The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1945 THE END OF THE LEDO ROAD

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 250, 22 October 1945, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1945 THE END OF THE LEDO ROAD

DEFORE the Japanese overran Burma, and severed the only land route *-* by which China could obtain war supplies, a mule path linked Ledo and Kunming. This path was converted into a thirty-foot, double-tracked highway, metalled, trenched, banked and inclined, over some of the worst country in the world. It was built under the worst possible weather conditions, with a bridge to be constructed on an average every three miles of its 1044 miles' total length. General Stilwell's determination supplied the driving, force and it was American equipment which proved once more that nearly anything is possible. Stilwell's forward engineers were so close on the heels of the fighting advance that they were constantly attacked by infiltrating Japs, and each man kept his rifle as handy as his pick and shovel. Many experts declared the job could not be done, but the world knows how the road was put through and the truck convoys rolled into China. It was not long after the opening of the road that the pipeline was completed, and petrol flowed over the mountains. It is true that neither road nor pipeline played as big a part ■in the defeat of the Japanese as was expected of them, but this was because the Japanese surrendered so much earlier than even th?- most optimistic Allied leader dared predict. Now it is announced that road, pipeline and telephone line will be abandoned on November 1. Maintenance costs ruled out the road as a peacetime proposition, and before many monsoon seasons have passed all that will be visible will be scars of cuttings and foundations of washed-out bridges. The destructive forces of nature will soon obliterate Stilwell's achievement. Throughout the Japanese war theatre aerodromes, harbours, roads and railways are being abandoned. That their period of usefulness was so short is a tribute to the strategic planning of the American Chiefs of Staff. It was their revolutionary use of carrier-borne aircraft, reinforced by land-based machines flying from aerodromes hacked out of tropical jungles with incredible, swiftness, which completely out-manoeuvred the Japanese and made possible their early defeat. But right up to the end the wisdom of the policy of by-passing large enemy forces, which had been rendered immobile by the severing of their lines of communication, was debated. No one could predict what these garrisons would do when their homeland had been overrun. American strategists oelieved the Japs would lay down their arms on orders from the Emperor, but they could not be sure. And so the Ledo Read, and similar projects, had to be - pushed ahead right to the end. The Allied High Command knew in c of the atomic bombing that Japan's capacity to resist had been ..almost exhausted, but they also knew that the large unbeaten Japanese :J armies on the mainland of Asia were capable of putting up a stiff fight. -Had they done, so, the additional Allied losses might well have been ■- : -counted in millions. In Europe, of course, there will not .be nearly the " waste " of -.-development which had only a wartime use. On the other hand, the :.; r darnage to buildings, communication systems and general facilities was -'i. very much greater. Fighting a war in the world's less populated places 'r/ltloes have advantages from the economic standpoint. Some of the 'development necessitated by military operations in the Pacific and on the mainland of Asia will be convertible, but the greater bulk will be chargeable to the cost of winning the war. In cases such as the Ledo,. Road, where the actual benefits derived did not justify the effort required in construction, it should be remembered that they were part of the over-all plan. Had they been required to do their full share it would .--have been because the operations against the enemy had been greatly And that would have meant that the fighting was still .■"feoing on. ■ . :