai- Shek*
Save for a few officers who could enjoy the comfort of tea-garden bungalows, the young American air crews were living in shocking conditions. There were at this time absolutely no amenities of life – no lounging places, no Red Cross girls, nothing cool or refreshing to eat or drink, no near-by rest resort to visit on leave,. It was a dreads and dismal place where dysentery was frequent and malaria certain, where haggard, sweating men dragged their feverish bodies through the day, ate execrable food, and shivered on cramped cots through nights often made unbearable by mosquitoes, Men collapse under the strain, and officers frequently broken by distant superiors when the statistics of their performance fell short.
It is almost certain that none of the passengers were aware that they were embarking in an aircraft - the C-46 - that had had its license to carry passengers temporarily revoked. The demands of war had resulted in its rushed introduction into service long before its testing was complete. Crews servicing them at Chabua, however, had quickly dubbed them ‘the Curtiss Calamity,’ ‘the Plumber’s Nightmare,’ and ‘the Flying Coffin.’ Theodore White described the problem of the C-46 in LIFE magazine when reporting restrictions on ATC operations across the Hump had been lifted in 1945:
The early runs had been made in DC-3S, whose normal ceiling was 12,000 feet and which had to be flown at 17,000 and 18,000. The C-87 had trouble with icing, and maintenance of its four engines was a drain on limited repair facilities., [Brigadier General] Alexander [ATC commander]chose as his ship the new Curtiss C-46- a big-bellied, ugly work –ship. It was just beginning to come from the assembly lines in the U.S., but the need for it was so great that it was rushed to Assam before the bugs had been taken out. There was no time for routine test flying to build up a backlog of pilot experience and knowledge of spare parts requirements. The planes came out factory fresh and were test flown in actual operations under conditions no other plane in aviation history has had to meet. They were subjected to all the climatic conditions of India and the Hump – dust, excessive heart, flights with maximum loads at higher than maximum serviceable altitudes, at maximum rates of climb, through turbulent winds and storms . . . Critical parts began to give way all at once, at rates which no previous experience could have forecast. Men died in the air and on the ground learning about the ship, ironing out its weaknesses, beating out a body of experience in the presence of [a supposed] overpowering military emergency.
Sevareid wrote:
Pilots were overworked, and when they made the perilous flight to China and back the same day, having fought storm and fog and ice, they simply fell into their cots as they were, unshaved and unwashed, to catch a few hours of unrefreshing sleep before repeating the venture next day. Hardly a day passed that the operations radio did not hear the distress signal of a crew going down in the jungle valleys or among forbidding peaks. Few at that time were ever found again, and there was a saying among the pilots that they could plot their course to China by the line of smoking wrecks upon the hillsides. It is not often that one sees fear in the faces of fliers, but I saw it here. Each one reckoned that it was only a matter of time before his time would come; they had the feeling of men wo know they had been condemned.
The USAAF described the route between China and Yunnan Province s “the most dangerous ever assigned to air transport.” During the second half of 1943, 155 aircraft came down, a rate of nearly one a day.
[The survival saga of downed American and Chinese service men and journalists ( including Eric Sevareid) in the jungle of Northern Burma, began at the ramshackle US Army Air Forces base at Chabua in northern India. They were headed out on ‘The Hump’, the supply route over dense jungle and high mountain passes into China.]
When he first set eyes on Chabua, aka ‘Dumbastapur’ (or ‘take cover you dumb bastards’) Eric Sevareid was appalled- it was hardly a fit place for young Americans to live and work, particularly when they were sacrificing so much to support the unscrupulous and corrupt Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai- Shek*
Save for a few officers who could enjoy the comfort of tea-garden bungalows, the young American air crews were living in shocking conditions. There were at this time absolutely no amenities of life – no lounging places, no Red Cross girls, nothing cool or refreshing to eat or drink, no near-by rest resort to visit on leave,. It was a dreads and dismal place where dysentery was frequent and malaria certain, where haggard, sweating men dragged their feverish bodies through the day, ate execrable food, and shivered on cramped cots through nights often made unbearable by mosquitoes, Men collapse under the strain, and officers frequently broken by distant superiors when the statistics of their performance fell short.
It is almost certain that none of the passengers were aware that they were embarking in an aircraft - the C-46 - that had had its license to carry passengers temporarily revoked. The demands of war had resulted in its rushed introduction into service long before its testing was complete. Crews servicing them at Chabua, however, had quickly dubbed them ‘the Curtiss Calamity,’ ‘the Plumber’s Nightmare,’ and ‘the Flying Coffin.’ Theodore White described the problem of the C-46 in LIFE magazine when reporting restrictions on ATC operations across the Hump had been lifted in 1945:
The early runs had been made in DC-3S, whose normal ceiling was 12,000 feet and which had to be flown at 17,000 and 18,000. The C-87 had trouble with icing, and maintenance of its four engines was a drain on limited repair facilities., [Brigadier General] Alexander [ATC commander]chose as his ship the new Curtiss C-46- a big-bellied, ugly work –ship. It was just beginning to come from the assembly lines in the U.S., but the need for it was so great that it was rushed to Assam before the bugs had been taken out. There was no time for routine test flying to build up a backlog of pilot experience and knowledge of spare parts requirements. The planes came out factory fresh and were test flown in actual operations under conditions no other plane in aviation history has had to meet. They were subjected to all the climatic conditions of India and the Hump – dust, excessive heart, flights with maximum loads at higher than maximum serviceable altitudes, at maximum rates of climb, through turbulent winds and storms . . . Critical parts began to give way all at once, at rates which no previous experience could have forecast. Men died in the air and on the ground learning about the ship, ironing out its weaknesses, beating out a body of experience in the presence of [a supposed] overpowering military emergency.
