Torrent Riders: Oral Histories of WWII Veterans from the Land, Sea, and Air Forces

"The Trendsetters is a unique book that has astonished and impressed researchers of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, while at the same time humbling professional historians. Lai En-tien, an independent photographer born in Zhangzhou, Fujian in 1982, never attended university. Yet, through his own efforts, he persisted for 15 years and accomplished a feat that no academic institution or civilian organization had ever achieved. He traveled across China, Taiwan, and even to the United States and Singapore, interviewing 170 veterans and eyewitnesses of the War of Resistance, including two female soldiers and one "comfort woman" survivor. He recorded 740 hours of professional-grade oral history video. With the assistance of volunteers who cared for veterans in various regions, he compiled over a million words of oral records. Since 2013, he has published oral interview records of 25 interviewees, totaling about 500,000 words, on the WeChat public account "Oral History of the War of Resistance Together."

Following the 2022 release of The Counter-Current: Oral History Records of Members of the Anti-Japanese Assassination Squad, this book, The Trendsetters: Oral History of Army, Navy, and Air Force Veterans of the War of Resistance, records the lives of five veterans who bravely navigated the currents of their lives. These five veterans were all professionals from the army, navy, air force, paratroopers, and military intelligence units. Their rich, diverse, and often highly classified experiences are rarely touched upon in existing oral histories of the War of Resistance, making them invaluable and rare historical materials.

Liang Jiayou (1922-2014) was one of the 800 students from National Southwestern Associated University who joined the army. In February 1944, he joined Sun Liren's unit as a translator, participated in the counter-offensive in northern Myanmar, and later was assigned to a artillery company attached to the British forces to retake central Myanmar.

Overseas Chinese from Singapore, Huang Xiji (1926-2023), returned to China to participate in the War of Resistance at the age of 15, on the eve of the Pearl Harbor incident. He enrolled in the Tongzi Naval Academy in Guizhou. In 1948, he received British naval training at HMS Tamar in Hong Kong, learning navigation techniques such as the gyrocompass. In the "Chongqing Incident" of 1949, he piloted the cruiser from Wusongkou in Shanghai to the "Liberated Zone" in the Bohai Sea.

Yang Qinhuai (1927-2020) was a member of the first team of China's first paratrooper unit, the "Army Commando Headquarters" (codename Hongxiang Unit). On the eve of the victory of the War of Resistance, he parachuted into Kaiping, Guangdong, to launch a surprise attack on the Japanese forces.

Chen Bingjing (1918-2022) was a Chinese fighter pilot embedded in the 23rd Fighter Group of the U.S. 14th Air Force (formerly the "Flying Tigers"). In October 1943, while escorting American bombers attacking Haiphong Port in Vietnam, his plane was damaged by Japanese aircraft. He parachuted and evaded capture in the wilderness for several days before finally being captured. He was imprisoned by the Japanese in the Jiangwan American POW camp in Shanghai and Nanjing's Laohuqiao Prison for nearly two years, enduring immense torture.

Li Jianping, the only surviving interviewee among the five, was born in 1927. In 1944, he was recruited by the U.S. 14th Air Force and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) into a radio training class. However, in early August 1945, he was imprisoned by the Americans after a colleague fled. During the Civil War, he served as a clerk in the personnel department of the 60th Army of the Yunnan Army, experiencing the brutal Siege of Changchun, the "uprising," and a long period of ideological re-education.

The Trendsetters covers the complete lives of the five interviewees, from their family backgrounds and upbringing to their war and post-war experiences, until old age. The content is meticulously detailed, rich, and vivid. Therefore, this oral history is not just a history of the War of Resistance; it is also the life history of five veterans, as well as a magnificent and tumultuous military, social, and political history of 20th-century China, and a history of Sino-American relations. Lai En-tien did not receive academic training, but he learned as he went after devoting himself to oral history. The authenticity, fidelity, completeness, and transparency of his oral history fully meet the most stringent academic definitions of oral history, which is truly astonishing."

-- Chang Cheng, Associate Professor, Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

2025-04-25

1 Plus Books

644

9781949736908