Short answers, pulled from the story.
In Burmese, Myitkyina means "near the big river." The city sits on the west bank of the Ayeyarwady River, just 40 kilometers downstream from the confluence of its two headstreams, the Mali and N'mai rivers.
Japanese forces captured Myitkyina and its airbase in 1942. In August 1944, Allied forces under General Joseph Stilwell recaptured the city after a prolonged siege involving Nationalist Chinese divisions, the Chindits, and Merrill's Marauders, against the besieged 33rd Imperial Japanese Army under General Masaki Honda.
Myitkyina was the northernmost river port and railway terminus in Myanmar, giving it critical rail and water links to the rest of Burma. It also lay on the planned route of the Ledo Road, a supply corridor connecting India to China.
According to government data, almost two billion US dollars in jade was exported yearly in 2010 and 2011. Fighting between Kachin Independence Army rebels and the government has since caused most businesses in the region to decline sharply.
Myitkyina has a population of approximately 150,000. Residents include Kachin, Shan, Bamar, Burmese Gorkha, and smaller communities of Chinese and Indians, with Burmese serving as the common national language and Kachin spoken widely among the Kachin community.
George J. Geis was an American Baptist missionary who arrived in Myitkyina with his wife in the late 1890s and in 1900 requested permission to build a mansion in the town. In the 1950s, a later Baptist missionary named Herman Tegenfeldt built Geis Memorial Church in his honor, which became part of the Kachin Baptist Convention.