‘WWII Museum’ to cement US-India relations: Ambassador Eric Garcetti

 OUR CORRESPONDENT

ITANAGAR: US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti inaugurated ‘The Hump WWII Museum’, the second museum in Asia, dedicated to the fallen airmen of the Allied forces during WWII. The ‘Hump World War II’ museum at Pasighat in the East Siang district of the state will pay tribute to ‘Hump Operation’, one of the most remarkable feats of aviation history. “We come here today not just to mark history but to make history. To see the ways in which each one of us is called not just to witness the past but to do something to change the future,” Garcetti said on the occasion. He profusely thanked and expressed gratitude to the Indian government, the Arunachal Pradesh government, and the team behind the museum, headed by its director, Oken Tayeng. “This is not a gift only to Arunachal Pradesh or to the families whose lives will be affected when they come here; it is a gift to India and to the world,” he said.

The Hump, Garcetti claimed, is not just a museum in some remote part of India, but already a world-class museum. Reiterating that the United States is committed to its friendship with India, the US Ambassador informed that on Wednesday there was a meeting between NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and top space officials of India to deepen bilateral cooperation across a broad range of innovation and research-related areas, especially in human exploration and Earth science. He said that NASA this year would facilitate an Indian being a part of space exploration from its station in the US. Reminding that the US will always remain grateful to the people of Arunachal Pradesh for saving lives and helping US pilots and soldiers during World War II while flying over the Hump, Garcetti said that such ‘human values’ bind the two countries together in friendship. “Today, how can we not but step up to be a great friend to India, to recognize her borders, all of them, to respect them, and to call on the world to do the same?” he said.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu, while welcoming the Ambassador and his entourage, said ‘The Hump’ was a tribute from the people of Arunachal Pradesh to the fallen heroes of World War II. He said that history should not be allowed to fade away with time and expressed optimism that the museum will remind the younger generation of the daredevilry of the Allied forces who flew over the ‘Hump’ to fight against the threat to democracy and freedom. Informing that about 30 locations where remnants of WWII aircraft are still believed to exist, Khandu urged the US Ambassador to facilitate exploration to these locations to retrieve the remnants and assured full support of the state government. He also lauded the efforts put in by Oken Tayeng and his team to make his vision a reality. “All the remnants and relics, including letters of US airmen communicating to their families recovered from the crash sites, are being displayed in the museum, which will soon attract tourists from across the globe.

Tayeng informed that remnants of crushed war planes available in the museum were collected from eight sites in the state. “Lot of challenges faced by the search teams to recover the remnants of the fallen aircraft,” Tayeng added. During World War II, the Allied Forces, led by the United States, flew supplies over the Himalayas. The route was known as ‘The Hump’ because of the altitude of the Eastern Himalayas. Many of their aircraft went missing in Arunachal Pradesh and were never found in the remote jungles and mountains. The Hump route traverses regions of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Tibet, Yunnan (China), and Myanmar, and it is estimated that nearly 650 aircraft crashed in these areas during World War II due to the extreme flying conditions. In 1942, when the Japanese Army blocked the 1,150-kilometre Burma Road, a mountain highway connecting Lashio in present-day Myanmar and Kunming in China, the US-led allied forces had to undertake one of the biggest airlifts in aviation history. The pilots of the Allied forces nicknamed the route ‘The Hump’ because their aircraft had to navigate deep gorges and then quickly fly over mountains rising beyond 10,000 feet.

From 1942 to 1945, military aircraft transported nearly 6,50,000 tonnes of supplies like fuel, food, and ammunition from airfields in Assam to those in Yunnan, China. The mountains of Arunachal Pradesh often get unpredictable weather, making it difficult for planes and choppers to fly even now. According to a US Embassy handout from 2017, investigators from the Defence POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) returned to India that year to continue the search for the remains of US personnel missing since World War II. In 2016, the DPAA deployed a team to northeast India for 30 days in search of the remains of unaccounted-for US airmen. There are approximately 400 US airmen missing in India, most of whose remains are believed to be located in the Himalayan Mountains in northeast India.

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