A Yank on the Burma Road

MGM's B picture unit apparently got this one out in a hurry to take advantage of the anger over the Pearl Harbor attack. According to A Yank On The Burma Road, Barry Nelson led the first counterattack after Pearl Harbor and it was in China.

This film casts Nelson as a cabdriver who after capturing some New York gangsters singlehanded accepts an offer from the Kuomintang of Nationalist China to head a convoy of supplies on the Burma Road from Rangoon to the wartime capital of Chungking. As if his exploits as a New York cabdriver qualified him for such a position.

At the same time Laraine Day is Rangoon inquiring after her husband Stuart Crawford whom she is shocked to learn is a mercenary flying for the Japanese. I'm unaware that the Japanese or any of the Axis powers hired out mercenaries, that sure hasn't come down in history. She tricks Nelson into taking her along to Chungking.

It's a job to Nelson, but as he makes the trip he starts admiring the Chinese for their fortitude. And when news of Pearl Harbor hits, he gets in the first licks for America.

Until the Doolittle Tokyo Raid, the American public festered for news that we hit back after Pearl Harbor. If they couldn't get real news then they settled for some vicarious counterattacks which movies like A Yank On The Burma Road provided.

This is one creaky old propaganda flick that hasn't stood up well at all.