Tucsonans were already familiar with the Chinese Nationalist pilots, popularly known as the Chinese Cadets, because they were in training at other Arizona army airfields (Luke, Thunderbird and Williams) before arriving at the Army Air Forces Basic Flying School at Marana Field in late 1942.
In early May 1942, Tucson’s younger Chinese entertained 38 Chinese cadets from Thunderbird Field. First, they were given a sightseeing tour, followed by a picnic. Then, under the direction of Miss Mamie Lee, they attended a dinner dance in their honor. The men did not speak English but were able to communicate using American slang terms like “OK toots” and “It’s the nuts.” They entertained the group by singing romantic songs in Mandarin. Local Tucsonan, Miss May Tom, was the toastmistress for the event. Major Henry R. Lyons, from the “Tucson Air Base” spoke: “We Americans are proud to have such gallant and heroic soldiers as the Chinese as our allies. We are now fighting as one. We will carry on as one, we will finish as one, and we will meet you in Tokyo.”
On May 6th, just days after the dinner, nine Chinese cadets from Luke Field did a flyover of Tucson during the Bowl of Rice Benefit Ball where three more pilots from Luke were in attendance. The first Bowl of Rice Ball, held in 1941, also raised money to furnish aid to “the suffering people of China and to their armies in the field. . .” Interestingly, both benefits had interracial co-chairs. Like the 1941 event, the 1942 event was held at the Pioneer Hotel and was also a great success. Two thousand people attended with $4,000 ($63,600 in 2020 dollars) raised for Chinese war relief.
Along with American flyers in training, the cadets of the 5th Chinese Training Detachment reported to Marana Army Airfield in early November 1942 to start their basic training. According to Min Zhou, producer of My 58 Uncles, Chinese ground crews accompanied the pilots and received training in maintaining and repairing the planes being used by the pilots. The Chinese posed unique challenges to their trainers. One issue was their lack of English language skills requiring, Chinese language interpreters both on the ground and in the tower. Another issue was that the men were smaller than the average American man and they required pillows to reach the airplane controls. One of the American pilots, Norman Wesley Achen, remembered the Chinese trainees as: “Really, really, really well educated, well-mannered, nice competitive people.”
Fay Don was one of the translators, as well as the secretary for the Chinese department at Marana Airfield. She was the daughter of Casa Grande grocer, Don June, and the granddaughter of pioneer Casa Grande grocer, Don Sing. She went to work for the Army recruiting office in Tucson as a civilian employee in November 1941, just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. An item in the Arizona Daily Star (January 3, 1943) noted she was to act as hostess for a special showing of the new film China Girl, with the Chinese cadets as special guests. Miss Don lived a long life after the war, dying in Casa Grande in 2020 at the age of 99.
On Sunday, November 8, 1942, a banquet was given in their honor at Tucson High School by the Chinese War Relief Association. Frank Wong, president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, was the toastmaster for the event, which was attended by 300 people.
The cadets sought out companionship in the Tucson community. Ruth Carol Atwell of Carol’s Introduction Service, a dating service for officers, reported that shortly after the Chinese cadets arrived in Marana, two came to her looking for help to arrange for dates with “girls of their own race.” She began to add Chinese girls to her files of mostly university students. In addition to Ms. Atwell’s efforts, Mrs. Jean Williams, director of the USO at the Main YWCA, arranged for cadets to meet local Chinese citizens and university students. It’s possible that the USO program, or a program or a contact within Tucson’s Chinese community, was the reason Dorothy Don’s family was entertaining cadets at their home. The visits were recorded with photos which she saved for a lifetime.
Almost immediately after their training started, there were fatal accidents. On November 16, 1942 Jui-Koa was killed ten miles south of Marana when his airplane had engine trouble and hit the ground. On December 12, 1942, an article announced the funeral of Pie Wen Sen, a cadet who was killed just west of Marana. A nameless cadet (likely Chang Siu-Yu listed in the Marana Field accident reports, January 31, 1945) was reported as killed in the Arizona Daily Star on February 1, 1945 when he crashed six miles south of the field. All told, accident reports from 1942 to 1945 contain the names of 44 cadets involved in “both minor and major aircraft accidents that occurred both on and off of flying fields.” (Note, the list of accident reports for the Marana Airfield are no longer available at Military Aviation Incident Reports. I found an archived copy of the page, dated September 17, 2010, by searching the dead URL on the WayBack Machine.) All three of the Cadets who died in training accidents at Marana Air Field are buried at Fort Bliss National Cemetery, El Paso, El Paso County, Texas.
0n February 22, 1943 the Arizona Daily Star ran a glowing article about the cadets titled “Brave Sons of China are Flying Cadets at Marana.” The article started out with “Brave sons of an invincible people . . .” and described them as “the men that America is training are for a trusted and worthy ally.”
Graduation day for the Chinese and American pilot trainees was held on July 28, 1943. Earlier, in June 1943, the Chinese War Relief Association gave a banquet for the 76 cadets at the Masonic Temple. Another pre-graduation party for them was hosted by New York heiress Florence Pond at her 17-room mansion, Stone Ashley (now the Mountain Oyster Club at 6400 E. El Dorado Circle, northeast of Speedway & Wilmot). After the ceremony, the American, and Chinese trainees went to a dinner-dance at the Pioneer Hotel.
Because China was an ally of the United States during World War II, on December 17, 1943 the U.S. Congress finally voted to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act. I can’t help but think that the citizens of Tucson thought that was a good idea, given their warm welcome and heartfelt praise of the Chinese cadets.
