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American Guerrilla
Paperback
- GenresMilitary History
342 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1990
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48 people want to read
About the author
Roger Hilsman
29 books5 followersRoger Hilsman was an American soldier, government official, political scientist, and author. He graduated from West Point in 1943. He served with the U.S. Army unit 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), more popularly known as Merrill's Marauders. He participated in infantry operations during the battle for Myitkyina in May 1944 and suffered multiple stomach wounds from a Japanese machine gun while on a reconnaissance patrol. After recovering in army field hospitals, Hilsman joined the Office of Strategic Services. By now a captain, he at first served as a liaison officer to the British Army in Burma. Then he volunteered to be put in command of a guerrilla warfare battalion, organized and supplied by OSS Detachment 101, comprised of some three hundred local partisans, mercenaries, and irregulars of varying ethnicities, operating behind the lines of the Japanese in Burma.Soon after the Japanese surrender in 1945, Hilsman was part of an OSS group that staged a parachute mission into Manchuria to liberate American prisoners held in a Japanese POW camp near Mukden. There found his father, who became one of the first prisoners to be freed. His father asked as they hugged, "What took you so long?" (Decades later, Hilsman related his wartime experiences in his 1990 memoir American Guerrilla: My War Behind Japanese Lines.) He later was an aide and adviser to President John F. Kennedy and, briefly, to President Lyndon B. Johnson, in the U.S. State Department, serving as Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research during 1961–63 and Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs during 1963–64. There Hilsman was a key and controversial figure in the development of U.S. policies in South Vietnam during the early stages of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He left government in 1964 to teach at Columbia University, retiring in 1990. He was a Democratic Party nominee for election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 but lost in the general election. He was the author of many books about American foreign policy and international relations.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton named Hilsman to the National Security Education Board, where he served until his term expired in 1999.
Hilsman remained active in local politics, where he was a member of the Democratic Town Committee in Lyme for over two decades. During the 1990s he led a letter-writing campaign to the Connecticut State Police on behalf of safer street speeds in Lyme. He continued to publish books on a variety of subjects into his eighties. He and his wife later lived in Chester, Connecticut, and Ithaca, New York. Through 2014, Hilsman was still listed as a professor emeritus at Columbia University.
Hilsman died at the age of 94 on February 23, 2014, at his home in Ithaca, New York due to complications from several strokes. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on August 28, 2014, with full honors.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton named Hilsman to the National Security Education Board, where he served until his term expired in 1999.
Hilsman remained active in local politics, where he was a member of the Democratic Town Committee in Lyme for over two decades. During the 1990s he led a letter-writing campaign to the Connecticut State Police on behalf of safer street speeds in Lyme. He continued to publish books on a variety of subjects into his eighties. He and his wife later lived in Chester, Connecticut, and Ithaca, New York. Through 2014, Hilsman was still listed as a professor emeritus at Columbia University.
Hilsman died at the age of 94 on February 23, 2014, at his home in Ithaca, New York due to complications from several strokes. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on August 28, 2014, with full honors.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 16, 2015
An enjoyable,accessible and intelligent autobiography of Roger Hilsman's WWII experiences. Mr. Hilsman graduated from West Point in 1943 and was a young officer with the U.S. Army in WWII. He saw action with the famed Merrill's Marauders in Burma,badly wounded and then attached to the O.S.S. and sent to Manchuria to work with the Soviets. He had an eventful war. By sheer chance his father was a prisoner of war of the Japanese and also in Manchuria at the end of the war so Roger Hilsman was there to liberate his father. Like I said Mr. Hilsman had an eventful war and his telling of it is very readable.
There isn't much else to say. World War II was a huge war in which millions were effected. There are many stories and Mr. Hilsman's in one of those tales and he does a good job in writing about it. If you like autobiographies,especially military themed bios,then give "American Guerilla" a try.
There isn't much else to say. World War II was a huge war in which millions were effected. There are many stories and Mr. Hilsman's in one of those tales and he does a good job in writing about it. If you like autobiographies,especially military themed bios,then give "American Guerilla" a try.
