Thread: Stilwell Road

Editorial

Epic Wartime Road Project May Finally Be Put To Use
By a Times staff writer , Los Angeles Times
Published on 1/11/2009

1,000-mile Burma road that cost a man a mile still a painful memory

This stretch of Stilwell Road in Myitkyina, Myanmar, is typical of most of it. China is working to revive the route as a means of boosting trade with India.

Myitkyina, Myanmar - It was a road some said could not be built. Most of the men ordered to make it happen were black soldiers sorted into Army units by the color of their skin.

As World War II raged, they labored day and night in the jungles of Burma, sometimes halfway up 10,000-foot mountains, drenched by 140 inches of rain in the five-month monsoon season. They spanned raging rivers and pushed through swamps thick with bloodsucking leeches and swarms of biting mites and mosquitoes that spread typhus and malaria.

Some died from disease or fell to their deaths when construction equipment slid along soupy mud tracks and dropped off cliffs. Others drowned or were killed pulling double duty in combat against the Japanese.

They gave their lives to build a 1,079-mile road across northern Burma (now Myanmar) to reinforce Allied troops, a project derided by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as “an immense, laborious task, unlikely to be finished until the need for it has passed.”

Not long after the thankless job was done, two atomic blasts finished the war with Japan, and a hard-won passage that soldiers called “the Big Snake” was abandoned to the rain forest. The road had cost 1,133 American lives, a man a mile.

Evelio Grillo is one of the few vets still alive to tell the tale of the Stilwell Road.

The son of black Cubans who migrated to Florida to roll cigars in Tampa factories, Grillo graduated from Xavier University, a black college in New Orleans, and was drafted. He made staff sergeant in the Army's segregated 823rd Engineer Battalion.

In a black-and-white photo he sent home during the war, Grillo wears his khaki uniform and garrison cap, one eyebrow slightly arched, his eyes dark and mischievous. His favorite stories of his time in Burma are about cleaning up at poker, taking breaks to look at pretty girls and talking to tent rats as big as small cats.

He remembers making road trips across the border to India to buy light bulbs when the old ones popped in their sockets most nights in their camp. The new ones exploded just as quickly as the ones they replaced.
Grillo also tells of officers who ordered him to measure the road with lengths of chain for hours on end until someone finally pointed out that the Army jeeps had odometers.

”That was probably you,” Grillo's daughter Elisa Grillo Clay says from her father's bedside at a nursing home in Oakland, Calif., proudly calling him “a professional troublemaker.”

Grillo, 89, was one of more than 15,000 U.S. soldiers who put their backs into the punishing work that many thought was futile.

In a little more than two years, they completed the road from India to the western Chinese city of Kunming. The United States spent almost $149 million to build it and, at the request of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, it was named the Stilwell Road, after U.S. Gen. Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, the abrasive commander of Allied troops in the region who insisted that the project would work.

More than half a century later, China is working to resurrect it as the first major overland trade route since World War II with India, where business leaders, politicians and bureaucrats also are pressing their government to formally commit itself to the road as a link between the world's two most populous nations.

In 2005, Indian and Chinese survey teams began mapping out plans to rebuild the road. China has done all the reconstruction work, paving dozens of miles with granite stones packed into dirt. When the monsoons end, the surface is watered, rolled and baked hard in the sun, making it almost as flat as asphalt.

The road's western end, close to the Indian state of Assam, has been swallowed up by the jungle, and portions of it can be traveled only on foot. In the east, the upgraded section near the Chinese border is busy, but most of the traffic consists of small traders and tourists on short visits to gamble, or to see transsexual burlesque shows in Myanmar.
The rest of the road is usually so quiet that villagers stroll down the middle as if it was a sidewalk. When they hear the hum of an approaching vehicle, pedestrians choose a lane and let the pickups, stuffed with swaying passengers on wooden benches or stacked with rusty drums of gas, sputter past.

Grillo always had been a fighter. In wartime, he defied white commanders he considered racist. After peace returned and he moved to Oakland, he struggled for decades to bridge the differences between Hispanics and blacks, arguing that they were all part of the same community.
The body that fought off malaria 14 times during the war, the lifelong rebel who refused to bow to intolerance, is slowly surrendering to time. The strong hands that hacked and dug through Burma's jungle and rock are frail now. Grillo's right leg has been amputated at the knee. His dry, papery skin is drawn taught over atrophied muscles. His voice is a whisper, and each word he speaks is a tug of war between mind and mouth.

