Joseph W. Stilwell

Joseph W. Stilwell was a four-star general in n the US Army during World War II. He headed the US campaign against Japanese forces in both Burma and China, the Chinese Nationalist government having such confidence in him that they gave him command of its forces in that theater.

Born in Palatka, FL, in 1883, Stilwell attended the US Army's Military Academy at West Point, NY, graduating in 1904. He served in the Philippines, then with the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during WW I. After that he became an instructor at West Point. He studied and became fluent in the Chinese language, and was posted to the Chinese city of Tienjin from 1925-28 and was US military attache in Beijing from 1935-39.

With the advent of World War II, Gen. Kai-Shek Chiang, the head of the Chinese Nationalist government, placed Stilwell in command of the Chinese Fifth and Sixth Armies in Burma. The Japanese had more and better equipped and trained troops, however, and in 1942 Stilwell's forces were driven out of Burma into India after a brutal 140-mile retreat through the jungles. Stilwell was eventually given command of all US forces in the China-Burma-India theatre. In 1945 Stilwell accepted the surrender of 100,000 Japanese troops in the Ryukyu Islands, ending the war in the Pacific.