February 22, 2026
American Guerrilla by Roger Hilsman (1990)
Roger Hilsman led a remarkable life in the twentieth century: West Point cadet, wounded guerrilla fighter in the jungles of Burma, OSS commander, Yale PhD, and ultimately Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asian Affairs during the Kennedy administration. American Guerrilla covers all of this terrain, and therein lies both its appeal and its frustration.
The memoir opens with Hilsman's unusual path at West Point. The son of a career Army officer, he entered in 1939 but was forced to withdraw after a severe bout of double pneumonia, returning in September 1940. Pearl Harbor settled any lingering doubts about completing his education, particularly given that his father was stationed in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked. The elder Hilsman ended up commanding some 800 Philippine Army soldiers on Davao, where he was eventually ordered to surrender to a vastly superior Japanese force. He survived the war as a POW at Mukden in Manchuria — a thread that quietly runs through the entire narrative.
Hilsman's account of his wartime service in Burma is the strongest part of the book. Graduating with his accelerated West Point class in June 1943, he was sent to what remained of Merrill's Marauders, a force already decimated by disease. He writes vividly about being severely wounded in an early engagement - eighteen bullet holes in his clothes, one bullet deflected by a cigarette case his father had given him. His recovery introduced him to two new medical realities: sulfa drugs in the field and the newly available penicillin, which he credits with saving his life, and morphine, which made sleep possible.
He eventually took command of Detachment 101, an OSS unit operating entirely behind Japanese lines in the mountains and jungles of Burma. The unit's accomplishments were genuine: the rescue of 425 Allied airmen flying the Hump, over the Himalayas into China, and a spectacular ambush using detonator cord strung along a line of hand grenades on a narrow road that killed nearly 400 Japanese soldiers in a single engagement. Detachment 101 also provided continuous intelligence to headquarters for air targeting, maintained reliable radio contact with its logistics base, and routinely created makeshift landing strips in rice paddies for liaison aircraft to evacuate the wounded. It is a genuinely impressive combat record. And the Army did arrange for Hilsman to be at Mukden to rescue his father, whom he found to have been very well treated by the Japanese!
The final section of the book turns to postwar policy, and this is where American Guerrilla becomes considerably less reliable. Hilsman is a skilled political animal, and his discussion of Vietnam reflects it. He defends Kennedy, criticizes General Harkins and Walt Rostow with evident relish, and presents himself as a clear-eyed skeptic about American military escalation. He had consulted with Robert G.K. Thompson, the British adviser whose successful handling of the Malayan Emergency in 1948 gave him real credibility on counterinsurgency doctrine, and Hilsman uses this association to position himself on the right side of history. His analysis of strategic hamlets, Diem's Catholic northern roots governing an overwhelmingly Buddhist south, and Rostow's obsession with bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail are all worth reading.
What is conspicuous by its absence is any honest accounting of his role in the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem on November 1, 1963. Hilsman was the author of the August 24, 1963 cable to Saigon stating that the United States would support a military coup if Diem refused to remove his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu from power. Two months later, the generals moved, and both Diem and Nhu were murdered. Hilsman professes surprise and insists that exile, not assassination, was the intended outcome. Perhaps, but a man of his experience with the realities of local politics and irregular warfare should have known better. He had learned that lesson himself in Burma, when a tribal subordinate he sentenced to death was tortured overnight by fellow tribesmen before the execution could be carried out. His own lesson at the time: carry out the order immediately, before events take their own course.
A politician rewriting his history is hardly a surprise, but the omission is a serious one, and it diminishes the book's value as a historical document. American Guerrilla is at its best as a combat memoir and at its worst as a policy apologia. Readers interested in the OSS, Burma, or Merrill's Marauders will find the first half well worth their time. Those looking for an honest reckoning with America's slide into Vietnam should look elsewhere.
Roger Hilsman led a remarkable life in the twentieth century: West Point cadet, wounded guerrilla fighter in the jungles of Burma, OSS commander, Yale PhD, and ultimately Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asian Affairs during the Kennedy administration. American Guerrilla covers all of this terrain, and therein lies both its appeal and its frustration.
