US Land Bank, Railway Bonds, and Burma’s Land Reform

Winding Ledo Road.

It was one pale-dawn in mid or late 1973 when our platoon entered a friendly Kachin village about 5 miles far-south-west of the winding stretch of Ledo Road about 15 miles from Myitkyina. Our company forward outpost then was right on the Ledo Road at 8 miles Post from Myitkyinar.

Just the night before, our company was told of the battalion’s radio-intercept report of that resettlement village defended by a 20 strong people-militia unit was being raided by a roaming KIA unit and our platoon was sent straight away there that night to aid the village.

We have no motorized-transport and so we walked about 15 miles on the jungle paths intentionally avoiding unsealed Ledo Road to avoid possible KIA ambushes as some times KIA attack on a village was just to draw the reinforcing army-column into their ambush.

Blood Bath in a Kachin Resettlement Village

The village was one of those nameless government villages with just a number. All these villages are called Pa-la-na (1),  Pa-la-na (2),  Pa-la-na (3), etc and we didn’t even know how many of these Pa-la-na villages were in that vast remote area as there were so many of them along the famous old Ledo Road from Myitkyinar all the way to Hugaung Valley.