Workers with hand tools building Burma Road2

The Burma Road () was a road linking Burma (now known as

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

) with

southwest China Southwest China () is a region in the south of the People's Republic of China. Geography Southwest China is a rugged and mountainous region, transitioning between the Tibetan Plateau to the west and the Chinese coastal hills (东南丘陵) and ...

. Its terminals were

Kunming Kunming (; ), also known as Yunnan-Fu, is the capital and largest city of Yunnan province, China. It is the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province as well as the seat of the provincial government. The headquar ...

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...

, and

Lashio Lashio ( ; Shan: ) is the largest town in northern Shan State, Myanmar, about north-east of Mandalay. It is situated on a low mountain spur overlooking the valley of the Yaw River. Loi Leng, the highest mountain of the Shan Hills, is located ...

, Burma. It was built while Burma was a

British colony The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Bri ...

to convey supplies to China during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

. Preventing the flow of supplies on the road helped motivate the occupation of Burma by the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent fo ...

in 1942. Use of the road was restored to the Allies in 1945 after the completion of the

Ledo Road The Ledo Road (from Ledo, Assam, India to Kunming, Yunnan, China) was an overland connection between India and China, built during World War II to enable the Western Allies to deliver supplies to China and aid the war effort against Japan ...

. Some parts of the old road are still visible today.

History

The road is long and runs through rough mountain country. The sections from Kunming to the Burmese border were built by 200,000 Burmese and Chinese laborers during the

in 1937 and completed by 1938 in order to circumvent the Japanese blockade of China. The construction project was coordinated by

Chih-Ping Chen Chih-Ping Chen (陳質平; pinyin: Chēn Zhìpíng) (13 November 1906 – 11 February 1984) was a student activist, military officer, statesman, and diplomat for the Republic of China from the 1920s through the mid-1970s. He served in student a ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

used the Burma Road to transport

materiel Materiel (; ) refers to supplies, equipment, and weapons in military supply-chain management, and typically supplies and equipment in a commercial supply chain context. In a military context, the term ''materiel'' refers either to the specifi ...

to China, especially after China lost sea-access following the loss of

Nanning Nanning (; ; za, Namzningz) is the capital and largest city by population of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in Southern China. It is known as the "Green City" because of its abundance of lush subtropical foliage. Located in the South of ...

in the

Battle of South Guangxi The Battle of South Guangxi () was one of the 22 major engagements between the National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In November 1939, the Japanese landed on the coast of Guangxi and captured ...

. Supplies from San Francisco for example would land at Rangoon (now

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

), moved by rail to

where the road started in Burma, up steep gradients before crossing into China over the

Wanding Wanding, also known as Wanting (; meaning in Tai Nüa language: "the sun shining overhead"), is a frontier town in Ruili City, Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. Wanding is a town in the official division system, but there are three admini ...

bridge. The Chinese stretch of the road continued for some five hundred miles through rural

terrain before ending up in Kunming. In July 1940, Britain yielded to Japanese diplomatic pressure and closed the Burma Road for three months. The Japanese overran Burma in 1942, closing the Burma Road. The Allies thereafter supplied China by air, flying "over

The Hump The Hump was the name given by Allied pilots in the Second World War to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains over which they flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek an ...

" from India, which initially proved fatally dangerous and woefully inadequate, leading U.S. army general

Joseph Stilwell Joseph Warren "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell (March 19, 1883 – October 12, 1946) was a United States Army general who served in the China Burma India Theater during World War II. An early American popular hero of the war for leading a column walking ...

to obsessively pursue the goal of reopening the Burma Road. The Allies recaptured northern Burma in late 1944, which allowed the

from

Ledo, Assam Ledo is a small town in Tinsukia district, Assam, India. , the Ledo railway station is the easternmost broad gauge railway station in India. The town is also the starting point of Ledo Road, also known as Stilwell Road, a highway built during W ...

to connect to the old Burma Road at Wanding, Yunnan province. The first trucks reached the Chinese frontier by this route on January 28, 1945.Winston Churchill. ''The Second World War'', v. VI, chap. 11.

Films set on the Burma Road

* ''

Burma Convoy ''Burma Convoy'' is a 1941 film about a truck convoy on the Burma Road directed by Noel M. Smith and starring Charles Bickford and Evelyn Ankers. It was also known as ''Halfway to Shanghai''. Plot In the Burmese town of Lashio, the convoys of ...

'' (1941) * ''

A Yank on the Burma Road ''A Yank on the Burma Road'' is a 1942 drama film directed by George B. Seitz and starring Laraine Day, Barry Nelson and Keye Luke. It is also known as ''China Caravan'' and ''Yanks on the Burma Road''. It was produced as part of a cluster of Ho ...

'' (1942) * '' Bombs over Burma'' (1942) * ''

Objective, Burma! ''Objective, Burma!'' is a 1945 American war film that is loosely based on the six-month raid by Merrill's Marauders in the Burma Campaign during the Second World War. Directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn, the film was made by Warner ...

'' (1945)

References

External links

* Merrill's Marauders: Protecting The Burma Road
Burma Road photosWW2 - Campaigns in Burma
World War II Burma Road video
WWII - Why We Fight - The Battle of China 1943
video 1
WWII - Why We Fight - The Battle of China 1943
video 2
Life-line to China Re-Opened, 1945/02/12 (1945)
''

Universal Newsreel Universal Newsreel (sometimes known as Universal-International Newsreel or just U-I Newsreel) was a series of 7- to 10-minute newsreels that were released twice a week between 1929 and 1967 by Universal Studios. A Universal publicity official, S ...

''
The Ghost Road
Mark Jenkins, ''

Outside (magazine) ''Outside'' is an American company and magazine focused on the outdoors. The first issue of ''Outside'' was published in September 1977. History Outside founders were Jann Wenner (the first editor in chief), William Randolph Hearst III (its first ...

'', October 2003
Blood, Sweat and Toil along the Burma Road
Donovan Webster, ''

National Geographic Magazine ''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...

'', November 2003
China to Europe via a new Burma road
David Fullbrook, ''

Asia Times ''Asia Times'' (), formerly known as ''Asia Times Online'', is a Hong Kong-based English language news media publishing group, covering politics, economics, business, and culture from an Asian perspective. ''Asia Times'' publishes in English and ...

'', September 23, 2004
On the way to Mandalay
'

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'', August 16, 2008 *

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

,
Burma's Stilwell Road: A backbreaking WWII project is revived
, December 30, 2008.
Transcribed copies of Joseph Warren Stilwell's World War II diaries
are available on the Hoover Institution Archives website, with the original diaries among th
Joseph Warren Stilwell papers
at the Hoover Institution Archives.
Transcribed copies of the World War II diaries of Ernest F. Easterbrook
Stilwell's executive assistant in Burma (as of 1944) and son-in-law, are available on the Hoover Institution Archives website, with the original diaries among th
Ernest Fred Easterbrook papers
at the Hoover Institution Archives.

{{Coord missing, Myanmar World War II sites in Burma Roads in Myanmar Roads in China Second Sino-Japanese War Military history of China during World War II South-East Asian theatre of World War II World War II operations and battles of the Southeast Asia Theatre World War II sites in China China–Myanmar relations Logistics routes of World War II

History

Films set on the Burma Road

Further reading

See also

References

External links