Squeezing the hand of his son and namesake, California Superior Court Judge Evelio M. Grillo, the old vet smiles at the memories of winning enough poker pots from his war buddies in Burma to buy his mom a house in Tampa, Fla.

But he would rather forget most of his two years at war. Grillo had to suffer the indignities of racial segregation on the 58-day passage to India aboard the Santa Clara, where the only comforts were reserved for the white officers.

The men who built the road weren't honored for their feat until 2004, when the Defense Department marked African American History Month at Florida A&M University.

By then, most of the veterans were long dead. The Pentagon could locate only 12 to invite to the ceremony in Tallahassee, and only six were well enough to travel, the American Forces Press Service reported at the time.
Today, the band of brothers who built the Stilwell Road has all but disappeared. But the feeling of resentment is still alive in Grillo.

He's happy to hear that the road is coming back to life. He summons all his strength to speak, whispering that it shows he and his comrades did a good job building it. But the proud smile on his wan face disappears with a question from his daughter.

”Do you think Winston Churchill was right when he said it was a waste of lives building the road?” she asks from the foot of his bed, speaking loud and slow to help him process the question. He closes his eyes and nods. An alarm sounds in the hall, calling a nurse to another room.

theday.com

Rise in accidents on Ledo Road due to dust
Written by KNG
Monday, 12 January 2009

There has been an alarming rise in road accidents because of heavy dust on the Ledo Road connecting Burma and India in Burma's northern Kachin state. There are at least 10 car accidents per month, said local travellers.

The Ledo Road also called Stilwell Road is being reconstructed from early November, 2008 by Yuzana Company based in Burma's former capital Rangoon and headed by U Htay Myint. The smog is created by rising dust from earth and sand stones on the road being dumped by the company, local people said.


Ledo or Stilwell Road is being rebuilt with earth and sand stones with Rangoon-based Yuzana Company since early November, 2008.

Most cars accidents occur with car divers speeding while crossing many short broken wooden bridges on the road not being able to see clearly, said local travellers.

There have been instances of cars hitting motorcyclists and people walking along the road. There are hit and run cases with the drivers fleeing with the cars from the scene, added a resident of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State who recently travelled to Danai (Tanai) city in Hukawng (Hugawng) Valley.

Currently, the local authorities of the Burmese military junta are not handling the accidents on Ledo Road correctly. On the contrary the officials are making money from goods cars and trucks heading for Hukawng Valley from the rest of Kachin state, said sources close to authorities.

The sources said, there are over 30 official checkpoints of the Burmese military and police based on the Ledo Road between Myitkyina-Danai. By ostensibly checking cars, which have killed people on the road, they stopping all goods trucks. There are goods trucks without licenses plying on the road for a long time. The soldiers and police in the two cities of Namti and Danai demand bribes to the tune of 100,000 Kyat (US $88) to 500,000 Kyat (US $ 439) per goods vehicle.

A goods truck driver in Myitkyina who recently came back from Danai said, "Only a single round-trip, I had to pay more than 2 million Kyat (US $1,754) as bribes to the Burmese soldiers and policemen in all checkpoints on the Ledo Road between Myitkyina and Danai."

A goods vehicle driver said, the military authorities earn at least 4 million Kyat (US $3,508) to 5 million Kyat (US $4,386) when they stop and demand money from a line of about 20 to 30 vehicles. The money is shared between the military and the police.

According to local travellers, Myitkyina-Danai Ledo Road is one of the busiest roads in Kachin state with 100 to 200 passengers and goods vehicles plying daily.

kachinnews.com

China beats India to Stilwell Road contract in Myanmar
Thu Jan 06 2011

China has stolen a march over India over the construction of a key section of the historic Stilwell Road. The Myanmar military government has awarded the contract for a 312-km road, linking Myitkyina in Kachin State to Pangsau Pass on the Arunachal Pradesh border, to Chinese company Yunnan Construction Engineering Group and the junta-backed Yuzana Group.

