Valor Friday

Born in 1912 in Portland, Oregon, Hazel Ying Lee was the child of Chinese immigrants. The family owned a Chinese restaurant, and Hazel was one of eight kids. As a kid she played ball, swam, and was an avid card player. After high school in 1929 she took a job as an elevator operator at a department story. Being Chinese and a woman greatly limited her job prospects.

A few years later, Lee took a ride in an airplane at an air show with a friend. This set her life on a different course. She was determined to become a pilot, not something undertaken by most people in the Depression-era let alone a woman, and a woman who faced open discrimination for her heritage.

Around this time (1932) the Japanese Empire invaded Manchuria. With China now fighting a war with Japan,similar to how Ukrainians and Israelis are asked to come help today, Chinese emigrants were called to fight for their mother country. With the American west coast having large populations of Chinese immigrants and their descendants, groups sprung up to get technical training for eventual service back home. Lee joined the Chinese Flying Club of Portland, and began living her dream and training as a pilot.

Participants in the flying club had to pledge their lives to China. In total, 32 pilots would be sent to China over the next year and a half, with two dying in service (one to Malaria before she became operational and one to a training accident). The flying club would continue training pilots until World War II.

Despite Lee’s mother’s objections (she saw nothing to be gained from a young lady becoming an aviator and going to war), she got her private pilot’s license at the age of 19 and went to serve in China. Along the way she met “Clifford” Louie Yim-qun, a fellow pilot from Seattle. Yim-qun would see active service in the Chinese Air Force from 1933, and remained in the service of the Republic of China (Taiwan) after the Chinese revolution. He’d eventually retire as a general and was Deputy Chief of General Staff in the Ministry of National Defence.

When Lee arrived in China there was a great need for pilots, but they refused to accept a woman for the role. As such, she was forced to serve in a desk role. She only flew occasionally for a local airline. She left Chinese national service and settled in Guangzhou flying for a civilian airline.

Lee was still in Guangzhou in 1937 when the Japanese invaded China proper. The city was subjected to Japanese bombings. Friends and neighbors remembered Lee for her calm under fire, helping people wherever she could.

Lee made another attempt to serve in the Chinese Air Force, but again was rebuffed. The war getting closer, as a non-citizen, she decided to return back to the States. She escaped by way of British-held Hong Kong and settled in New York City. She worked there as a purchaser of war supplies for the Chinese.

After Pearl Harbor, the US was now thrust into the ongoing war raging across the world. The US rapidly expanded their military, and found themselves in need of pilots, lots and lots of pilots. With the available aviators called to front line service, it was obvious to people like legendary aviator Jacqueline Cochran that women should fill some of non-combat roles. Lee heard about, and applied for, the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) in 1942.

In 1943, the WFTD merged with another Army flying ladies organization (the Women’s Air Ferrying Service) to become the Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) program. They accepted female aviators to serve so that men could go to war, just as women were filling traditionally male jobs in factories, offices, and shops across the country.

WASPs, as the women in the WASP came to be known, wore Army-style uniforms, but were considered part of the federal civil service instead of the armed forces. This would be rectified in 1977 when they were finally granted veteran status. WASPs served predominately as service pilots, ferrying aircraft from factories to military bases, but they also served as flight instructors to Army Air Force flight cadets, as stateside transport pilots, and towed aerial targets for gunnery training. Every WASP in service freed up a man to go forward towards the front.

Lee, who had twice before attempted to join the war and use her piloting skills, jumped at the chance to join the WASPs. She was one of the early women to join the program, becoming part of the fourth class in 1943. She trained at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. In doing so she became the first Chinese woman to fly for the US military. By war’s end, only two Chinese-American women had served in the program.

As a testament to her toughness, during her training Lee was once ejected from her plane and survived. It seems her lap belt wasn’t properly secured, and when her instructor pilot made an unannounced loop, she fell out (which means it was an open cockpit plane like a Stearman or Ryan ST). Luckily she was wearing her parachute. After landing, she walked back to base, dragging the limp chute behind her.

After training Lee was assigned to the Third Ferrying Group in Romulus, Michigan (Detroit Metro area). They took delivery of aircraft from the big auto manufacturers. By Lee’s own words she said, “I’ll take and deliver anything.” She gained a reputation as an eager pilot with excellent skills and calm under pressure. In Michigan she flew aircraft such as the Stearman, T-6 Texans, and C-47 twin engine transports.

She was only forced down twice. One of those forced a landing into a Kansas farm field. After surviving the ordeal, she was chased around her plane by a farmer with a pitchfork as he screamed about how the Japanese had invaded. She somehow talked her way out of that one.

Lee was popular with her fellow pilots, and was known for using red lipstick to write Chinese characters on the tails of her planes and those of other WASPs. Owing to her upbringing in a Chinese restaurant, she was also known as a excellent cook. She served as an ambassador for Chinese culture, exposing the white American WASPs to a foreign way of life for the first time in their lives.

In September 1944, Lee became one of only about 134 women to receive training in pursuit aircraft. In the parlance of the time, a pursuit plane was a fighter. It’s the origin of the “P” in the most famous American wartime legends like the P-38, P-40, P-47, and P-51. Receiving this training meant Lee would be entrusted to fly the most high performance of USAAF aircraft.

On 10 November 1944 Lee received orders to go to Niagra Falls, NY to ferry a P-63 Kingcobra to Great Falls, Montana. The P-63 isn’t well known on these shores, as the USAAF did not accept it for combat use. Instead it was offered to the Soviets, who had been prolific users of the preceeding design P-39 Airacobra. The Soviets loved both Bell airframes, and took as many of the more than 3,000 Kingcobras as they could get. Great Falls was the first leg of a trans-Alaska route taken by these planes on their way to the Soviets.

The ferry flight was delayed by bad weather at Fargo, North Dakota. Lee was part of a large group of P-63s making the flight, and they departed Fargo when the weather cleared on 23 November. They made their way cross country, and were preparing to land at Great Falls. Due to the confusion between the big number of aircraft and the controllers on the ground, Lee’s aircraft and another Kingcobra were cleared to land on the same runway at the same time.

Lee and this other pilot collided, sending both planes down in a heap of fire. Lee was pulled from the wreckage of her aircraft, her flight jacket still smoldering. She died from her severe injuries two days later. Flying for any reason (training, ferry, test, or in battle) was always dangerous in those days. Lee was one of 38 WASPs killed performing their duties, with another who went missing (and her whereabouts are still unknown).

Because the WASPs were not military, those killed in the line of duty were not afforded military honors. In fact, they were even paid less than the men, had to cover their own room and board, and even had to buy their own uniforms. More than 1,000 of the determined iron-willed ladies would serve in the WASP before war’s end.

To add insult to injury, just three days after Lee died, Hazel’s younger brother Victor was killed in action in the European Theater. He was a T/5 in the 607th Tank Desroyer Battalion. He’d landed at Normandy on 23 June 1944 (D+17) and fought his way across northern France. His tank destroyer was hit by an enemy anti-tank gun near the French town of Merten.

The WASP was disbanded in December 1944, having fulfilled its mission of plugging the gaps left by men. The WASPs as a whole were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civil honor of the legislative branch, in 2009.

Category: Air Force, Historical, Valor, WWII