Remembering, and Forgetting, the Flying Tigers  By AUSTIN - TopicsExpress

Remembering, and Forgetting, the Flying Tigers  By AUSTIN RAMZY  October 21, 2013 The decrepit state of a graveyard that is connected to one of the most famous World War II fighting forces in China has revived questions about the country’s ability to honor its veterans. In August, the grave sites of several hundred Chinese military personnel who served with the force — the Flying Tigers — were rediscovered on a trash-strewn hillside in the southern city of Kunming. Researchers had reported on the cemetery in 2007, but despite official pledges to restore and protect it, little has been done. World War II history remains a sensitive subject in East Asia, and China has frequently complained about what it sees as Japan’s insufficient contrition for the suffering it inflicted on its neighbors. At the same time, Beijing has ignored and underplayed parts of China’s own wartime history, particularly the contributions of the Nationalist government. In recent years, China’s Communist leaders have promoted greater recognition of the role of the Nationalists in fighting Japan, and volunteer groups have restored important sites and raised funds and other aid for the last surviving veterans. Few wartime endeavors are as celebrated as the Flying Tigers. Officially known as the American Volunteer Group, discharged American pilots were organized with secret approval from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to fight for the Chinese military in the months before the United States entered World War II. In aircraft emblazoned with an iconic shark’s maw, its pilots battled Japanese forces in China and Burma. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, left the United States reeling, the Flying Tigers’ early success against Japanese fighters provided a key morale boost to the Allies. “One shining hope has emerged from three catastrophic months of war,” Life magazine wrote of the unit in March 1942. Later that year, John Wayne played the group’s leader in the Hollywood film “Flying Tigers.” In some ways, the Flying Tigers are experiencing a renaissance of that wartime fame in China. A Flying Tigers Heritage Park is under construction in the city of Guilin, a wartime base in Guangxi Province. Next year, John Woo, the Hong Kong director of action films like “The Killer,” “Red Cliff” and “Mission: Impossible 2,” is scheduled to begin shooting a film and miniseries on the Flying Tigers. The Kunming Flying Tigers Museum opened in December 2012 in the capital of the southern province of Yunnan. In Lake Dian, a large body of water south of the city, researchers are searching for the wreckage of a Flying Tigers P-40 that crashed during a 1942 training run. But less than 10 miles, or 16 kilometers, away, the graves of about 500 Chinese translators, ground crew members and other personnel associated with the unit sit ignored and neglected on Changchun Hill. The Kunming-based City Times newspaper reported on Aug. 12 that graves had been disturbed and remains scattered and that pieces of wooden coffins were rotting above ground. The story circulated widely in Chinese newspapers and online in the days before the Aug. 15 anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia. In Japan, some cabinet members marked their country’s defeat by visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where several war criminals are memorialized along with the country’s 2.5 million war dead. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not attend, but he sent an offering and delivered a speech that offered no apologies for the widespread suffering caused by Japan’s war effort. Once again, the Chinese government voiced anger over Japanese leaders’ words and gestures. But some Chinese said that while their government focused on Japan’s distortions, it was failing to respect China’s own history. “Japanese Class A war criminals are enshrined as national heroes in the Yasukuni Shrine, but Chinese Flying Tigers war heroes are seen as trash to be discarded on a hillside,” wrote the Chinese poet and novelist Bei Cun. “Seven decades ago, China was a victor, but seven decades later, China has still lost, and lost more tragically, because this makes future generations doubt the nation’s values, the importance of sacrifice and the dignity of life.” The neglect of the Kunming burial ground has roots in China’s calamitous postwar history. Japan’s surrender in 1945 ended the uneasy wartime alliance between the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists, and the two sides turned their guns on each other in earnest. The civil war ended with the Communist victory in 1949 and the Nationalist retreat to the island of Taiwan. For decades, the Communist government portrayed the Nationalists not as compatriots but as enemies. Nationalist veterans who remained on the mainland suffered decades of persecution. Some settled in Burma, today also known as Myanmar, or hid in border regions of Yunnan Province. Even those who died fighting the Japanese were treated as foes. Graveyards in towns like Tengchong, which had seen heavy fighting during the war, were vandalized during the Cultural Revolution. In recent years, China’s Communist Party leadership has begun to recognize the wartime efforts of the Nationalists. In a 2005 speech marking the 60th anniversary of the war’s end, China’s president at the time, Hu Jintao, acknowledged their contributions. Surviving Nationalist veterans in China were awarded a medal commemorating their World War II service. This summer, the government pledged to help them receive social security benefits. “In the eyes of many, in addition to the low-key extension of social security to cover them, the government should offer the war veterans an official apology – a small step toward the long overdue recognition of their war efforts,” News China, the English-language edition of the mainland magazine China Newsweek, said in a story about the veterans in its November issue. Volunteer groups have led efforts long before the government got involved. They’ve tracked down surviving Nationalist veterans, gathered donations to help with their living costs and searched for abandoned graveyards. The Kunming cemetery was originally established near Wujiaba Airport and once contained about 800 graves. After the war, the remains of more than 200 Americans were removed to the United States, according to Chinese historians. In the early 1950s, the Chinese graves were pulled up. Peasants used oxcarts to move the caskets and headstones two and a half miles to make room for a storehouse, Sanlian Life magazine reported in 2010. Then, at the start of the Great Leap Forward in 1957, when the country embarked on a disastrous collectivization campaign, the headstones were removed for use in the construction of reservoirs. “Due to the particular political environment at the time, the ‘air force cemetery’ was gradually abandoned and destroyed,” the magazine said. After the cemetery’s rediscovery by volunteer researchers in 2007, the local government said it would build a suitable memorial site for the veterans’ remains. But a thorough restoration has been thwarted by development regulations and questions of who controls the land, The City Times reported this summer. “The mountainside is completely as it was before, and the state of the graveyard is an even bigger mess,” the newspaper said. Members of the Kunming-based Yunnan Flying Tigers Research Institute, a volunteer group that publicized the poor state of the veterans’ cemetery, declined interview requests. One Yunnan-based independent historical researcher, Ge Shuya, said the delays in restoring the site stemmed from a debate over just what to call the cemetery. A cemetery with the name “Flying Tigers” would attract more attention, Mr. Ge said, but it would be incorrect. With the American war dead long ago removed, the site shouldn’t be considered a Flying Tigers cemetery, Mr. Ge said, but a Chinese Air Force cemetery, even if it that would mean a less storied name. “This is a Chinese cemetery. It should be protected. The government has already given money for it to be protected,” Mr. Ge said. “The reason it still hasn’t been protected, I believe, is there are people who still want to say this is a Flying Tigers cemetery.” Li Yulian, a Kunming Civil Affairs Bureau district official, told Xinhua, the state-run news agency, on Aug. 15 that the government had taken basic steps in recent years to protect the cemetery but that it was still in a poor state because of decades of neglect. She promised that the government would speed up efforts to build a proper cemetery. However, it will be dedicated to the Chinese Air Force, she said, not the Flying Tigers.