Flying Tigers inspire spirit of cooperation

Camaraderie forged in battle against a common enemy has been celebrated 80 years after the US fighter pilots who fought for China first took to the skies as the Flying Tigers.

The heroism of the US airmen and the Chinese forces they served alongside were recounted on Wednesday at a gathering in San Francisco that sought to keep alive the spirit of cooperation showed in World War II.

“Eighty years ago, we were united fighting against the common enemy, and today, 80 years later, the two countries have the shared responsibility to meet challenges and find a way for a better future for humankind,” Wang Donghua, the Chinese consul general in San Francisco, said at a ceremony for the reopening of the WWII Pacific War Memorial Hall in the California city.

History is a reminder that cooperation undertaken in the spirit of solidarity is the only way to combat difficulties during a crisis, said Wang. “Only by working together, both of our countries can make greater progress,” he said.

The event, which was livestreamed, also drew those determined to keep alive the legacy of the Flying Tigers, a volunteer force formed in 1941 to help the Chinese in their battle against Japanese aggression. They recounted stories at a virtual meeting during the event.

Larry Jobe, president of the Flying Tiger Historical Organization, shared a “little day-to-day story” about the courage of ordinary Chinese who rescued a downed US airmen.

It was told by a Flying Tiger pilot who was shot down over enemy territory in China. Fortunately, he was picked up by villagers and hidden in a couple’s house.

“The first thing they did was to take his boots away. He thought: ‘They’re going to take everything I have of value and then turn me over to the Japanese,’” Jobe told the audience.

When the Japanese came into this house, they mercilessly beat the couple, and then another Japanese soldier came and mumbled something, and suddenly all of them left the home and the town.

Touching story

The pilot later discovered that the couple had given his boots to a young man who left a trail out of the town; the Japanese believed the trail was left by the Flying Tiger, so they followed it.

The pilot waited at the home till a missionary arrived to help escort him back to his base. Before leaving, he asked the missionary to ask the couple why they risked their lives to save his. “Their answer was simplicity itself: ‘When the Japanese come, we see fear in the eyes of the Chinese; when the Flying Tigers come, we see fear in the eyes of the Japanese,’” said Jobe.

“I’ve heard many more (stories) and each one of them is poignant,” said Jobe, calling them “emblematic” of the US-China cooperation “on a common-man level”.

“Too few Americans know the story of US-China collaboration during the Pacific War,” said Clayton Dube, director of the US-China Institute at the University of Southern California. “To China’s credit, there are entire museums dedicated to this collaboration.”

In 2015, Dude took a group of US teachers to the Site Museum of Shenyang POW Camp of WWII Allied Forces in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang. It was one of the Japanese army’s most notorious prisoner camps during the war.

The museum’s exhibition shows that the US prisoners worked with Chinese laborers to fight against the Japanese by destroying machinery in the camp. They also made friends with the Chinese, a number of whom risked their lives to offer them food and medicine and even helped them escape.

“It’s really a remarkable experience that demonstrates so clearly how tightly joined we were in these efforts,” said Dude.

“So we have to remember how to work together, even when it’s hard, even when the challenges are many, and the road ahead is far from clear. We have to remember that we have a common foe that must be addressed,” he added.