[weihsien_camp] Whata red letter day! Here's Weihsien liberator #7 ! [1 Attachment]

What a day!

In 1997, I searched successfully and found all of the six Americans who liberated Weihsien. But seven men were on the Duck Mission that parachuted into the gao-liang fields outside the camp.

Where was Wang Chen-Han. I have searched unsuccessfully for about 18 years to find Mr. Wang. In Weihsien, we called him "Eddie." Finding a man named Wang in China is like trying to find a man named Smith or Jones in the U.S.A. or U. K. Wang Cheng-Han was 20 years old, the youngest member of the rescue team, the Chinese translator on the team.

For more than an hour I talked by telephone with our "Eddie" Wang today at his home in Sichuan province. He is now 90 years old, in good health, with an amazingly-sharp memory, and still an amazingly-good mastery of English.

His is an amazing story. I vowed I would not cry. But I still have goose bumps

Bless my soul! Here are details of what fascinated and delighted me: A teenager Betty Lambert and another teenaged girl taught him to dance in Weihsien. A Greek girl gave him a piece of silk parachute embroidered with the rescue scene and autographed by the seven liberators. He knew nothing about religion, so someone had to stop him when he was smoking in the church. The team ate their meals at first from the kitchens but later from food dropped by airplanes. They ate their meals in the quarters that had been Japanese Headquarters. Sometimes he got diarrhea and had to be treated by team medic, Raymond Hanchulak.

When I asked Mr. Wang (I COULD'NT call him "Eddie.") what he loved most about his experiences there, he said, "Everything was so new to me. I loved it all," -- that he was only 20 years old so many, many children and everyone talking English. He loved He loved to play sports with the children.

There was nothing he didn't like, he told me.

BUT the parachute drop was a nightmare! He had been trained to do parachuting in a Chinese camp, a simulation on the ground only, never a real jump from an airplane during his training. He said he once questioned his training instructor that his life could be endangered doing real parachuting if he was trained only in simulation. The instructor told him, "You'll be fine. You are not a big guy," So he always worried about a real jump. Fortunately, the parachutes they used on that mission would be automatically deployed. And it did save his life. When he jumped from the B-24, the sudden strong flow of air made him dizzy, almost unconscious. But the parachute deployed in about 15 seconds, and he was awakened by the powerful pulling force. This was his first jump from a plana. He landed safely.

Wang Cheng-Han began to learn English in Shude High School, one of the top in China. He was a sophomore student in Sichuan University when he joined the military service in December 1944 and trained in Luzhou. He didn’t like the training there because they were not trained for how to fight, only non-combat drilling. He says it bothered him because he wanted to fight the Japanese army. There was a war out there!

Later, he was recruited into the telecommunication group in Chongqing, where he learned Morse code. After that, he was recruited in the interpreter training class administrated by Foreign Affairs Bureau (FAB), and completed a 25-day translation training before he was assigned, in May 1945, to the interpreter pool in Kunming. The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS ) went to recruit interpreters from that pool. There, he was employed and assigned to Special Intelligence (SI) group and to Major Stanley Staiger’s team. Major Staiger headed the Weihsien "Duck Mission" rescue team.

The Weihsien rescue mission was organized in Kunming, the headquarters of OSS. On the early morning of August 17, 1945, he was informed that the team was about to carry on a rescue mission at Weihsien, Shandong province. Only then, he was informed of the details about flying to Weihsien.

Previously, Mr. Wang had trained in using small arms , light machine gun, Bazooka (a small rocket launcher) and TNT at Kaiyuan where he had learned parachuting.

So at the age of 20, "Eddie" Wang parachuted from the B-24 over Weihsien. He remembers carrying a pistol, a carbine, and a dagger.

Team members landed in a field of gaoliang not far from the camp.

He says he was closest in friendship with Peter Orlich, the American radio operator on the team. Peter Orlich was 21 years old.

Mr. Wang says his job in Weihsien was to translate for members in the team. Team members took over and stayed in what had been the small Japanese headquarters building, not far from the entrance to the camp. There was a toilet downstairs that allowed only two people to use it at the same time.

What an astonishing, long-lost chapter of the Weihsien story!

Wang Cheng Han, college graduation photograph.

Believe it or not, Mr. Wang's grandson, Daniel Wang found me via the Internet. Daniel tells me that when Daniel graduated from college, his grandfather told him a lot of family history including the liberation of Weihsien. Recently Daniel, who is now living in the U.S.A., searched the Internet by putting together the words "Weihsien" and "Stanley Staiger." (Major Staiger headed this rescue team). That brought him to Leopold Pander's amazing Weihsien web site -- and to me.

Weifang officials have invited Wang Cheng Han to attend the August 70th anniversary reunion.

Mary Taylor Previte

To:weihsien_camp@yahoogroups.com
Fri, 1 May 2015 at 10:12

[weihsien_camp] Fw: Subject: Children interned in Weihsien: year of birth

From: Mary Previte
Sent: Friday, May 01, 2015 3:14 AM
To: Leopold Pander

Subject: Subject: Children interned in Weihsien: year of birth

Leopold,
Please send to our Weihsien group

Mary

>> I think you'll be fascinated, as I am, by another of Ron Bridge's astonishing collections of data about the Japanese civilian internment camps in Asia. Those of you born in 1934, like my brother John, comprise the largest age-group of children interned in Weihsien. By the way, slightly more girls were interned than boys.

Ron has collected probably the most complete data in the world from all Japanese camps in Asia during World War II.

See below.

Mary Taylor Previte

Herewith date of birth taken from the basic statistics:

>>> Weihsien inmates: Children
>>> YEAR OF BIRTH
>>> Girls Boys

>>> 1926 8 11
>>> 1927 12 13
>>> 1928 14 18
>>> 1929 14 11
>>> 1930 16 10
>>> 1931 12 20
>>> 1932 17 16
>>> 1933 17 11
>>> 1934 22 16
>>> 1935 8 8
>>> 1936 14 10
>>> 1937 7 7
>>> 1938 13 13
>>> 1939 4 9
>>> 1940 10 8
>>> 1941 8 7
>>> 1942 3 13
>>> 1943 9 4
>>> 1944 6 3
>>> 1945 2
>>> 0

>>> Total: 424 children interned

>>> Ron Bridge