The 1,079-km Stilwell road, named after World War II General Joseph Warren Stilwell aka Vinegar Joe, links Ledo in Assam with Kunming in China through the Pangsau Pass.

In 2001, the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh had visited Myanmar and signed several proposals including opening the Pangsau Pass crossing for border trade. Since then, India had evinced interest in building a part of the road from Ledo to Tanai in Myanmar’s Kachin state, via the Pangsau Pass, a stretch of 230 km.

During the visit of Myanmar’s Vice-Senior General Maung Aye to India in April 2008, Rangoon asked New Delhi to build the Stilwell Road from Ledo to Tanai.

But it is now learnt that Yunnan Construction and Yuzana signed an agreement on November 22 for construction of the Myitkyina-Tanai-Pangsau Pass section of the road that was used by allied forces to supply China during World War II.

The Chinese delegation that signed the road agreement was led by the Communist Party Secretary of Yunnan province. The winding road is 160 km from Pangsau to Tanai, the headwaters of the Chindwin river, and another 152 km to Myitkyina.

indianexpress.com

Holly shit, can you just Imagine the blood shit and carnage on that highway caused by a population from those countries who have no respect for any sort of road rules.

My Great Uncle Colin worked on the initial construction of this road. Working for the Japanese, and their Korean subbies.

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

traders and tourists to drive from its eastern tea state of Assam into Burma, Thailand and eventually Cambodia and Vietnam

Yes, the traffic jams look bad judging by the picture

Can ya just imagine the awesome motorcycle trip? Vietnam - Cambodia - Thailand - Burma - India (Assam - Bihar - Nagpur - Mumbai - Goa!) Mind you I think the local bandits might find it a very lucrative highway to target in Burma and Nagaland.

I'd love to fly to India and ride an Royal Enfield back.

Actually doing that on a superhighway would suck...

Carry on.

Cheaper dried peas and peanuts?

you would think a railway would also be a good idea

Originally Posted by kmart

My Great Uncle Colin worked on the initial construction of this road

though not under these conditions

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

"The idea is that you can get in a car or bus and drive to Bangkok from Guwahati. Burma was the hurdle, but now it has opened up, thanks to the Americans. It marks a great opening of a new economic zone," he said.

Explain to me why the Americans are getting thanked.

Originally Posted by WujouMao

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

"The idea is that you can get in a car or bus and drive to Bangkok from Guwahati. Burma was the hurdle, but now it has opened up, thanks to the Americans. It marks a great opening of a new economic zone," he said.

Explain to me why the Americans are getting thanked.

Driving all the way Across America is a very enjoyable and interesting trip, which I do every year and would especially recommend to anyone from Britain. I would not even think of trying to drive to India.

Originally Posted by terry57

Holly shit, can you just Imagine the blood shit and carnage on that highway caused by a population from those countries who have no respect for any sort of road rules.

No, I was thinkin how long it would take to get a decent Curry delivered.
God, I'm a selfish fukker

^

Be a long way between shitters, hope the curry ain't off.

Originally Posted by BobR

Driving all the way Across America is a very enjoyable and interesting trip, which I do every year and would especially recommend to anyone from Britain. I would not even think of trying to drive to India.

Oh shit yes, a road trip through America would be an awesome trip, the country is stunning.

Love to do that. Good chance one would Finnish it up against a maybe on a great Asian over lander.

Good chance some mad fuk in a ten wheeler would head butt you on the wrong side of the road.

Absolute tards on the road.

Originally Posted by WujouMao

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

"The idea is that you can get in a car or bus and drive to Bangkok from Guwahati. Burma was the hurdle, but now it has opened up, thanks to the Americans. It marks a great opening of a new economic zone," he said.

Explain to me why the Americans are getting thanked.

I'm guessing because they believe that the sanctions the US led against Burma, that led to something resembling elections, are now being lifted.

won't be holding my breath .................

Should be finished in the next century, can you imagine the corruption involved?

Burmese military close Stilwell Road
19 June 2012


Yuzana company's checkpoint on Stilwell Road which collects tax from every vehicle and traveller.

