The Yunnan-Burma campaigns of 1944 are significant for several reasons. First, they were the first joint Sino-Anglo-American offensive of the war and, second, they represented the first successful major Chinese counter-offensive against the Japanese. Chinese scholars are only just beginning to study these campaigns in depth and have as yet done little to explain how the Chinese armies were trained and equipped and what tactics Chinese Nationalist forces had developed for the campaigns. In addition to providing a narrative of the campaigns, the presentation by Professor ZANG Yunhu (Department of History, Beijing University ) was significant in filling this gap, though more needs to be done to meld his descriptive essay with issues of larger strategic and political importance. Professor ASANO Toyomi (Liberal Arts Department, Chûkyô University ) had been assigned the topic of viewing these campaigns from the Japanese side. In his presentation, Asano explained that the principal Allied objective in these campaigns was to secure the Ledo Road , constructed to reopen a land supply route from the Assam Railway terminal at Ledo in Bengal , over the mountains to Kunming in Nationalist-held China . The Japanese objective, on the other hand, was to interdict that supply route and thus it was critical for the Japanese to occupy northern Burma and Yunnan . After the Allied armies entered Yunnan and Burma , the Japanese army began its ill-fated Imphal offensive with consequences that were to be disastrous for its efforts in Yunnan and northern Burma .