At a banana Lately I've been a reader
but it's been tough on some other people people in one of the countries used to be
called Banana Republic is quite a story back if you're not having bananas
and it's a war story.
Twenty four hours after Pearl Harbor the Republic of Honduras the cleared war on
Japan four days later on Germany and Italy.
What it means to us
and to ram through what it meant for our help to clear the Panama Canal Central
American nations bases to travel from its air patrols have helped them guard
against active submarines and from the first
and then sailors have gone to war in the Merchant Marine of the United Nations
have a hundred
or more have already lost their lives there is three times torpedoed everything
that service is legally as they entered it and turns out crap
but this ally has even more to consider than a human resource rich tropical storm
of Honduras can go to bravely necessary war materials loss was in the Pacific
rubber for a hundred carpet bomb
that all Abacha fiber needed in every place of worship both of her brains
and my breath were hardening for B.P.
Both bananas have been a proper right hander
and so I can do the whole north coast of Honduras with banana country.
The greatest producing area in the world.
It was an amazing machine for example agricultural production needing special
integration. They developed an overhead system of three.
Water for one hundred yards with your control of a housewife watering a window box.
Every phase of the work with time to the minute
cut green the bananas were carried to the rail line by Patience specially trained.
Starting with a for brass.
Begins a trip to the north coast shipping ports of Taylor and photo court.
Up to the war this represented almost seventy percent of ALL hundred X.
For thousands of men work to produce the bananas
that moved out of the markets of the world of the Caribbean to the ones in New York.
Across the Atlantic to England and Europe. Under under good workman.
Careful and fell. And the North Coast was geared to get out bananas.
IMO throughout. Government revenues food clothing.
And most all of these were dependent on banana production. Bananas.
Sent out by set before the war.
With more there are fewer here.
And higher priority.
Northcoast hundred in economy topped with a jolt.
A few banana still mold to come any day but they could keep men on.
Power who had to be let out there were thousands more dependent on them back on the
plantations bananas rotted on the ground in the towns men
when they knew going away then headed for the interior with the North Coast cover
was already meeting hunger in the hills.
Most had to stay where they were these North coasters were United Nations men power
men willing and able to get out the rubber mahogany
and other materials a hundred can produce running start for Abacha can't be found.
Overnight. Right.
Mahogany rubber production can't be organized in the shipping economic gears takes
time and organization for man to get broken hungry takes no time at all
or sometimes better than it can be distorted thinking
and some telephone calls at all because again.
Something had to be done
and something was done at the invitation of President career U.S.
Government through the coordinator of her American affairs
and a special emergency mission to Honduras in the fall of nineteen forty two.
Not covered a man of the north coast heard what the hundred government this nation
an ambassador one had decided to do it started by looking at a map.
To go through Galbraith the capital has no real way to get from coast to coast in
hundreds of people for good.
And now good railway starts in the north coast.
But it's got the poetry of.
America truck could get to the hills like your deep mud was more like a pile of
rocks on a road. That's right.
United Nations rubber rock and half a dozen. That way straight through like a hawk.
And what amounts to the only coast to coast road in the Panama Canal to Mexico.
The Lake. Gives up an hour and a half before you hit road again.
Still not very good.
To take you over the mountains to come out in the Pacific.
Bad stretches that one from like a whore
and a half barrier of water at twenty dollars per car park.
That helps makes shipping cost from the cost of the go to Garba higher than pre-war
cost in New York the Bonnet Carre line being the mahogany from the interior can't
get out and manufactured good can't get in and if we are hundred.
Ever wanted or needed to move heavy stuff from the cabin to the Pacific
and if anything happened to happen for a boat the Honduran
and Americans at the map.
They found a job during the time needed for conversion with American help was going
to fix the roads
and build a new one on break your.
Man's work
and it was starting for nine months of the day the agreement was signed
selected men were drawn from every town in the north coast.
Again inscribed two hundred times.
The first of them slept in Banana Car the pottery Israel had.
They built work camp out of the jungle for the hundred more who would have power.
Because Americans the work that was done with the materials at hand.
The way the manual.
Ripping came from abroad.
Monica.
From cars is what up warehouse. Cooks Jack.
The main body of work moved in five engineers began the job
and it was really an all american team.
Accident New York public road administrator calling with Malina from under
him under my
or from Mexico.
