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Burma Road

The Burma Road is a road linking Burma with China. Its terminals are Kunming and Lashio, Burma. When it was built, Burma was a British colony.

Allied lines of communication in Southeast Asia (1942–43). The Burma Road is shown at far right.

The road is about 1,130 kilometres 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, where the British used the Burma Road to transport war material to China before Japan was at war with the British. Supplies would be landed at Rangoon (now Yangon) and moved by rail to Lashio, where the road started in Burma. After the Japanese overran Burma in 1942, the Allies began to fly supplies over the eastern end of the Himalaya mountains and, under the command of General Stillwell, built the Ledo Road to connect Assam in India to the Burma Road through territory in the far north of Burma still in allied hands.

• During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli forces in the Jerusalem front, headed by general Mickey Marcus, built a make-shift road to Jerusalem that was called the "Burma Road" after its model. At that time, the Jordanians surrounded and besieged Jerusalem, by closing off the main road with artillery fire. The citizens of Jerusalem were suffering with attempts to resupply and provide weapons leading to failure. The "Burma Road" was a goat trail quickly widened by bulldozer. This unpaved road provided a new way into Jerusalem that was not blocked by the Jordanians. This road was completed on the 10th of June 1948 and broke the siege on Jewish military forces and civil population in Jerusalem. ^[1]

• Burma Road is also a nickname for the now closed section of railway line in Ireland linking Collooney to Claremorris (part of the route now known as the Western Railway Corridor). It gained this name due to the hilly, boggy conditions through which the line was built. ^[2]

• Burma road is also a name given to rice pudding by the British Army, origins are from the Army serving in India. ^[3]

• Burma Road is also a name given to the main passage way, Deck 3, on former Mackenzie Class ships (HMCS Mackenzie (261), Saskatchewan (262), Yukon (263) and Qu'Appelle (264)) that served in the Canadian Navy until the late 1990s. The passage way connected all parts of the ship and was used to "store" the ship with supplies.^{[citation needed]}

• Burma Road in Nassau, Bahamas, was the scene of rioting in 1942, when workers building an airport demonstrated for better pay and conditions. ^[4] This was the inspiration for Ronnie Butler's 1967 song Burma Road.

• Burma Road is also a name given to Route 1006 in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, a winding, narrow road which connects the borough of St. Clair, Pennsylvania to the Morea Road (State Route 1008), passing by Locust Lake State Park, Mountain Valley Golf Course and Bendinsky Airport.

1. ^ Rosenbloom, Michael (December 2001). The Road to Jerusalem. Tales of Survival. Retrieved on November 26, 2006.
2. ^ Swinford, Michael Fox. The Other Burma Road. WestOnTrack History. Retrieved on November 16, 2006.
3. ^ British Empire: Glossary. Retrieved on November 26, 2006.
4. ^ "'The Burma Road Riot' 1-2 June, 1942", The Nassau Guardian, January 19, 2006. Retrieved on November 26, 2006.

• Jon Latimer, Burma: The Forgotten War, John Murray, (2004). ISBN 0719565766.