Burma Road

{{about|the Sino-Burmese road|the 1948 Siege of Jerusalem|Burma Road (Israel)|Japanese-built wartime railroad in Southeast Asia|Burma Railway}} [[Image:Burma and Ledo Road 1944 - 1945.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Burma Road and [[Ledo Road]] in 1944]] [[Image:Ledo Burma Roads Assam-Burma-China.gif|thumb|left|200px|Burma Road and [[Ledo Road]]]] [[File:Workers with hand tools building Burma Road2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Women and children using hand tools to build Burma Road]] The '''Burma Road''' ({{lang-zh|滇缅公路}}) is a [[road]] linking [[Burma]] (also called Myanmar) with the [[Southwest China|southwest of China]]. Its terminals are [[Kunming]], [[Yunnan]], and [[Lashio]], Burma. When it was built, Burma was a [[Crown Colony|British colony]]. The road is {{convert|717|mi|km|0}} long and runs through rough mountain country. The sections from Kunming to the Burmese border were built by 200,000 Chinese laborers during the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]] in 1937 and completed by 1938. It had a role in [[World War II]], when the [[British Empire|British]] used the Burma Road to transport [[materiel]] to China before Japan was at war with the British. Supplies would be landed at [[Yangon|Rangoon]] (now Yangon) and moved by rail to [[Lashio]], where the road started in Burma. In 1940 the British government yielded to Japanese diplomatic pressure to close down the Burma Road to supplies to China for a period of three months. After the Japanese overran Burma in 1942, the Allies were forced to supply [[Chiang Kai-shek]] and the nationalist Chinese by air. They flew these supplies from airfields in [[Assam]], India, over [[The Hump|"the hump"]], the eastern end of the Himalaya uplift. At the insistence of the United States, and much to the chagrin of Winston Churchill, the wartime leader of Britain, British forces were given, as their primary goal in the war against Japan, the task of recapturing Burma and reopening land communication with China. Under British command Indian, British, Chinese, and American forces, the latter led by [[Joseph Stilwell|''Vinegar Joe'' Stilwell]], defeated a Japanese attempt to capture Assam and [[Burma Campaign|recaptured northern Burma]]. In this area they built a new road, the [[Ledo Road]] which ran from Ledo [[Assam]], through Myitkina and connected to the old Burma Road at Wandingzhen, Yunnan, China. The first trucks reached the Chinese frontier by this route on January 28, 1945. (Winston Churchill, The Second World War, v. VI, chap. 11.) ==See also== {{Campaignbox Burma}} {{commons|Burma Road}} *[[Ledo Road]] *[[Yunnan-Burma Railway]] *[[Salween River Bridge]] == Further reading == *[[Jon Latimer]], ''Burma: The Forgotten War'', John Murray, (2004). ISBN 0-7195-6576-6. ==External links== *[http://ledoroad.home.comcast.net/~ledoroad/Ledo_Burma.html Burma Road photos] *[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jt5w3vqw_Bs WW2 - Campaigns in Burma] World War II Burma Road video *[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5BYTuGNjbdM&feature=related WWII - Why We Fight - The Battle of China 1943] video 1 *[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I3tDZ0Pntbk WWII - Why We Fight - The Battle of China 1943] video 2 *[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GEEO6kbsnc4&eurl=http://www.danwei.org/featured_video/the_burma_road_to_yunnan.php Life-line to China Re-Opened, 1945/02/12 (1945)] ''[[Universal Studios|Universal Newsreel]]'' *[http://outsideonline.com/outside/features/200310/200310_burma_1.html The Ghost Road] Mark Jenkins, ''Outside Magazine'', October 2003 *[http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0311/feature5/ Blood, Sweat and Toil along the Burma Road] Donovan Webster, ''[[National Geographic Magazine]]'', November 2003 *[http://www.crossculturedtraveler.com/Archives/Apr2004/Burma.htm Burma Road on bicycle] Erin O'Brien, ''The Cultured Traveler'', Vol 6 April 2004 *[http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FI23Ad06.html China to Europe via a new Burma road] David Fullbrook, ''[[Asia Times]]'', September 23, 2004 *[http://www.smh.com.au/news/south-east-asia/on-the-way-to-mandalay/2008/08/13/1218306954852.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2 On the way to Mandalay]''[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]'', August 16, 2008 *[[Los Angeles Times]], "[http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-road30-2008dec30,0,3240088.story Burma's Stilwell Road: A backbreaking WWII project is revived]", December 30, 2008. * [http://www.hoover.org/library-and-archives/collections/east-asia/featured-collections/joseph-stilwell Transcribed copies of Joseph Warren Stilwell's World War II diaries] are available on the Hoover Institution Archives website, with the original diaries among the [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf958006qb/ Joseph Warren Stilwell papers] at the Hoover Institution Archives. * [http://www.hoover.org/library-and-archives/collections/east-asia/featured-collections/ernest-easterbrook 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 the [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0q2nf01k/ Ernest Fred Easterbrook papers] at the Hoover Institution Archives. {{coord missing|Burma}}