The Girl who Saved the American Pilot

By Fanny Wong, Chinese American author, New York.

 

On February 11, 1941, Ah Ying watched a parachute float down from the sky. It draped the roof and the side of a small building in their village of Shatin, in the outskirts of Hong Kong.

The adults of the village were frightened and ran off. Ah Ying was nervous too, but she was more curious than frightened. She walked closer and saw a White pilot. She was relieved the pilot was not a Japanese. The Japanese had occupied Hong Kong and she was used to seeing them strutting around, sometimes on horseback.

His leg was hurt. He was limping. Could she trust him?

The pilot showed a Chinese flag sewn on the inside of his jacket. Ah Ying breathed a sigh of relief.

It was all right. He was not an enemy. He was working with the Chinese against the Japanese invaders. She must hide him from the Japanese soldiers.

Ah Ying led the pilot from the village to the cow pastures on a small path. As they climbed the steep path, he could hardly follow her with his hurt leg and a burned arm. They went up a steep path, Ah Ying pulling him by the good right hand.

There was no way of avoiding a Japanese sentry post below. They hurried as fast as they could. But the Japanese spotted them.

Crack! Wheeeee! Crack! Two Japanese soldiers fired shots and others were running toward them. They raced up a hill and down the other side. The pilot could not follow fast enough and Ah Ying lost sight of him. The Japanese soldiers were quite a distance away when she reached the top of a hill and raced down the other side. She looked back once and saw the pilot half hidden by a boulder surrounded by scrawny weeds.

For the next few hours, until the sun set, Ah Ying dared not look for the pilot. The Japanese soldiers were still searching for him on the hillside. She had to help him somehow. Her parents were against her going back to help.

“The Japanese is our enemy, not the pilot. If he’s caught, the Japanese will treat him cruelly,” she said to her parents, who knew too well the cruelty of the soldiers.  

As Ah Ying searched the hillside, she sang a folk song to let the pilot know she was looking for him. He emerged from behind the boulder. She led him through bushes and grass to a tall shrubbery on another hillside. She pulled the shrubbery aside and shoved the pilot down a foot or two onto a straw floor in a hole about eight feet in diameter.

Ah Ying turned on a flashlight. The hole was underground. It must have been used as an oven for burning charcoal. The past fire had baked the walls into hardness and sealed off dampness. She pounded two nails into the rock at the entrance and hung a blanket to block the light from inside the cave.

The next morning, Ah Ying brought food. It was plain rice with pickled cabbage. She watched him scoop them into his mouth hungrily with the chopsticks.
 The pilot wiped his mouth with the back of his good hand and pointed to his chest to introduced himself, “Donald Kerr.”

Ah Ying introduced herself he same way. She motioned with her palm that he should stay there and left.

It was too dangerous to visit the pilot in daytime. The next night, Ah Ying brought hard boiled eggs, boiled sweet potatoes, and a thermos of hot water. She pointed toward the outside and brought in an old man dressed in dark clothes and western hat.

Peering at the pilot through thick glasses, the old man said, “Good morning, sir. I am happy to know you. I am Y.T.”

“My name is Donald Kerr. I’m glad we can talk in English”

The children did not understand what the two men discussed in English. When the discussion was over, Ah Ying left with Y.T.

During the three days that Kerr hid in the cave, Ah Ying supplied him with food. On the fourth day, she brought along a young Chinese woman.

“Friend, friend,” the woman whispered, while removing the bushes and crawled in.

“My name is Miss Li,” she said. “I speak some English. Someone will come for you in a few days.”

She left with Ah Ying.      

Several nights later, Y.T., the woman, and Ah Ying arrived with more food.

“Eat fast. We go to another place,” he said.

They hiked in silence up a long slope. At the top of the hill, water shimmered in the distance.

“Now you go with Ah Ying,” Y.T. said and disappeared with Miss Li into the darkness.

They walked and walked, up and down hills, on large paths and tiny trails. It was rough going. There were rocky patches and narrow gullies.

At the bottom of a hill was a town with dim lights. Ah Ying left him on the hill to sleep among the weeds, with his rolled-up coat for a pillow.

The weather was sunny the next day. After dark, Ah Ying came back to the waiting pilot with a note in English, “I bring you home now.”

They traveled silently into another valley and reached a long Chinese house. A wooden door opened a little to let them in. A room was full of people, young and old men and Miss Li.

“Who are all these people?’ Kerr asked.

“Guerillas,” Miss Li said. “We’ll keep you safe. The Japanese are only a few miles away. Sleep here until we are ready to leave.”      

Around midnight, Miss Li woke the pilot sleeping on a bamboo bed. “We take you to China by boat.”

Miss Li and Ah Ying shook hands with the pilot.

“Thank you for saving my life,” Kerr said.

The pilot was taken to his base in Guilin, China. Back home in Shatin, Ah Ying never forgot the pilot and her courageous story became proud lore of her family.  

By Fanny Wong, Chinese American author, New York. Ms. Wong has been a frequent contributor to Skipping Stones Magazine.