Sevareid wrote:
Pilots were overworked, and when they made the perilous flight to China and back the same day, having fought storm and fog and ice, they simply fell into their cots as they were, unshaved and unwashed, to catch a few hours of unrefreshing sleep before repeating the venture next day. Hardly a day passed that the operations radio did not hear the distress signal of a crew going down in the jungle valleys or among forbidding peaks. Few at that time were ever found again, and there was a saying among the pilots that they could plot their course to China by the line of smoking wrecks upon the hillsides. It is not often that one sees fear in the faces of fliers, but I saw it here. Each one reckoned that it was only a matter of time before his time would come; they had the feeling of men wo know they had been condemned.
The USAAF described the route between China and Yunnan Province s “the most dangerous ever assigned to air transport.” During the second half of 1943, 155 aircraft came down, a rate of nearly one a day.
* There were
alarming reports from Stillwell that China was duping America, the nationalist
Chinese were not willing to do what they promised, and that American blood and
treasure were being expended in a vast logistical effort that in actuality was
keeping a bunch of corrupt clowns in power. The American military mission in
China was a mess. FDR ignored it and continued to support Chiang with the fictional
view that Chiang had ‘unified China under his undisputed leadership.’
. . . . . . . . . . .
In his account one gets the sense that Sevareid was taken with the entire romance of his experience in the jungle. The so-called ‘Headhunters’ had behaved perfectly civil to him and his fellow travelers. They hd not demanded his head in exchange for his dropping into their territory unannounced, and it seemed a shame that the trappings of ‘civilization’ should be forced on these simple ‘ noble’ savages against their will. But the British Administrators’ view of the inhabitants of unincorporated territories in norther Burma was unequivocal. The Nagas in their native state lived fearful lives, dominated by daily concerns about security that limited their human experience to one not much better than survival. Sevareid got Adams wrong. His conclusion was that Adams believed ‘that the savages back in the hills were happy people. They were strong, cheerful, keenly intelligent, more straightforward and healthy both in mind and body than the Indians of the tepid plains. They were men of honor and instinctive dignity. What frightened him was that up to now, wherever ‘civilization’ and its ways had crept in among the Nagas, it had harmed and debased them.”
From an ethnological and cultural perspective, Sevareid was right: the colonial administrators had little time for the culture-changing impact of the missionaries and were afraid of the impact of opening up the hills to newcomers from Assam and Bengal. But in all other resopects Sevareid misjudged the British colonial administrators. Adams didn’t possess any romantic notions of the noble savage living a happy and uncomplicated life if unmolested from the outside. Adams was ultimately fearful of what life without the rule of law meant for the people of the hills when the only law was power, and the utilization of such power was evidenced through their brutal use of force against those unable to protect themselves, i.e. neighboring villages whom they slaughtered or enslaved to the last woman and child when the opportunity presented itself.
Adams and his colleagues had a Hobbesian vision of the lawless future for the Naga hills if the villages were not taken in hand by a benevolent authority. They understood from their own experience that only a strong, undivided government could provide and alternative to the state of existence that characterized the lives of many powerless Nagas. Without the intervention of the rule of law, life in the Control Area and the un-administered areas would remain one of ‘continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,’ As Hobbes famously described an ungoverned world.
. . . . . . . . . . .
In his account one gets the sense that Sevareid was taken with the entire romance of his experience in the jungle. The so-called ‘Headhunters’ had behaved perfectly civil to him and his fellow travelers. They hd not demanded his head in exchange for his dropping into their territory unannounced, and it seemed a shame that the trappings of ‘civilization’ should be forced on these simple ‘ noble’ savages against their will. But the British Administrators’ view of the inhabitants of unincorporated territories in norther Burma was unequivocal. The Nagas in their native state lived fearful lives, dominated by daily concerns about security that limited their human experience to one not much better than survival. Sevareid got Adams wrong. His conclusion was that Adams believed ‘that the savages back in the hills were happy people. They were strong, cheerful, keenly intelligent, more straightforward and healthy both in mind and body than the Indians of the tepid plains. They were men of honor and instinctive dignity. What frightened him was that up to now, wherever ‘civilization’ and its ways had crept in among the Nagas, it had harmed and debased them.”
From an ethnological and cultural perspective, Sevareid was right: the colonial administrators had little time for the culture-changing impact of the missionaries and were afraid of the impact of opening up the hills to newcomers from Assam and Bengal. But in all other resopects Sevareid misjudged the British colonial administrators. Adams didn’t possess any romantic notions of the noble savage living a happy and uncomplicated life if unmolested from the outside. Adams was ultimately fearful of what life without the rule of law meant for the people of the hills when the only law was power, and the utilization of such power was evidenced through their brutal use of force against those unable to protect themselves, i.e. neighboring villages whom they slaughtered or enslaved to the last woman and child when the opportunity presented itself.
Adams and his colleagues had a Hobbesian vision of the lawless future for the Naga hills if the villages were not taken in hand by a benevolent authority. They understood from their own experience that only a strong, undivided government could provide and alternative to the state of existence that characterized the lives of many powerless Nagas. Without the intervention of the rule of law, life in the Control Area and the un-administered areas would remain one of ‘continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,’ As Hobbes famously described an ungoverned world.
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