The memoir opens with Hilsman's unusual path at West Point. The son of a career Army officer, he entered in 1939 but was forced to withdraw after a severe bout of double pneumonia, returning in September 1940. Pearl Harbor settled any lingering doubts about completing his education, particularly given that his father was stationed in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked. The elder Hilsman ended up commanding some 800 Philippine Army soldiers on Davao, where he was eventually ordered to surrender to a vastly superior Japanese force. He survived the war as a POW at Mukden in Manchuria — a thread that quietly runs through the entire narrative.
Hilsman's account of his wartime service in Burma is the strongest part of the book. Graduating with his accelerated West Point class in June 1943, he was sent to what remained of Merrill's Marauders, a force already decimated by disease. He writes vividly about being severely wounded in an early engagement - eighteen bullet holes in his clothes, one bullet deflected by a cigarette case his father had given him. His recovery introduced him to two new medical realities: sulfa drugs in the field and the newly available penicillin, which he credits with saving his life, and morphine, which made sleep possible.
He eventually took command of Detachment 101, an OSS unit operating entirely behind Japanese lines in the mountains and jungles of Burma. The unit's accomplishments were genuine: the rescue of 425 Allied airmen flying the Hump, over the Himalayas into China, and a spectacular ambush using detonator cord strung along a line of hand grenades on a narrow road that killed nearly 400 Japanese soldiers in a single engagement. Detachment 101 also provided continuous intelligence to headquarters for air targeting, maintained reliable radio contact with its logistics base, and routinely created makeshift landing strips in rice paddies for liaison aircraft to evacuate the wounded. It is a genuinely impressive combat record. And the Army did arrange for Hilsman to be at Mukden to rescue his father, whom he found to have been very well treated by the Japanese!
The final section of the book turns to postwar policy, and this is where American Guerrilla becomes considerably less reliable. Hilsman is a skilled political animal, and his discussion of Vietnam reflects it. He defends Kennedy, criticizes General Harkins and Walt Rostow with evident relish, and presents himself as a clear-eyed skeptic about American military escalation. He had consulted with Robert G.K. Thompson, the British adviser whose successful handling of the Malayan Emergency in 1948 gave him real credibility on counterinsurgency doctrine, and Hilsman uses this association to position himself on the right side of history. His analysis of strategic hamlets, Diem's Catholic northern roots governing an overwhelmingly Buddhist south, and Rostow's obsession with bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail are all worth reading.
What is conspicuous by its absence is any honest accounting of his role in the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem on November 1, 1963. Hilsman was the author of the August 24, 1963 cable to Saigon stating that the United States would support a military coup if Diem refused to remove his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu from power. Two months later, the generals moved, and both Diem and Nhu were murdered. Hilsman professes surprise and insists that exile, not assassination, was the intended outcome. Perhaps, but a man of his experience with the realities of local politics and irregular warfare should have known better. He had learned that lesson himself in Burma, when a tribal subordinate he sentenced to death was tortured overnight by fellow tribesmen before the execution could be carried out. His own lesson at the time: carry out the order immediately, before events take their own course.
A politician rewriting his history is hardly a surprise, but the omission is a serious one, and it diminishes the book's value as a historical document. American Guerrilla is at its best as a combat memoir and at its worst as a policy apologia. Readers interested in the OSS, Burma, or Merrill's Marauders will find the first half well worth their time. Those looking for an honest reckoning with America's slide into Vietnam should look elsewhere.
December 23, 2020
Hilsman didn't write as a writer. His descriptions of his time in combat were tedious. Where this book shines is in his reflections toward the end -- when he worked for the Kennedy and then Johnson administrations -- summing up what he learned as an Army officer leading guerrilla operations and then reflecting on his role as a policy advisor during the Vietnam conflict. Those reflections are very interesting and poignant. And valuable.
May 24, 2015
American Guerrilla is an exciting first-hand account of guerrilla warfare behind the enemy lines fighting against Japanese troop in the jungles of Burma during World War II. The book is capped off in an informed – and subsequently validated – perspective on counterinsurgency and American military developments leading to the flawed decisions to commit regular troops in Vietnam.
I met the author, Roger Hilsman, when he taught at Columbia University. He was my senior year thesis adviser. He was a West Point Graduate. I was kicked out West point at the end of my junior and enrolled in Columbia just months later. So, I found Professor Hilsman's perspectives and experience fascinating.
