Burma supply route cleared

A vital supply route linking India to China through Burma is finally cleared for Allied military transports on this day in 1945. The first convoy of 133 trucks under British General Mountbatten left Ledo several weeks earlier, but could not enter China until the Americans were able to remove the last Japanese troops, retreating southward from a Chinese counter-offensive. Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek said the road had broken Japan’s siege of China.