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02:20China's leaders have neither planes, nor tanks, nor artillery, nor organized armies with which to stem the blood of one million Japanese soldiers.
02:28But with what little she has, China fights on under her leader, Chiang Kai-shek.
02:33♪♪♪
02:38Land is the one forbidding weapon China does have.
02:41Blast, burn, destroy everything on land, everything in the invader's path.
02:46Surrender only the scorched earth.
02:49♪♪♪
03:07Imperial Japan cuts 300,000 square miles out of the heart of Republican China.
03:12And China's coast is shackled to Japan's navy.
03:15A million refugees flee inland.
03:18The incident in China today will be war in the world tomorrow.
03:48♪♪♪
04:12Deeper and deeper into the interior, beyond the reach of the invaders.
04:16A mass migration toward the new capital of free China, toward Chongqing.
04:21Landlocked oasis in the midst of Asia.
04:24♪♪♪
04:44Free China's sole access to survival now lies southward across the Himalayas.
04:48Southward to Burma.
04:50Rangoon.
04:52Mandalay.
04:53Lashio are joined together by rail and road.
04:56From the port of Rangoon, supplies are carried north.
04:59To link China with Burma, a road is built from Chongqing to Lashio.
05:03The Burma Road.
05:05On this road hangs China's only hope of health, of life.
05:09The independent kingdom of Siam is Burma's eastern roommate.
05:12Siam.
05:13Land of teak and mangrove.
05:15Land of 16,000 temples.
05:18To reach Burma, to cut the Burma Road, to isolate China completely,
05:22the Japanese must first absorb Siam.
05:25♪♪♪
05:44And absorb it they do, without violence or resistance.
05:48Siam, already betrothed to Japan, succumbs gracefully the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
05:54The Japanese get their base for the invasion of Burma.
05:57Semi-Oriental ceremonies legalize the union.
06:00♪♪♪
06:13One week after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army
06:16bursts across the border of Siam into Burma.
06:20Five months of ravaging and slaughter lie ahead before the Allied defenders are split and shattered.
06:25Into central Burma go the invaders, on the road to Mandalay.
06:29Mandalay, whose conquest would cut the Burma Road.
06:33In May of 1942, the city falls.
06:37China is isolated.
06:39China is cut off from her allies.
06:41♪♪♪
06:46Now it is the British and Burmese who put their wealth and resources to the torch.
06:51These the enemy shall not have.
06:53The flames that were lit in China now scorch the earth that is Burma.
06:57♪♪♪
07:09The Allies are driven out of Burma.
07:12But the Japanese have been deafened by the sound of their own guns.
07:15For the wind is in the palm trees, and the temple bells they say,
07:19Come you back, you British soldier.
07:21Come you back to Mandalay.
07:23♪♪♪
07:35In Canada, in Quebec, Allied statesmen and the combined chiefs of staff
07:40plan their return to Mandalay, to Chongqing.
07:43China, Burma, India have moved to the forefront of global planning.
07:47China must be kept in the war.
07:49Land communications must be reopened.
07:52A supreme commander is chosen to direct the campaign in Southeast Asia,
07:56Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten.
08:00From the island of Ceylon, from bases in India,
08:03Lord Mountbatten marshals his sea power,
08:05without which no land campaign will be possible.
08:08♪♪♪
08:15The United States carrier Saratoga is welcomed to the Allied East Indies fleet
08:19by the crew of the British battleship, Queen Elizabeth.
08:22The Royal Navy, the United States Navy, and the navies of France,
08:26the Netherlands, Australia, South Africa,
08:29pool their warships to guard seven million square miles of ocean.
08:33♪♪♪
08:42The mission of the fleet in these waters is threefold.
08:45Deny the Indian Ocean and adjacent waters to the enemy.
08:48Cut his communications with Burma.
08:50Protect the Allied convoys,
08:52on whose safe arrival the destiny of Southeast Asia now depends.
08:56♪♪♪
09:03His Majesty's Indian ship.
09:05India is a focal point in the world's communications system,
09:09and Indians have been seafarers since prehistoric times.
09:12In World War II, Indian ships and sailors fight in the Battle of the Atlantic,
09:16in North Africa, and Sicily.
09:19And as the Royal Indian Navy,
09:21they help defend their homeland against Japanese invasion,
09:24keep the sea lanes open to liberate Burma,
09:26to save China.
09:28Cruisers like His Majesty's ship, Delhi,
09:30destroyers like the Rajput,
09:32patrol the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea,
09:35the Gulf of Manila,
09:37alert, efficient, ready to fight for the cause of freedom.
09:41♪♪♪
10:05Axis submarines, German, Italian, Japanese,
10:09prowl the Indian Ocean,
10:11an ever-constant threat to Allied convoys
10:13carrying men and supplies to China, Burma, India.
10:17The main body of the Japanese surface fleet
10:19has more than it can do to cope with the United States Navy in the Pacific.
10:23But there are Imperial submarines to spare.
