Ex-Marine Pilot Recounts Chinese Rescue of Doolittle Raiders in WWII

A former United States Marine Corps pilot has drawn attention to a lesser-known chapter of World War II, describing how ordinary Chinese civilians risked their lives to shelter American airmen after the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan.

Jeffrey Greene, born in the 1960s, served as a Marine pilot before moving into film and television as a military advisor. He later made a documentary about Chinese and American forces fighting side by side during the war, which prompted then US president Bill Clinton to express gratitude for China's help to American pilots stranded behind enemy lines.

In April 1942, sixteen US bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet to strike Tokyo and other Japanese cities. It was the first American air attack on the Japanese homeland, forcing Japan to recall troops for home defence and shifting momentum in the Pacific theatre.

China had prepared for the bombers to land at airfields along its eastern coast, mobilising half a million civilian labourers who worked day and night for two months to expand an airfield in Quzhou, Zhejiang province. But on the day of the raid, a Japanese warship spotted the carrier, and the pilots took off earlier than planned, from a greater distance than intended.

The mission succeeded, but with fuel running low and communications disrupted, the crews had to bail out or make emergency landings across Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. Starving and injured, they were rescued by Chinese soldiers and civilians who bandaged their wounds and shared food saved for their own families.

"The Doolittle Raid, they had a jump in the middle of the night into a very dark China. There were no lights in the countryside. They were all gathered by the Chinese people, normal people -- soldiers, doctors, merchant men, farmers, kids, children," Greene said.

In one instance, three pilots landed in a Japanese-occupied zone. More than a dozen Chinese civilians formed a human wall, using their bodies to shield the airmen from Japanese assaults and escorting them to safety.

The help triggered a brutal retaliation. Less than a month later, Japanese forces launched a campaign in Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces. A newspaper at the time described the devastation: "There is no sign of life in the fields, only cries of grief at midnight; there is nothing on the roads, but coffins being carried." Members of the notorious Unit 731 deployed biological weapons during the offensive.

"The Japanese soldiers went berserk, and in the next three months, they killed at least 250,000 Chinese men, women and children -- anyone they suspected of giving aid and comfort to the American pilots. They used rifles and bayonets and bombs and grenades. They also used bacteriological weapons. We see a holocaust," Greene said.

The raid strengthened US resolve to fight alongside China. Of the rescued airmen, 28 stayed in the China-Burma-India theatre to continue the fight. Some joined the famed Flying Tigers, led by General Claire Lee Chennault, and flew the treacherous "Hump" route to transport supplies into China.

"I don't know where in history any nation, any group, any country would risk so much for a group of people who had come from a distance to fight for them. It's not in Europe, it's not in Central or South America history. It's only here in China, and it's only between the Chinese people and the American pilots. It's the ultimate display of humanity," Greene said.

Greene founded the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation to preserve the legacy of the Flying Tigers and promote US-China youth and cultural exchanges. For three decades he has travelled between the two countries to ensure younger Americans understand this shared history.

"Our two countries are the two most powerful countries on the planet. Because if China and the United States do not cooperate, it's a very iffy situation looking at the future," he said.

At a recent exhibition in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, students viewed photographs and displays on the wartime cooperation. Jackson Parker Long, great-grandson of a Flying Tiger pilot, said his great-grandfather was shot down twice during his 104 missions and both times was rescued by the Chinese. John Martin Feister, a student from Pequea Valley School, said the camaraderie between the pilots and the Chinese people was a story that should be told.