Back Door to China

In the gorge of the Wu-ti Ho the Japanese began to move. The rains had ended in Burma and Yuennan Province; the steamy, pestilential countryside was drying out. The Japs appeared to be launching their long-expected attack, creeping toward China's back door.

The Wu-ti Ho (the bottomless river) is the Salween, which curls for 200 miles through the mountains of Yuennan. Along its west bank the Japanese had nurtured themselves, gathering their strength. Near Tengyueh they struck. Three columns, altogether some 6,000 veteran troops, swung north and east with the apparent intention of outflanking Chinese troops scattered along the Burma Road (see map).

Principal objective of any Japanese attack would be the city of Kunming, at the top of the Burma Road. There U.S. ferry planes from General Elmer Edward Adler's India-based Army Air Forces refuel. The closing of the Burma Road itself had clamped a terrible constriction on China's thin lines of supply. Japa nese occupation of Yunnan would draw the cord tighter, could even throttle China.

How well the Japs were prepared for such an undertaking was a mystery. Latest reliable reports put Japanese concentrations in Burma at some 90,000 troops. In Indo-China, Jap troops were recently reported landing at Haiphong on the coast and streaming ashore from barges at Hanoi on the Red River. Troop trains had been seen moving north-toward the Yunnan border. Chungking declared that Japan, with the cooperation of Vichyfrench Governor General Rear Admiral Jean Decoux, was conscripting an army of 150,000 native Indo- Chinese. Estimates of Japanese air forces in Burma, Indo-China and Siam: between 700 and 800 planes.

Since July, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers have clung to the east bank of the malaria-infested Salween (TIME, Dec. 7). For months they have guarded the pocked and broken upper half of the Burma Road which still belongs to them. In the first few days of the fighting in the gorge of the Wu-ti Ho last week they turned back the prongs of the Jap advance.

To the men of Chungking the defensive role had become a bitter and weary one. They still waited for their preoccupied allies to get around to them.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.