Summary

Japanese officials meeting in strategy session. Japanese infantry on mission to cut Chinese supply lines during 2nd Sino-Japanese war. Black smoke rises as they move along a river bank. Chinese prisoner-workers are forced to rebuild railroads destroyed by the Chinese people during their great Westward trek. Japanese soldier closely guards workers. A Japanese army armored train underway on the rebuilt railroad, as Japanese soldiers cheer. Animated map shows China's supply lines by sea, to Tsingtao, Hangchow, and Amoy, cut off by Japanese naval blockade. Japanese Navy launch with officers and crew moving near commercial ships as they take over Chinese river ports. War materiel and other supplies destined for China, including trucks, sit idle, unable to be transported to their destinations. Large oil tanks and drums of gasoline are shown, as well as gun barrels and a flightline filled with parked Curtiss P-36 Hawk aircraft. The Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Asakaze (DD-3) and another, next to it, in a Chinese river port. A Japanese freighter with anchored weighed, secured by long lines to a wharf. Small boats flying Japanese Naval ensigns are next to it. View of map showing china, Burma, Indo-China, and Chungking, with Japanese blockading fleet stationed in the South China Sea. It traces path of narrow gauge rail line from Indo-china to Kumming,China, where it connected to an overland road to Chungking. Next it traced the old Camel Caravan route, across China, from Russia. Narrator notes these were to small to be useful and too close to Japanese-occupied territory. Next, the map traces a railroad that from the port of Rangoon to Lashio, Burma. It is separated from the road to Chungking, by mountains and gorges. Views of the actual mountainous terrain. Animal pack trains moving through the area. Construction engineers in a large drafting room designing a road to transit the area. View of modern road-building caterpillar tractor equipment of the type needed to accomplish this. View of Chinese laborers using manpower instead. They push large rollers and employ pickaxes and other hand-held tools to carve away and dig road beds. Masses of Chinese laborers at work, carving a road along the edge of a mountain. Two-men teams using manual tampers to pound down the roadbed. Children are employed along with adults. A woman with a baby on her back, pounding large rocks into gravel, surrounded by other children doing the same. View from above of the "Burma Road," the product of their labors, winding its way through the mountains and gorges. Many scenes of trucks moving along portions of the Burma Road. P-40 airplanes flying past white cumulus clouds, overhead. Animated map shows continued expansion of Japanese occupied areas to encompass two thirds of the rail lines in China with goal of controlling the remainder, starting at Chengchow, in Summer, 1938. View of Chengchow region, on banks of the Yellow River. Map illustrates flow pattern of the Yellow River. View from past of the Yellow River's Spring floods toward the Sea, with Chinese people throwing rocks onto dikes that keep the river flowing in a more Northerly direction than its former course. Illustration shows how with Japanese encrouching on Chengchow, the Chinese decided to destroy those dikes and allow the river to flood over its former more Southerly course. Japanese soldiers being inundated by the flooding river. Japanese infantry and tanks regrouping on their occupied side of the new (old) path of the Yellow River. Local Chinese residents of Chengchow, wade with belongings as they leave their flooded homes. Location: Chengchow China. Date: 1938.