Frank and Joe Sandoval grew up in a predominantly Hispanic-American community in the small town of Silvis, Illinois, which is near the Illinois-Iowa border. They grew up on Second Street, which is only about 1.5 blocks long with 25 houses. What makes Second Street unique, however, is that more than 100 individuals from that street have served in the U.S. military. That is a higher number than any other U.S. street of similar size. 

The Sandovals’ parents were born in Mexico. During the Mexican Revolution, they came to the United States in 1917. Their sons were born in Silvis.

Frank Sandoval quit high school to work on a full-time basis. When he was inducted into the U.S. Army in October 1942, Sandoval had been working at the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal on present-day Arsenal Island (which is near Silvis). After basic training, Silvis began his active service in Southeast Asia as part of Company C of the 209th Combat Engineering Battalion in September 1943. 

His brother Joe also served in the U.S. Army during World War II, seeing action in Africa, the Middle East and Europe in the Army’s 41st Armored Infantry Division.

Why was the Ledo Road built? 

Japanese forces occupied Burma (now known as Myanmar) in 1942. This cut the last supply line between China and the outside world. There were over 800,000 Japanese troops in China, and they controlled all the coastal cities (as well as other Chinese territory). Allied forces needed China to keep fighting the Japanese; If the Japanese conquered China some of those troops would be redeployed and would be fighting U.S. troops. 

The Allies began a military airlift to supply China; however, an airlift could not supply the country adequately. Therefore, a land supply route was needed. In late 1942, construction on what became known as the Ledo Road began in Ledo, India. Ledo was chosen as the location for the road’s beginning because it was near the northern terminus of a rail line from the ports of Calcutta and Karachi.  

The Ledo Road was built by U.S. Army Engineers, construction battalions and native labor from Ledo through the mountains and jungle of northern Burma, to a junction with the Burma Road. It was built through difficult mountain terrain, across monsoon-fed swamps and rivers and through the thickest jungle. 

Frank Sandoval and the 209th Combat Engineers were sent halfway around the world – from “Illinois to California to New York to Rio, around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Pacific to India.” 

In India, the battalion was among many assigned the very difficult task of building the Ledo Road. It would be the overland connection that the Allies would use to deliver urgently needed supplies to China in order to better combat the Japanese forces in that theater of the war. 

Construction on the road began in the town of Ledo in northeastern India and ended in southwestern China in the city of Kunming. When it was finished, the Ledo Road traversed 1,072 miles in India, Burma and China. 

Construction of the Ledo Road began after the Japanese successfully stopped the flow of Allied supplies on the Burma Road. The Ledo Road provided an alternate route for the Allies to transport military equipment and other materiel to help fight the Japanese. In addition, the road made it possible to deliver huge quantities of critically needed food.

“China was starving,” wrote Marc Wilson in a 2004 column about Sandoval in the Iowa-based Quad-City Times. So among the key reasons that the road was built through the jungle from India through Burma to China was “in hopes of feeding a starving nation.”

Building the Ledo Road was one of the most critical and difficult road-building projects of World War II. Its builders had to contend with the ever-present threat of Japanese attacks as they worked. The road-builders also had to hack through jungles populated with leeches, snakes and tigers; navigate the steep and hazardous terrain of the Himalayan region; and build bridges across rivers that could rise as high as 45 feet above normal in monsoon season. One of the chief engineers on this project was Colonel (later General) Lewis A. Pick. He described building the Ledo Road as “the toughest job ever given to the U.S. Army Engineers in wartime.”

Charles Monroe worked with Sandoval, helping to build the Ledo Road. He later recalled the challenges of “making it wider and putting in drain lines (culverts), which was very hard work, also widening the sharp turns.” Monroe also said, “Many of us had our first experience in operating heavy equipment, bulldozers, road graders, rock crushers and heavy dump trucks.” 

To better understand the scope of the work, the New York Times reported that enough soil was moved “to build a solid dirt wall three feet wide and 10 feet high from New York to San Francisco.”

Other key facts about the Ledo Road include:

There were debates at the highest levels over the usefulness of the Ledo Road – both before its construction and after it was completed. Military planners worried whether the road could be completed in time (to help the war effort) or even at all.  

Construction began on December 16, 1942 and the Ledo Road officially opened on May 20, 1945. Before the war ended in September, it is estimated that 147,000 tons of supplies were transported by trucks over the road. Further military use ended in March 1946. The Ledo Road was officially “open” for only the last three months of the war.

Frank Sandoval died in June 1944 after he and other members of the 209th were helping to defend an airbase in northern Burma that was under Japanese attack. Sandoval was killed by Japanese forces along the banks of the Irrawaddy River. He was only 23 when he died. In a letter to his parents, a military chaplain wrote, “Frank was killed in action and suffered no agony, as he was killed by enemy gunfire in an attack.” The chaplain also noted, “Please do not picture the worst, for he went quickly, perhaps not knowing it.”

Frank’s brother Joe died during the war as well. He was killed in action in Germany in April 1945, the last full month of the war in Europe. 

The bodies of the Sandoval brothers were eventually returned to Illinois; they are buried in Rock Island National Cemetery. Silvis’ Second Street was renamed Hero Street U.S.A. in 1967 as a tribute to those who had lived on that street and served in the U.S. military in times of war. Hero Street Park USA was dedicated four years later to specifically honor the Sandoval brothers and several other Hispanic-American servicemen from that street who made the ultimate sacrifice.

While much of the Ledo Road has been reclaimed by the jungle, portions are still in use.

Men from the following companies, regiments and battalions were part of the crew that built the Ledo Road.

FreightWaves thanks its several sources for this article, particularly Carl W. Weidenburner, whose research and article on the Ledo Road can be found at http://www.cbi-theater.com/ledoroad. Weidenburner’s father was one of those U.S. servicemen who helped to build the Ledo Road.

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