Tensions are building in Kachin State after government troops have blocked Stilwell Rd., also known as Ledo Rd., connecting Myitkyina with Danai, on June 17. The Burmese army blocked travel on the road so they could control the movement of civilians and reinforce their military positions in Hpakant Township.

Last month, in Hpakant Township the government suspended all jade mining operations and warned civilians to return to their homes by May 30. Since then, intense fighting between the KIA and Burmese military have broken out in the area.

The travel restrictions on the Ledo road and other places in the region are creating problems for residents who are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a livelihood.

“Now more than 700 (Burmese) soldiers are marching through Danai town to 8 miles. We have heard more than 500 soldiers will join them,” said a resident from Kamaing.

Burma Army’s battalions, Infantry No. 86, IB No. 238 and Light Infantry Battalion No. 318, based around Danai, have been conducting daily military exercises outside the town. They are firing small arms and artillery. They are also laying land mines. Martial law has been imposed and residents are not allowed to leave their homes or farms.

Despite over a half-dozen meetings between Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and government peace team fighting has been occurring on a daily basis since the government broke a 17-year ceasefire over a year ago (June 9).

A new meeting between KIO and government peace team is planned for next week at neutral site between Bhamo-Loije border route with China, according to KIO officials.

kachinnews.com

Great LA Times piece. This is the kind of journalism that you don't get by 'citizen reporters' or CNN iReport, or fake tough questions by presenters who know little and by their producers who get their own info by blogs. It's why we still need professional journalism.

'Asian highway will put region on progress path'
Mar 20, 2013

IMPHAL: Royal Thai government representative Nalinee Taveesin on Tuesday said the northeast, especially Manipur, will embark on the path of rapid economic development once the 3200-km trilateral Asian highway connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand becomes operational.

The permanent representative of Thailand Prime Minister's Office, Nalinee, who led a high level Thai delegation in its two-day visit to Manipur, said Manipur should prepare for boosting the trade and commerce growth to match with the proposed opening of the trilateral Asian highway.

Manipur's Moreh town in Chandel district, the end point of National Highway 2 and the focal point of India's ambitious 'Look East Policy' through which the trilateral Asian highway would pass, is currently being developed at a fast pace in view of the opening up of the tri-country highway.

Notably, Thailand and other South East Asian countries are also responding with high expectation to India's Look East Policy with its Look West Policy. Officials here said the Asian highway would be operational by 2016 as the three linked countries are putting in best efforts to develop the route.

The Thai delegation have been touring the northeastern states at the initiative of the Indian Chamber of Commerce since last Saturday to access the region's potential for trade and investment, she told reporters here.

Stating that a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and Thailand is under process, she said the same is also aimed at promoting trade and investment between the two countries. The Thai delegation also met governor Gurbachan Jagat and chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh separately and discussed about promoting business ties between India and Thailand. The delegation that wrapped up its two-day Manipur stint on Tuesday also joined a meeting with state officials, traders, representatives of various civil bodies of the state on Monday evening in Imphal.

Other delegation members include General Noparrat Yodvimol and Shiva Thepcharoen, advisors to the Thailand Trade Representatives, Plan and Policy Analyst Supawadee Cherdamanee and three officials of the Royal Thai Embassy, New Delhi.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Yep, it'll make everything perfect. Just like ASEAN! Puppy dogs and candycanes for everybody.

India Divided on Opening of Stilwell Road
SUBIR BHAUMIK
Monday, May 13, 2013


Members of youth organizations in the Indian state of Assam demonstrate in favor of opening up the Stilwell Road, a 1,726-km route from Ledo in Assam to Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province.
(Photo: Subhamoy Bhattacharjee)

India appears divided over whether or not to reopen the World War II-era Stilwell Road for trade with China, as potential commercial benefits are weighed against national security concerns.

Retired Gen J.J. Singh, former chief of India’s army and now governor of the frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh, has strongly pushed for the road’s reconstruction. He argues that it should be opened to enable trade and traffic with Burma and China.

“China has developed its part of the road. They are helping Myanmar develop its bit of the road as well. So there is no point in India not developing its own part of the road,” Singh said recently while addressing a conference on India’s “Look East” policy at the National University of Singapore.

