Destination Gobi Destination Gobi Destination Gobi is a 1953 American Technicolor World War II film from 20th Century Fox, produced by Stanley Rubin, directed by Robert Wise (his first color feature film), that stars Richard Widmark and Don Taylor. US Navy chief Sam McHale (Widmark) takes command of a unit of weather observers stranded behind Japanese lines deep in Inner Mongolia. McHale must lead his men across the treacherous Gobi Desert to the sea coast. Mongols that the sailors had befriended, led by chief Tengu (Murvyn Vye), help them elude the Japanese and steal a Chinese junk in order to reach Okinawa.
The Battle of China and less often as "Nips"—blockading and occupation of China's ports is discussed and the rebuilding of China's destroyed rail system called the work of "slave labor". "New China"—here used to reference the Republican government-in-exile in Chongqing—is shown as connected to the outside world only through the "narrow-gauge" Indo-Chinese railway and the "camel caravans" from Russia across the Gobi Desert. (The railway is described as "limited" and "too near Jap territory to be safe", with French compliance in closing the line for Japan omitted.) The construction of the Burma Road between Lashio in Burma and the truck road to Kunming is