Flying Tigers pilots call for cooperation

The United States and China should continue their unique bond formed years ago, set an example for the world and work together for peace and survival, wrote two veteran Flying Tigers pilots to the Chinese ambassador to the US.

Harry Moyer, 101, and Robert Moore, 98, were Flying Tigers members.

“Friendly and cooperative relations between our two countries is essential to world peace and survival,” wrote Moore in his letter to Ambassador Qin Gang.

Moore said “the world faces even more dangers” than he had imagined. “I am thinking of dangers that will affect every human on Earth,” he wrote, mentioning climate change, which is far from “treaties or boundary disputes that may affect two or three nations”.

“That is why we must work together, cooperatively and in the spirit of friendship,” Moore wrote. “The most important goal that everyone in authority has is to work for peace. I believe that China and the US, two countries with a friendship, can be an example for the rest of the world.”

The American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force, more widely known as the “Flying Tigers”, was formed in 1941 by US general Claire Lee Chennault. It was a group of volunteer US pilots that went to China, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Chinese people to fight the invading Japanese troops.

In Moyer’s letter, he said the Flying Tigers means much more than those two words. He recalled how the Flying Tigers and the Chinese troops and people fought against the invaders together.

“China and America were allies then, great friends, and together drove the invaders from the land and sky,” wrote Moyer in the letter.

“So too should we look at that relationship as an example of how our two countries worked together to overcome a great challenge.”

On April 9, the Remembering heroes — 80th Anniversary of the Flying Tigers and America’s Second World War Air Defense of China photo exhibition was held at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Qin attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech. He said the story of the Flying Tigers is a tribute to the feat of China and the US fighting side by side. The Flying Tigers, together with the Chinese military and civilians, fought for the cause of justice and fate of humankind, and their bravery and sacrifice will always be recorded on the flag of victory in China’s war against the Japanese invasion.