Singh, whose state hosts about 27 km of the old road, says his logic is simple: Only 61 km of the historical road passes through India, so it does not really matter whether India reopens the road or not. Chinese goods and people will be able to reach the Indian border in any case once the Burmese part of the road is opened.

India has been reluctant to open the Stilwell Road due to both military and commercial considerations.

Indian generals fear that it could be an “asset” for the Chinese in the event of a war between the two Asian giants.

In November last year, retired Lt-Gen J.R. Mukherji opposed the opening of the Stilwell Road at a conference in Calcutta.

A former chief of staff of India’s eastern command, Mukherji stressed that the road would give the Chinese an advantage in the event of armed conflict.

Many other military commanders support Mukherji’s assessment and say the Chinese could use the road to move troops and supplies, slicing through India’s defenses in Arunachal Pradesh if war were to break out.

Indian commerce ministry officials fear that the Stilwell Road could be used by the Chinese to dump their goods into India’s northeast.

When completed by the Western Allies in 1944, the 1,726-km road was seen as a lifeline to China in the war against Japan, keeping Gen Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army supplied.

It was originally called the Ledo Road, after the small town in the Indian state of Assam at which it begins. Later it was renamed after the American Gen Joseph Stilwell, who had pushed for its construction.

Wartime records indicate that 15,000 American soldiers and 35,000 local workers were used to build the road through daunting mountainous terrain and malaria-ridden forests at a cost of $150 million. More than 1,000 Americans and many more locals died during the construction of the road, which terminated at Kunming in China’s Yunnan province.

While China has upgraded its part of the Stilwell Road into a highway that can easily handle modern container traffic, Burma is now renovating its part of the road, with the work farmed out to a Chinese company.

The Indian part of the road has gone to seed, especially a stretch from Jairampur to Pangsau Pass.

Much of the road has been swallowed up by jungle, barely negotiable on foot. Ethnic insurgents active in the area make passage dangerous.

Local border trade takes place with Burmese traders who are allowed to sell their products at a bazaar on the Indian side two days a week. Indian traders are also allowed to sell their products on the Burmese side two days a week.

Officials of the Assam Rifles paramilitary force, which guards the border with Burma, say local products are traded at these bazaars.

Local politicians, citizens’ groups and businesspeople in India’s northeast have been upbeat about proposals to revive the Stilwell Road by the Burma government, which came to power in 2010.

It is rebuilding the 312-km stretch of the road from Myitkyina in Burma’s northern Kachin State to the Pangsau Pass, nicknamed “Hell’s Pass,” on the border with India’s Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh.

This section of the road remains in poor condition, though the road from Myitkyina to the Chinese border is passable.

Studies by the Indian Chamber of Commerce earlier in the decade indicated that trade via a renovated Stilwell Road could cut down up to 30 percent of transportation costs for goods shipped between India and China.

“Major production hubs can come up in northeast India and northern Myanmar if this road is opened. That will change the economy of the area,” says Nazeeb Arif, a former secretary general of the Indian Chamber of Commerce. “This is the only surface link between India and China capable of taking a substantial volume of the growing bilateral trade.”

But with policy makers in Delhi ambivalent and opinions still divided, it may be a while before the vintage road is fully open to trade and human traffic between the two Asian giants.

irrawaddy.org

India-Myanmar-Thailand highway to start by 2015-16

The proposed trilateral highway covering India, Myanmar and Thailand is expected to be operational by 2015-16.


Trilateral Highway will connect India, Myanmar and Thailand

Leading a business delegation, India’s Commerce and Industry Minister, Anand Sharma was attending the World Economic Forum on East Asia 2013 in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar.

“India is working closely with Myanmar and Thailand to develop the trilateral highway as we call it. We are half-way there, and this should be fully operational by 2015-16,” Sharma said during a session – The Long-Term View.

The idea of the highway, from Moreh in Manipur to Mae Sot in Thailand, via Myanmar was conceived at the trilateral ministerial meeting on transport linkages in Yangon in April 2002.

The highway represents the most significant step in the establishment of connectivity between India and South East Asian countries. “

The free trade agreement between India and ASEAN will act as a catalyst to boost trade and investment ties with countries in the region including Myanmar,” Sharma was quoted as saying by The Economic Times.

traveldailymedia.com