The author’s experience in Burma formed his perspectives, which were borne out later as the way modern warfare is conducted today by American troops and the other world armies. American Guerrilla provides fascinating historical perspective that could be used to better understand the context of the past decades counter-insurgency warfare in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. Any student of modern warfare, global politics, and the human search for peace in a world of conflict should read this biographical memoir. In order to better understand the failures of the military and political strategies in Vietnam under the Johnson administration, one should read Hilsman's WWII memoirs of fighting alongside Kachin, Karen, Shan and Chinese insurgents against the Japanese occupiers of Burma in World War II.
Roger Hilsman was my teacher. He was also a soldier, statesman, and scholar who actively participated in world affairs when the United States faced great threats – during World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War. The stories he relates in America Guerrilla detail how Roger Hilsman was formed in the crucible of war as a young man fighting in Burma during World War II. These lessons would fuel his debates with policy-makers and military leaders when the author later served as Assistant Secretary of State for Far East Affairs under President John F. Kennedy. The events related in this book provide an enthralling story which highlight how the author was a man of ideals and actions. His story is fascinating— one not to be forgotten
I met the author, Roger Hilsman, when he taught at Columbia University. He was my senior year thesis adviser. He was a West Point Graduate. I was kicked out West point at the end of my junior and enrolled in Columbia just months later. So, I found Professor Hilsman's perspectives and experience fascinating.
The author’s experience in Burma formed his perspectives, which were borne out later as the way modern warfare is conducted today by American troops and the other world armies. American Guerrilla provides fascinating historical perspective that could be used to better understand the context of the past decades counter-insurgency warfare in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. Any student of modern warfare, global politics, and the human search for peace in a world of conflict should read this biographical memoir. In order to better understand the failures of the military and political strategies in Vietnam under the Johnson administration, one should read Hilsman's WWII memoirs of fighting alongside Kachin, Karen, Shan and Chinese insurgents against the Japanese occupiers of Burma in World War II.
Roger Hilsman was my teacher. He was also a soldier, statesman, and scholar who actively participated in world affairs when the United States faced great threats – during World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War. The stories he relates in America Guerrilla detail how Roger Hilsman was formed in the crucible of war as a young man fighting in Burma during World War II. These lessons would fuel his debates with policy-makers and military leaders when the author later served as Assistant Secretary of State for Far East Affairs under President John F. Kennedy. The events related in this book provide an enthralling story which highlight how the author was a man of ideals and actions. His story is fascinating— one not to be forgotten
February 24, 2014
Was not exactly what I expected.
Reading the opening and seeing where the author was discussing his academic writings and policies, pretty much set the theme for the book. Was not what I expected.
However, with that said, it was still a good read. The author makes some great points in regards to Guerrilla warfare. Especially as it pertains to the Vietnam war (of course with the benefit of hindsight). But is a good overall read describing the challenges of fighting behind enemy lines with various national fighters.
One of the greatest parts of this book was reading how the author was able to liberate his father from a Japanese POW camp. What a rare and unique opportunity. But again, was very academic and just did not have the emotion and feeling that one would expect at the opportunity to get their father out of a POW camp. The author does a good job describing his relationship and challenges with his father which was more academic than emotion.
Reading the opening and seeing where the author was discussing his academic writings and policies, pretty much set the theme for the book. Was not what I expected.
However, with that said, it was still a good read. The author makes some great points in regards to Guerrilla warfare. Especially as it pertains to the Vietnam war (of course with the benefit of hindsight). But is a good overall read describing the challenges of fighting behind enemy lines with various national fighters.
One of the greatest parts of this book was reading how the author was able to liberate his father from a Japanese POW camp. What a rare and unique opportunity. But again, was very academic and just did not have the emotion and feeling that one would expect at the opportunity to get their father out of a POW camp. The author does a good job describing his relationship and challenges with his father which was more academic than emotion.
May 27, 2016
While well written, the work is a self-important memoir of the author's service during World War II in Burma and with the OSS as well as his brief career in government service through President Kennedy. It centers more on personal events and little to military history. There is more about partying than tactics or strategy.
August 6, 2011
WWII American warfare in Burma - very interesting.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews