A Bond Forged in Life and Death Between Chinese Villagers and American Airmen
BEIJING, Sept. 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — A news report from China.org.cn:
China held a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War in Beijing on Wednesday.
President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday that the resistance war against Japanese aggression, an arduous and great war, marks China’s first complete victory against foreign aggression in modern times.
This great victory was achieved through the joint struggle of the Chinese people together with the anti-fascist allies and peoples across the world, Xi said.
During the war, the famed Doolittle Raid is well remembered — but there is a little-known poignant, heroic story behind it that happened in China.
“I believe that the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples, forged by blood and fire, will be passed on from generation to generation. President Xi once said.
In the dead of night on April 18, 1942, young Chinese villager Mao Jifu hoisted the towering, critically injured American pilot Jacob Manch onto his back, struggling to make their way up the steep, rugged mountain paths.
Manch later recalled: “I was utterly exhausted… A 5-foot-4 Chinese man insisted on carrying me. I smiled and shook my head, thinking I must be too heavy…But he moved as if I weighed nothing, sprinting up and down the mountains as if the path were flat.”
That same day, U.S. Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle led 16 B-25 bombers in a daring raid on Tokyo and four other Japanese cities. The mission was successful, but after running out of fuel and losing contact with their ground teams, 15 of the planes crashed across China’s Zhejiang and surrounding provinces, forcing most pilots to abandon their aircraft and seek safety.
Manch was among the pilots. He fell into Daren Pit at Dawu Mountain in Quzhou City, Zhejiang Province, and was miraculously rescued by local villagers. Mao Jifu’s wife, Wu Meilan, along with villagers like Liao Shiai, even prepared what was then considered a lavish meal — egg soup and fried rice – for him.
Meanwhile, Japanese search parties were on the move, with life-and-death rescues unfolding across the rugged mountains at the junction of Zhejiang, Anhui, and Jiangxi Provinces. Once these kind-hearted villagers realized these American airmen were friends, not foes, they risked everything to shelter and care for them. On Tantoushan Mountain in Xiangshan County, fishermen couple Ma Liangshui and Zhao Xiaobao hid four airmen in the compartments of their fishing boat, evading the searchlights of Japanese patrol vessels. In Changtai Town, Jiangshan, local leader Liao Shiyuan rescued Lieutenant Charles Ozuk, whose wounded leg had exposed the bone. Liao’s family treated him with precious herbal remedies. In Yankeng Village, Suichang, pilot Robert Gray drew a chicken on paper, and the villagers, with what little they had, actually brought him a live hen to eat.
In the end, 64 American pilots were saved, a remarkable rescue feat in the history of World War II, entirely staged by common Chinese people.
However, the Japanese aggressors responded with massive retaliation.
From May to August 1942, Japan deployed over nine divisions to the Zhejiang–Jiangxi campaign, aiming to destroy key airfields and prevent further raids on Japan. The Japanese also unleashed mass-scale biological warfare. In Quzhou alone, over 300,000 people fell ill, and more than 50,000 perished.
Local media in Quzhou described a haunting scene: “Fields abandoned, cries echoing through the night, coffins carried along deserted paths.”
This trans-Pacific rescue forged a deep bond between the peoples of China and the United States. The surviving pilots established the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders Association, commemorating the raid annually on April 18. Their descendants continue to visit Zhejiang’s mountain villages and plant trees or erect memorials at the sites where their forebears were sheltered.
In 1990, a group of surviving veterans returned to Zhejiang, leaving bronze plaques engraved with “Thank You” and signed by the 44 living members of the Doolittle Raid. In 1992, at the event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid in Minnesota, U.S. pilot Edward tightly embraced Zhao Xiaobao, the villager who had saved him decades earlier. In 2018, Susan Ozuk, daughter of Lieutenant Ozuk, returned to the rammed earth house where her father had been sheltered and donated $15,000 for its restoration.
More than 80 years ago, ordinary Chinese people risked everything to carry foreign soldiers to safety amid the ravages of war. In the darkest days, these ordinary villagers became living torches themselves, igniting hope and illuminating the way toward shared victory and world peace.
China Mosaic