After the initial group of cadets graduated in July 1943, Chinese cadets continued to train at Marana until 1945, and the Tucson community continued to entertain them. In February 1944 cadet S. W. Yaw was singled out for praise in the Arizona Daily Star. Later in the month, a party at La Hacienda was announced as in the planning stages. In April 1944, the largest class of cadets to date started in Marana. They were reviewed by Major General P. T. Mow of the Chinese Air Force. An interesting article in August 1944, referred to the monthly picnic and dance to be held for the cadets. Entertainment at the August event was provided by the Tucson Little Theater. In September 1944, the graduating class to date was feted at the Pioneer Hotel. In January 1945, the 10th class of cadets turned the tables when they entertained Tucson with a concert in Chinese on KVOA radio station as part of Marana Army Airfield’s weekly “Music in the Air” program. This group continued to entertain the Tucson community with several concerts in Chinese during the following months. In June and August 1945, the cadets went to swim parties at Ashley Stone, followed by dances. The August party hosted 90 cadets with a total of 250 people in attendance.
The Japanese surrender was signed on September 2, 1945. The last class of cadets graduated two days later. Their graduation party was shortly after. The training of cadets ended at Marana in the fall of 1945. During that time, the facility trained 13,000 pilots, 800 of whom were Chinese Nationalists.
Once they graduated from basic flying school in Marana, the cadets continued their training at one of the advanced flying schools. After completing their advanced training, they went off to war. Baldwin H. Tom, whose father was one of the Mandarin-speaking ground school flight instructors at Luke, Thunderbird and Marana, said that his father believed that most of the pilots he helped train did not survive the war.
In June 1954, a group of 27 experienced Chinese Nationalist pilots from Formosa (now Taiwan) stopped in Tucson “on their way to further A. F. instruction” to fight the Reds (the Chinese Communists). Just as they had during World War II, the Arizona Daily Star published a complimentary article about the men including a photo of four of the senior officers with “local beauty” Ora Lee.
Resources
“37th Flying Training Wing (World War II),” Wikipedia, August 5, 2022 edit, viewed on 11/9/2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37th_Flying_Training_Wing_(World_War II)
Arizona Daily Star. I used numerous articles from the Star in researching this essay.
“Army Air Forces Training Command,” Wikipedia, last edited June 21, 2020, viewed on 9/9/2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Air_Forces_Training_Command Extensive bibliography.
“Army Air Forces Training Command,” Wikipedia, October 26, 2023 edit, viewed on 11/9/2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Air_Forces_Training_Command
ELGIN ROY NEWELL. Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame, Pima Air & Space Museum, 2007, viewed on 11/9/2023 https://pimaair.org/hall-of-fame/elgin-roy-newell/ Instructed Chinese cadets during WWII at Thunderbird Field.
Freeman, Paul. “Arizona: Northern Tucson Area,” Abandoned and Little Known Airfields, last edited January 8, 2020, viewed on 9/9/2022 http://www.airfields-freeman.com/AZ/Airfields_AZ_Tucson_N.htm#Coronado Interesting maps and photos.
“Hoover Institution Acquires The Papers Of Zhou Shilin, Founder Of The Taiwanese Air Force ‘Thunder Tigers’,” Hoover Institution, December 1, 2021, viewed on 9/9/2022 https://www.hoover.org/news/hoover-institution-acquires-papers-zhou-shilin-founder-taiwanese-air-force-thunder-tigers
KENNETH H. DAHLBERG. Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame, Pima Air & Space Museum, 2009, viewed on 11/7/2023 https://pimaair.org/hall-of-fame/kenneth-h-dahlberg/ Instructed Chinese pilots during WWII at Yuma Army Air Field.
Lerner, Preston. “Oldies and Oddities: Tinseltown’s Training Base,” Smithsonian Magazine: Air & Space Magazine, March 2010, viewed on November 9, 2023 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/oldies-and-oddities-tinseltowns-training-base-6283264/
“Looking Back . . . “Luke Airforce Base Thunderbolt, July 7, 2017, viewed on 9/9/2022 https://www.aerotechnews.com/lukeafb/2017/07/07/looking-back/
“Marana – Pinal Air Park,” Skytamer Images, 2014, viewed on 9/9/2022 https://www.skytamer.com/6.1/AZ/Marana,PinalAirPark.html
“Military Operations, Aerial – Chinese,” Arizona Memory Project, viewed on 11/7/2023 https://tinyurl.com/yhxv244b This collection is part of Southwest Airways and Thunderbird Field #1
My 58 Uncles (Production in progress), 2022, Min Zhou, Producer, viewed on 11/9/2023 https://youtu.be/_1V9NC8aLQM?si=DLQzYspkvm9KGCDY The documentary should be finished in 2024.
“Pinal Air Park,” Wikipedia, last edited October 4, 2023, viewed on 9/9/2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinal_Airpark
Rodriguez, Nadine Arroyo. “Did You Know: Thunderbird School In Glendale Was WWII Training Base,” KJZZ 91.5, July 20, 2015, viewed on 11/7/2023 https://kjzz.org/content/167542/did-you-know-thunderbird-school-glendale-was-wwii-training-base
Tom, Baldwin H. “Memorial: Thunderbird Field, Luke Field, WW II and Me,” Ignite the Promise, May 25, 2015, viewed on 9/9/2022 https://baldwintom.typepad.com/ignite_the_promise/2015/05/thunderbird-field-luke-field-and-wwii.html