As part of their 2012 National Reunion, veterans of Detachment 101 of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS-101) will hold a panel discussion entitled, Our Hearts Never Left: The Wartime and Humanitarian Efforts of Detachment 101 at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 19, 2012 at the Residence Inn DFW Airport South. The event is free and open-to-the-public.
A precursor of today’s Army Special Forces, OSS-101, was an elite group of American volunteers serving in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II. The men were trained in guerilla warfare, demolition, psychological operations, and other unconventional warfare methods to serve as a linchpin in the Allied fight against the Japanese in Burma. Members of OSS-101 parachuted behind enemy lines to rescue downed airmen, as well as train and lead volunteers of various ethnic groups to ambush the Japanese occupiers. The Jingpaw Rangers, staffed almost entirely by Kachin volunteers, forged a particularly strong bond with their American counterparts.
OSS-101 veterans returned home after the war to become founding members in the Central Intelligence Agency, doctors, teachers, real estate and oil prospectors, and fathers. The bonds forged in battle were never forgotten by either side.
Starting in the early 1990s, Detachment 101 veterans provided humanitarian services and programs to their brothers and sisters overseas. The two most successful – a farm substitution program that swaps opium crops for sustainable food called “Project Old Soldier” and an English and mathematics education program for children called “101 Schools” – continue to help thousands of Kachin to this day.
“We know that the Kachin still speak of our wartime accomplishments and the bond of brotherhood,” said Sam Spector, OSS-101 veteran and co-founder of the 101 Schools program.
“We started these programs to show that we haven’t forgotten them.”
Founders of these programs will be present on the panel, as will other OSS-101 veterans – Kachin-American Badangli Maran, son of the Burma Administrator of Project Old Soldier; and Dr. Troy Sacquety, Association historian and author of an upcoming book about the unit.
Discussion moderator, Dr. Richard B. McCaslin, chairs the Department of History at the University of North Texas and is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author and editor of historical nonfiction.
The Residence Inn Dallas, DFW Airport South is located at 2200 Valley View Lane, Irving, Texas, 75062.
