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By Root 1201 0

Carrier losses had been heavy, the losses in trained pilots even worse. American submarines took a deadly toll of the shipping that flowed along the arteries of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It was increasingly obvious that every basic assumption of the Japanese war plan was incorrect: the Allies had not quit, they had not suffered significant defeats on the perimeter, they had not been too busy elsewhere to bother with Japan, they were not—worst misassessment of all—effete and decadent. Now the Aleutians were gone, and the north was quiet, but in a great irregular arc from southern China all the way around to the central Pacific the battles raged; the skies filled with smoke, the jungle with the rattle and blast of explosions, and the seas with sudden death.

The Allied situation in China did not significantly improve during 1944. The Chinese were still all but exhausted, riven by internal dissensions, and prey to conflicting advice and advisors. The American Generals Stilwell and Chennault completely disagreed on how to conduct the war. Stilwell’s basic idea was that with proper training, organization, and equipment the Chinese could win their own war, and he constantly pressed that they be encouraged to do so. Chennault’s view was that air power was the answer, and he had progressively moved into the limelight. By late 1943 Chennault’s 14th Air Force was dominating the sky over southern and central China and striking Japanese targets on Formosa. It was also eating up the major portion of the supplies reaching China.

The Japanese responded to Chennault’s pressure by proving that Stilwell was right, or at least that Chennault was wrong, and that air power alone could not win the war. Through the middle months of 1944 they launched a series of limited offensives in south and east-central China that eventually overran more than half of Chennault’s air bases, and quite literally knocked the pins out from under him. Stilwell was still fully occupied trying to keep open some kind of cooperative link with the British in Burma, and for a few weeks it looked as if China might collapse at last and simply bow out of the war. Stilwell’s recommendations were met with the same irascibility with which they were offered, and when Roosevelt suggested that he be put in supreme command of the entire Chinese war effort, Chiang Kai-shek responded by demanding he be recalled home. Reluctantly, Roosevelt gave in, having little real option; Stilwell left the theater and was replaced by General Albert C. Wedemeyer. Wedemeyer’s tact achieved what Stilwell’s brilliance and acerbity could not. Cooperation with the Burmese front was preserved, Chiang was mollified, and the Japanese were brought to a halt by the end of the year. China remained in the war, though Chennault, who had steadfastly maintained he could win the whole war with 147(!) bombers and fighters, did not do so. As the year ended, both sides were licking their wounds, and the Japanese, temporarily halted, were catching their breath before resuming the attack on the airfields.

The Chinese theater and events in Burma were closely intertwined. Indeed, much of the rationale of the Burmese campaign, aside from the natural desire of the British to regain imperial territory, was provided by the necessity of keeping supply routes open through to China. Burma, of course, was a relatively isolated country in its own right, and before the war its links with India had been almost exclusively by sea. Therefore, to reach China, or even to keep the Allied armies fighting in northern Burma, it had been necessary to construct huge and costly facilities from India to Burma. In addition to a great number of airfields, there was built the once-famous Ledo Road, from the northeastern extremity of India up at the top of the Brahmaputra Valley, across the Naga Hills and into Burma. It took several hundred thousand support troops and laborers in India to keep the soldiers fighting in Burma.

For late 1943 and 1944 the Allies decided on a four-phase operation. Wavell was relieved