The master carpenter's Foreman
and Masons laid out the
tell him include the brushes a lot only one direction.
Nine weeks after this project started nearly.
Two thousand men were useful at work on the road with pushing through political
horse. The machinery but not much. This job.
Wasn't asking for equipment more needed elsewhere.
To use what they had
and then provide the rest.
Yet it's good to work again.
Good work again and good do it again.
As a man walked out the road when I moved in and helped organize the camp right.
The man with a gift from a few
engineers helped on the water supply.
And they sort of got details of grain crops but the water.
Meals were private enterprise price for a day's board was telepaths the daily way.
Later a surprise the better organized it dropped to a third.
And every day the world went forward.
When you're short on truck
and I'm asking favors you make out with what you can lay your hands on.
Under and what went back up with any in the world.
Known as cut square and their debt is straight. It wasn't easy though.
Even with good men.
Not with malaria and dysentery around
that engineer lost thirty pounds the first four months of the job the American
engineer dropped more than thirty.
How many thousand pounds the memory of it altogether would be pretty hard to count.
More than earth and gravel was going into the.
Granite what I had another job was going on finding
and keeping in practice planting stock for the work crops that hundreds could grow.
Abacha up a rope terrace Peralta not a new food for the interior.
Any road needs bridges getting in and car
but this one though has to stand up on the reins
that can come down six inches a day
that means good bread and lots of carbon and going made.
But each day pushes the world on. And it's not the man much comment from a victory.
They have a right to hide country hard to build a road in to stay healthy
and.
That's an important building. But all in the project there is.
This interest and malaria.
The tropical plants.
But it was another theme in action and done doctors in the U.S.
Help with sanitation units.
Working together what they call a service That's Spanish for service leave men
we're getting it.
Not Mayo Clinic style is medical It had to improvise the way the engineers did.
But the essential were there.
And I would share and share alike in the boardroom
and keep engineer the water boy us one hundred. The man with her.
This is where it can be spent
there is a point in reach of every man
and woman in the work camp.
Hospital care.
Then got the call you noted people are up against everything in the book from Barry.
The books haven't got to yet
but one press kept them all breathless plaintiff in the first days.
More than thirty percent of the men positive.
Power diesel power diesel powered practically
are pure. Also a way to prevent.
By spraying a breeding place in the end I believe mosquito netting
and draining.
And I have been diverted to every workman and every ten regularly.
It's still tough country but the sanitary engineers and doctors are looking at.
They cut the malaria rate from about thirty to less than two percent.
And then know the kind of help. They're getting and they appreciate it.
The broadcast lineup used to be pretty good.
Now it's almost cried
when the needle goes in the other power output like the.
US technicians cooperating with local government.
Going on in eighteen American republic.
Men with microscopes and goodwill fighting a continent wide battle to protect
and build up the human resources of the America
and piling up knowledge while we're at it
that we very much made on the other side of the Pacific and in Europe.
It was not a matter of money flowed job.
Almost as powerful as
that about a
day on the road.
Mightiness the sound of out on to the rubble go of it every two weeks
the work these men were doing was moving nearly a ton of silver in the circulation
on the north coast nineteen hundred men collect their well
and weighed some fourteen thousand person benefit their wives
or children called the worst when the macabre should make.
Not much for man but enough for three square meals a day
and something left over for the good the north coast needs
and now can buy pretty ghastly.
Russell orders. And even something for the kids.
Market day
and Sunday he was offered for sale a simpler time in the can be found
that the private lobby for the hard.
Yes These men are feeling good.
Again confident.
It's a real job they're doing and they're doing it
but it's a small road now
starting out from poetry or someone will build a road map for business.
You can get around the lake and the rubber killing rocks are gone.
Goods are already moving more easily.
We are returning again in the interior and on the code.
Like a magnet the road is drawing out new products from the bricks
that mahogany the P.T. Boats need to the right.
While the rubber core and beams in the new crop
but US agricultural technicians are helping Hondurans to grow
and they've got the planning start by because now.
Thousands of hundreds are working today.
Many of the men who are tied to by the project.
The road they made helping hundreds
and helping on the big what they've been doing is just a sample about the good
neighbors in action together for the Americas and against the act.
Minor battle maybe but a battle
that was won.