Siberia America s Nearest Asiatic Neighbor

The Pacific Story. This is the story of the Pacific and its people, of the peaceful sea, the lands and lives it touches. And they are meaning to us and to the generations to come. The National Broadcasting Company presents the third in a series of programs dedicated to a fuller understanding of the vast Pacific Basin.

This new broadcast series, another feature of the Inter-American University of the Air, will deal with a different aspect of the Pacific each week, with drama of the past and present, and commentary by Owen Latimore, a quality on the Pacific, and director of Water Hines School of International Relations, John Hopkins University. This is the Pacific Story.

Siberia, America's nearest Asiatic neighbor. Come over here, you can see better. Yes, thanks.

Certainly a lot of people turned out for the launching. The launching of this warship marks the opening of a new epoch. Do you mean because it's the first warship built by your Russians in the Far East?

Because it shows that the industrialization of Soviet Asia has become a reality. Yes. A barrier is the America of this century. Just as your Americans built a self-sufficient economy on the wilderness, In the last century, so we are doing here in Siberia in this century.

Now, is this better? Can you see the ship? Yes, yes. Fine. It's a powerful looking craft. This ship is bit of steel that was made in the middle. Here it comes the most. The iron and the manganese that went into the steel and the coal that ran the blast from the seas all were mine here in Siberia.

Well, then you're practically independent from European Russia out here, right? Practically, yes. It's incredible. It is if this entire industrial region just rose up out of the ground. Here it is, 1939, and it seems that only yesterday there was nothing here at all.