Chicago Sun Times
Chinese nurse who cared for 'Flying Tigers'
June 11, 2007
BEIJING -- Rita Wong, the only Chinese nurse who cared for the famous ''Flying Tigers'' -- U.S. airmen who defended Chinese supply routes over the Himalayas during World War II -- has died, state media reported. She was 95.
The China Daily said Ms. Wong, also known by her Chinese name Huang Huanxiao, died Tuesday in Kunming in the southwestern Yunnan province.
The ''Flying Tigers'' was the nickname for the U.S. airmen who flew out of southern China, defending supply routes over the Himalayas, known as ''the Hump.''
Ms. Wong was born in Guangdong in southern China and earned a nursing degree from the University of Hong Kong in 1941.
She applied to the headquarters of Allied Forces, which needed English-speaking nurses, and was sent to a hospital of the U.S. 14th Air Force, then stationed in Kunming.
''The flights were very dangerous and planes crashed almost every day. Often the airmen were never found,'' Ms. Wong wrote. AP
Rita Wong; U.S. 14th Air Force; 'Flying Tigers' nurse
