While American troops advanced across the European continent and the vast reaches of the Pacific, they were also fighting and dying in a remote theater viewed as a sideshow by Allied leaders. When the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt and his advisers had regarded Nationalist China as a possible base against Japan, as well as a major belligerent and future great power. Although American leaders continued to hold lofty expectations regarding China's postwar role, they had adopted by mid-1944 a more realistic estimate of Chinese military prowess and were limiting American efforts on the Asian mainland to the minimum necessary to maintain Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist regime. The main task in the theater from the American point of view was to reopen China's overland communications with the outside world. In this theater of limited resources, great distances, challenging terrain, and Byzantine politics, American military leaders thus intended to commit few if any conventional forces, yet needed to secure northern Burma to ensure the flow of supplies to the embattled Nationalists. Here, as well as in China itself, the opportunities for a large program of special operations appeared evident. Yet the Army was slow to turn to such activities, again largely leaving the field to the British and the Office of Strategic Services.
For the Americans most of the fighting in the theater would take place in Burma, a land that offered uniquely favorable conditions for unconventional warfare. In the rugged mountains, narrow river valleys, monsoons, and dense tropical vegetation of Burma units on both sides relied heavily on the few existing roads and railways to move troops and supplies. These routes appeared vulnerable to operations by well-trained light infantry or by guerrillas operating in the thick jungles. To operate in this difficult assistance from the natives was imperative. A number of different national groups, each with its own customs and dialect, inhabited the area. The Kachins offered the best prospect of cooperation. Living in the hills along the northern border, these primitive tribes had benefited for many years from British support against the Shans and Burmese. To gain independence from British rule, the latter had aided the Japanese invaders, who, in turn, joined them in burning and plundering Kachin villages. Full of resentment, the Kachins, if provided with equipment and leadership, were more than ready to fight the Japanese. Around them, the Office of Strategic Services would build perhaps the most successful guerrilla organization of World War II.
