TWO FOUR-TON FORD TRUCKS HEAD UP THE BURMA ROAD TOWARD CLOUD-WREATHED MOUNTAINS OF CHINA'S YUNNAN PROVINCE ON WAY TO CHUNGKING, 1,000 MILES AWAY.
The only way American aid can reach China is over the famous Burma Road, inspected on these pages by LIFE Photographer Hedley Metcalf.
American traffic experts, military experts, malaria experts have already begun the great job of making the Burma Road work.
They propose to cut the 1,400-mile trip to Chungking from two weeks to six days, to increase the monthly tonnage moved from 6,000 tons to 30,000 tons and to lengthen the average life of a Burma Road truck above its present low point of five trips.
The goal of all this effort is to pour American planes and trucks and gasoline and tools into Free China.
The Japanese Army has other plans. It has massed a force of 100,000 soldiers in French Indo-China, in position to strike at the Burma Road across Thailand or across China's Yunnan Province.
China has broadly hinted that the U.S. and Britain have secretly agreed to help her defend the Burma Road. American volunteer fliers, many of them former members of the U.S. Army Air Corps., are already flying U.S. military planes in Burma.
The remote Burma Road could well be the fuse that would set off the great Pacific war.
Along hairpin turn on Burma Road, road workers keep off rain with straw hats and matting.
Dry season starts in November.
At first malaria killed 80% of the workers, enfeebled the rest.
Past Rangoon's temples, new Chevrolet trucks head for Lashio in the Interior.
Wooden chassis have been put on here. Gasoline to keep the trucks going makes up about 60% of the load.
Crated planes and trucks are unloaded from American Export freighter onto Rangoon docks. So crowded is the port that assembly of planes and trucks is often in open air.
At Lashio railhead coolies load the gasoline drums in the streaming mud. For fear of bombing by Japanese planes based only 500 miles away, such oil dumps are dispersed.
Veteran of the road is this bashed and muddy Dodge truck. A mission of American mechanics is on way to Burma to teach Chinese how to keep their machines in repair.
A road casualty, one of 2,000 a month, litters the Burma Road. Tires and parts will be salvaged.
Improperly loaded trucks often break axles.
Most driving is in low gear.
LIFE'S COVER: The spruce-looking officer on the cover is Douglas MacArthur, Commanding General of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East.
A stickler for sartorial splendor, he is wearing a richly gold-embroidered dress cap with his everyday service uniform.
By rights he could also wear the 14 decorations that have been bestowed upon him by the U.S., France, Belgium, Hungary, Italy Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Mexico, Rumania and Ecuador.
Adapted by Carl W. Weidenburner
from the December 8, 1941 issue of
LIFE.
Portions copyright 1941 Time, Inc.
Along hairpin turn on Burma Road, road workers keep off rain with straw hats and matting.
Dry season starts in November.
At first malaria killed 80% of the workers, enfeebled the rest.
Past Rangoon's temples, new Chevrolet trucks head for Lashio in the Interior.
Wooden chassis have been put on here. Gasoline to keep the trucks going makes up about 60% of the load.
Crated planes and trucks are unloaded from American Export freighter onto Rangoon docks. So crowded is the port that assembly of planes and trucks is often in open air.
At Lashio railhead coolies load the gasoline drums in the streaming mud. For fear of bombing by Japanese planes based only 500 miles away, such oil dumps are dispersed.
Veteran of the road is this bashed and muddy Dodge truck. A mission of American mechanics is on way to Burma to teach Chinese how to keep their machines in repair.
A road casualty, one of 2,000 a month, litters the Burma Road. Tires and parts will be salvaged.
Improperly loaded trucks often break axles.
Most driving is in low gear.
