What happens
A Chinese shopkeeper and his wife, along with a farmer named Lee, leave the interior city of Chungking and walk back toward their homes in Hankow and Honan after the war. Along the road they pass the sick and the dying, see destroyed towns, and meet relief workers who inoculate them against cholera. The travelers reach ruined cities such as Hengyang and Hankow, where the shopkeeper finds his old shop reduced to wreckage. The episode is narrated against a backdrop of commentary by Roy F. Hendrickson, Deputy Director General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, on the scale of China's needs. The series is The Pacific Story, first aired on January 27, 1946.
China, 1945-1946: Chungking, Guiyang, Hengyang and Hankow, along the roads between them
Characters: Shopkeeper, Shopkeeper's wife, Lee, Roy F. Hendrickson
Listen for: The shopkeeper's wife pleading with the men to keep walking, and the relief workers explaining cholera inoculations
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.