Salute to heroes of the past

Comment on "Downtrodden route" (China Daily, Sept 29)

I was pleasantly surprised to find in China Daily an article on Moon Chin and other American pilots who flew over the Himalayas during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

I was one of Moon Chin's passengers. A kid of 15, I flew from Chongqing via Kunming to Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, in 1943. I remember Moon Chin because my father, then manager of Bank of China, Calcutta office, introduced me to him. Moon Chin patted my head to assure me that the flight over the "Hump" would be safe.

Aside from the huge amount of cargo these aircraft carried to China, they also transported many passengers to China and from China to the outside world, because no land route was available then.

Besides being thankful to the American and Chinese airmen, we must also be grateful to the tens of thousands of Chinese laborers, for if they had not built the airports with shovels, handpicks, baskets and stone-rollers, the feat would not have been possible.

Lin Wusun, via e-mail

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(China Daily 10/22/2012 page9)