BUILDING THE RUNWAYS TO FLY AND FIGHT:
Cooperation between Americans and Chinese in World War II

March 29, 2004

Posted on Apr 5, 2004

Pictures of this ceremony

KUNMING - March 29. In a compound that once served as the headquarters of General Claire Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force (the Flying Tigers), a stone roller used to construct airfield runways during the Second World War was presented to representatives of the United States Air Force Museum.

The Deputy Governor of Yunnan Province, Madam Cheng Yingxuan, presented the roller to an American delegation with representatives from the American Embassy in Beijing, the USAF Museum, and the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation.

Retired Air Force Brigadier General Jon A. Reynolds, a highly decorated Air Force veteran of the Vietnam war and former Defense Attache to the People's Republic of China, accepted the roller on behalf of the Museum. When the roller joins other exhibits at the Museum later this year, he said, it will "commemorate the Chinese effort in the war against Japan and symbolize the cooperation between Chinese and Americans during the war." "We remember the Chinese cooperation to build the great runways to enable the bombing mission to help end the war."

American Embassy official Donald M. Bishop, another Air Force Vietnam veteran who once taught military history at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, saluted the seven oldest Chinese attendees at the ceremony - all now in their seventies and eighties. The seven airfield construction workers were "participants and witnesses. They helped build the airfields. They saw the aircraft take off and return from battle. They saw the crashes and the losses. They recall the Japanese attacks." To Chinese students at the ceremony, Bishop said the airfield workers "are passing on to you a great legacy."

Also attending was retired nurse, Rita Wong (Huang Huanxiao), the only Chinese nurse among those caring for wounded Americans at the Army field hospitals in Guilin and Yuannanyi.

The roller - used to construct runways in Kunming used by the Flying Tigers, the 14th Air Force, and the transport aircraft flying the dangerous Hump Route from India to China -- is made of solid stone. It is 150 cm (59 inches) long and 120 cm (47 inches) in diameter with an estimated weight of 5000 kg (11,000 pounds). It is being provided to the Museum by Yunnan Province.

The roller is now being shipped to the United States. The United States Air Force Museum, located at Wright-Paterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, hopes to have it on display with other China-related WWII exhibits by June.

Other members of the American delegation were the American Embassy Air Attache, Lieutenant Colonel John Robinson; retired Army National Guard Brigadier General Michael Heilmann who is Executive Director of the Bob Hope Hollywood USO at Los Angeles Airport; and Jeffrey Greene, Executive Director of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation.

Greene reviewed the record of the American units - the original American Volunteer Group, the China Air Task Force, and the 14th Air Force - under General Chennault's command in China during the Second World War. They destroyed more than 2400 enemy aircraft, while losing less than 500. They knocked out 817 bridges, destroyed 1225 locomotives, and sank or damaged more than two million tons of shipping.

Bishop noted that American and Chinese aviators once again fly together over south China because an American firm in Kunming trains Chinese airline pilots in flight safety. During the recent visit to China of the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, Marion Blakey, the two nations have agreed to increase cooperation in the areas of flight safety, aviation standards, airport safety management, and air traffic control.