China, US transfer remains of US servicemen killed in WW 2

Chengdu: The Chinese and United States militaries have held a ceremony to honour the US servicemen who flew over the Himalayas during World War II to provide supplies to Chinese forces.

"In SW China’s Chengdu, the Chinese and US militaries held a ceremony to transfer the remains of American airmen recovered along the Hump Route back to the United States," Mao Ning, Spokesperson of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, posted on X on Tuesday.

"Eighty years after they crossed the Himalayas to aid China’s resistance against Japanese aggression, these heroes are finally homeward bound — a return made possible with China’s humanitarian assistance," the spokesperson added.

The mission undertaken by US servicemen to fly from British India, over the Eastern Himalayas, and into Southwest China, was one of the most daunting ones ever undertaken during the course of World War II. 'The Hump', as the route came to be called, was so treacherous that some US servicemen called it 'hell in the air', according to US historian and journalist, Theodore H. White.

The 500-to-800-mile air route stretched from Assam in British India to Kunming in China. It was operated by the USAAF Air Transport Command from April 1942 to November 1945 to resupply Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese forces. The mission was undertaken after the Imperial Japanese Army rolled into British Burma in April 1942. They closed down the Burma Road, a 717-mile (1,154 km) highway linking Lashio in British  Burma with Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan province.

China during World War II had itself been in a state of intermittent conflict for over 12 years. In 1927, the Communists under Mao Zedong started a brutal Civil War against the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) government in the country. In 1937, Japan invaded China, starting the equally brutal Second Sino-Japanese War. (ANI)