"The only American officer standing in the way of Sino-American cooperation”: Haydon L. Boatner, Joseph Stilwell’s Right-hand Man, in the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II

General Joseph W. Stilwell and Haydon L. Boatner were the only American officers appointed directly by Chiang Kai-shek in the Second World War. These two "Old China Hands" served in Tianjin and subsequently became language students and US army attaches in Beijin. After Pearl Harbor, they returned to assume key roles in the China-Burma-India Theater (CBI). In the wake of the disastrous First Burma Campaign, Chiang appointed Stilwell the commanding general and Boatner the chief of staff of the Chinese Army in India. In the training center in Ramgarh, India, and the war front in north Burma, American and Chinese officers frequently clashed over command. As Stilwell's surrogate, Boatner became a lightning rod drawing the ire of Chinese officers, especially Sun Liren and Zheng Dongguo, who called him "the only American officer standing in the way of Sino-American cooperation." Boatner, however, outlasted Stilwell to become the only US general who served throughout the war in the CBI and who represented the United States in two Japanese surrender ceremonies - in Zhijiang and Nanjing. Using Chiang's and Stilwell's diaries, Boatner's papers, and other sources, this talk examines the contentious US-China relations in war as exemplified by Boatner's conflict with his Chinese peers in India and Burma, especially during the Battles of the Hukawng Valley and Myitkyina, and cautions against interpreting Sino-American conflicts in moralizing, racializing, or oreintalizing terms.