The Republic of China (Taiwan) Air Force will hold a ceremony in September to symbolically “bring home” 52 Air Force Academy cadets who were killed during World War II and buried in the United States, a military source said Monday.
On Sept. 3, which is Taiwan’s Armed Forces Day, memorial plaques honoring the 52 cadets will be placed at the Air Force Cemetery in the Bitan area in New Taipei’s Xindian District, and the ceremony will include a ritual that symbolizes the return of the airmen’s spirits, the source in Taipei told CNA.
Taiwan’s decision to erect the memorial plaques to the 52 Air Force cadets after more than 80 years was first disclosed Saturday by Wang Li-jen (???), a retired Taiwanese aerospace engineer based in the U.S.
In a Facebook post, Wang said the 52 cadets were among many who had joined the ROC Air Force Academy in Kunming, China, during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945), known internationally as the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was part of the wider Pacific theater of World War II.
Some of the cadets were later sent to the U.S. for flight training, under the American Lend-Lease Act of 1941, which allowed the U.S. president to direct war supplies and aid to the Allied forces during WWII, Wang said.
The accident rate among WWII pilots was high, and 52 of the ROC Air Force Academy cadets were killed in air crashes in the U.S. between 1942 and 1946, he said.
Their bodies were buried at Fort Bliss National Cemetery in El Paso, Texas, and they were supposed to be relocated to China, but that plan never materialized due to several post-WWII events, including the Chinese Civil War, which resulted in the then-Kuomintang (KMT) government relocating to Taiwan, Wang said.
Furthermore, under U.S. law, only the next of kin could gain permission for the relocation of a body buried in that country, he said.
After years of efforts by Taiwanese scholar Wang Zhi-hui (???) to “bring home the spirits” of the 52 ROC cadets, Taiwan’s Air Force in April gave approval for a symbolic burial at the Bitan military cemetery and for memorial plaques to be placed there on Sept. 3 in honor of the airmen, Wang said.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel