The Forgotten CBI: China-Burma-India Theater

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 The Forgotten CBI: China-Burma-India Theater


“The U.S. War Department hoped that a revitalized Chinese Army might offer a defense of China effective enough to ease pressure on the United States and the British Commonwealth in the Pacific.”[1]

The China-India-Burma Theater at the strategic level, was determined to be the theater and geography that would tie down hundreds of thousands to millions of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers and requisite resources. This theater stretched from India through Burma, Indochina, on up into Eastern China.

As complex as the climate and terrain, so too were the Allied Chains of Command, principle leaders, and logistics.

How then did the Allies get involved in such a complex theater in comparison to the overall Pacific and European theaters of World War II? It was the rapid Japanese advance across South East Asia and their hunger for the natural resources contained therein.

Burma was a British colony, as were Singapore, Hong Kong and India proper. Indochina was the domain of the French (Laos, Vietnam) and Indonesia to the Netherlands. Japanese expansion of its ‘Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ ultimately forces the European colonies into war with Japan, and after the 7 December, 1941 raid on Pearl Harbor, the United States.

As the Unites States came to command the Pacific Theater it had to tackle first, the Chinese theater as it related to the Pacific campaign, and with her Allies (British, Dutch, French) the expanding India-Burma theater.

The United States had, for some time (generations in fact) been deeply involved in China. It was a bastion of American missionaries and entrepreneurs. And there was a belief, however misguided, that China, with over 400 million people, would be able to greatly assist the United States in the war with Japan. “Many Americans agreed with the Christian Science Monitor, that China was the best base, both geographically and politically, for any serious offensive against Japan.”[2]

In 1941 to early 1942 the decisions on how to tackle the Japanese across the vastness of the Pacific and Asia had not been settled. Many truly believed that the only logical approach would be on the Chinese mainland. The ‘island hopping strategy’ of ‘Plan Orange fame, had yet to be worked out.

1942 saw Americans dispatched to China to link up with the Generalissimo, Chiang Kai Shek. And the British, losing Hong Kong and Singapore rapidly in 1942, prepared for the defense of Burma and India. Soon, the United States was involved in India and Burma as well.

And U.S. involvement continued for four years. What did involvement in the China-India-Burma (CBI) theater produce?

 

“When the U.S. declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, the Japanese were fighting both the Nationalists and Communist forces. The lifeline to the American-supported Nationalist forces in 1943 following the loss of key bases on the Burma Road was the Lido Road from India and across northern Burma to China. If the road was severed by the Japanese, Chinese resistance might collapse and Japan's warlords could transfer numerous divisions to other war zones.”[3]

 

The intelligence estimates of 1941 on into 1942 all determined that a) the Central Pacific thrust was the most direct route to striking towards the Japanese home islands, b) that the expansion of the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater would do much to tie down the majority of the Imperial Japanese Army and serve as a key flank in the overall Pacific campaign, and that c) the CBI effort would be an ‘economy of force’ effort ie. minimum U.S. forces would be thrown against the CBI theater with the British largely in charge.


For the majority of the Pacific campaign, the bulk of the Imperial Japanese Army was focused on the Asian mainland. Of the 51 Divisions, the IJA maintained over 45+ in Burma to Thailand, Manchuria, China proper and Korea. Should the United States not have supported the Chinese Nationalists, nor involved itself in the defense of Burma, the IJA could have likely strike out for and seized New Guinea, held the Philippines and perhaps have even expanded offensive operations in the Aleutians. The CBI was and continues to be a little studied backwater of the overall theaters of World War II. But its significance and the sacrifice of American, British, French, Dutch, Burmese, and Chinese forces can never be underestimated.

[1] Romanus, Charles F. and Sunderland, Riley, Time Runs Out in CBI, United States Army in WWII, China-India-Burma-Theater, Center of Military History Unites States Army, Washington D.C. 1959, p3

[2] Spector, Ronald H., Eagle Against the Sun, The American War with Japan, The Free Press, Macmilan, New York, 1985, p328.

[3] National Park Service, “War in The Pacific: The First year”, A Guide to the War in the Pacific, https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/npswapa/extContent/wapa/guides/offensive/sec4.htm, accessed on 12 June, 2018


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