About Utah: Gary and Rose pay tribute to Brazil's rubber soldiers

[Judi Lynn]

By Lee Benson
Published: June 4, 2017 6:55 p.m.
Updated: 4 hours ago


SALT LAKE CITY — Somewhere in the Amazon — the real Amazon, not the online marketing behemoth in Seattle — old men are raising a toast to Gary and Rose Neeleman of Sandy.

More than 60 years ago, these Brazilian men helped win World War II by harvesting rubber from wild hevea trees that grow in the vast and remote reaches of the Amazonian basin. Some 55,000 of them rushed to the jungle in 1942 when the Allied forces came face to face with the cold hard fact that 95 percent of the world’s existing rubber supply was in the hands of the enemy.

Without rubber, no planes, no tanks, no bombs, no Army — no fighting Hitler and Hirohito.

Fortunately, Brazil had plenty of rubber in the Amazon, rubber that had laid dormant — untapped — ever since the British smuggled seedlings from the hevea tree to Malaya (now Malaysia) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), places with climates vastly superior to harvesting rubber that were now controlled by the Japanese.

More:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865681333/Gary-and-Rose-pay-tribute-to-Brazils-rubber-soldiers.html

Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016186536