What happens
Correspondent Conover reports on Yunnan province in southwestern China, centred on the city of Kunming, as the Pacific War reaches it. He speaks with Dr. Wu, an academic, about the region's remote mountains and mixed peoples. News arrives of the Japanese attack near Beijing, and refugee universities move inland to Kunming. Japanese occupation of Hanoi cuts the railway supply route, and bombing raids follow. Kunming is then cut off by the closure of the Burma Road, and the story turns to the Allied build-up in the region, the new Ledo Road from India, and the first convoy to arrive over it.
Kunming, Yunnan province, southwestern China, and the Burma Road, 1937 to 1945
Characters: Conover, Dr. Wu, Lord Chen, General Pick
Listen for: Dr. Wu's reflections on Kunming's refugee universities and the arrival of the first convoy over the Ledo Road
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.