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12:13Across three vast oceans, past three great continents,
12:17the supplies for victory reach the docks of Calcutta.
12:20From the United States, from Great Britain,
12:22from the factories of India herself.
12:25Half a world away, the war in Europe demands and consumes millions of men,
12:29billions of supplies.
12:31Half a world away, the war in the Pacific demands and consumes more millions of men,
12:36more billions of supplies.
12:38Calcutta gets only what can be spared from democracy's ever-emptying arsenals.
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13:15Cargo planes will fly a portion of the supplies into China
13:18over the Himalayan hump at the rate of 47,000 tons a month.
13:22Even so, the overwhelming mass of materiel must reach China overland
13:26or China will perish.
13:28The problem of getting the supplies through becomes the toughest of the war,
13:32of any war in history.
13:34The first link is a ramshackle railroad that hauls the supplies north from Calcutta.
13:39The first link is the easy link.
13:41♪♪♪
14:02With Southeast Asia overrun by the Japanese, with the Burma Road cut,
14:06Allied supplies pour from Calcutta to Lido on the border of India.
14:11From Lido, the Allies must now hack a road out of the central Burmese jungle,
14:15fighting the enemy and nature all the way to join up with the old Burma Road.
14:19♪♪♪
14:22Troops, supplies, equipment assembled to drive the Japanese from Burma
14:26to build the road and to lay a pipeline along the route
14:29to carry desperately needed oil and gasoline to China.
14:33But before engineers can build, armies must fight.
14:37And before armies can fight, man must wait on weather.
14:41The monsoon that storms in from the Indian Ocean at every change of season,
14:45lashing jungle and mountain with war, paralyzing torrents of rain.
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15:41The time has come.
15:43A truly cosmopolitan army stands ready for the bitter ordeal ahead in Burma.
15:47Scotsmen, Irishmen, Welchmen, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians,
15:54Gurkhas, Burmese, Africans, Chinese, British.
15:59The campaign begins late in 1943.
16:02Into the jungle fire the Allied troops.
16:05Into the jungle that reeks of steam with a thousand fetid eagles spread by German insects.
16:10Malaria, cholera, typhus, dysentery, beriberi, tropical fever.
16:16It will be a war of hunting and stalking, of ambush and infiltration,
16:20of sudden alarm by day, of strange terrors by night.
16:25♪♪♪
16:49Behind the combat troops come the engineers to lay their pipeline foot by foot,
16:53yard by yard, across the conquered jungle.
16:56♪♪♪
17:09And foot by foot, yard by yard, the road begins to creep across the conquered jungle.
17:15♪♪♪
17:44♪♪♪
18:11Deep in the tangled jungle of Burma, on the banks of the Irrawaddy,
18:15boat yards and then boats are hewn out of the forest.
18:18Amphibious craft for the next assault, the next landing.
18:22The interior of Burma is slashed and crisscrossed by wide, tumultuous rivers,
18:26almost impassable to man.
18:29But not to the men who are determined to conquer nature while conquering the Japanese.
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19:14Foot by foot, yard by yard, and then mile by mile,
19:18the men, the pipe, the road move forward, forward toward China.
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20:21♪♪♪
20:42Cracked Japanese units, conquerors of Singapore and Malaya,
20:45are decimated in the jungles of Burma.
20:48And the vultures, they never had it so good.
21:18♪♪♪
21:47The enemy has been challenged and beaten in jungle warfare.
21:50Churchill never made a truer statement.
21:53In spite of untold hardships and frustration,
21:56in spite of the hazards of nature and the enemy,
21:58the men who made up the Allied forces in Southeast Asia
22:01meet the challenge and overcome the obstacle.
22:04♪♪♪
22:34Come you back, you British soldier.
22:37Come you back to Mandalay.
22:40And back they come, the British 14th Army.
22:44♪♪♪
22:52Meanwhile, through jungle, swamp, and forest,
22:55over ridge, hill, and mountain, across river and ravine,
22:582,000 miles of pipeline,
23:01an enormous artery pumping a life-giving transfusion
23:03of gasoline and oil into China.
23:06♪♪♪
23:22Many called it impossible,
23:24but the Ledo Road becomes one of the greatest feats
23:26of construction in man's ancient endeavor
23:28to move from one place to another.
23:31♪♪♪
23:42The Japanese are cleared from central Burma.
23:47Now from Ledo, stretch highway and pipeline,
23:49south and east across Burma, to Laxia, into China.
23:54The Ledo Road, joined at last with the Burma Road, is open.
23:58♪♪♪
24:14In January 1945, the first convoys head for China,
24:18bearing relief for a free country from the free world.
24:21The supplies the ships brought in from assembly lines
24:23thousands of miles away,
24:25roll an endless procession toward China.
24:51♪♪♪
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25:48Chongqing, China.
25:51A journey of more than three weeks from Ledo.
25:54At last, at long last, China is one with her allies.
25:59At last, at long last, the east joins hands with the west.
26:05♪♪♪