1942
Fuel gone. Crews scattered.
None reached the planned Chinese airfields. Fifteen aircraft came down in or off China; the sixteenth landed near Vladivostok in the Soviet Union.
Not a side story
The raid's human truth was written in China.
The relationship did not end with rescue. Families, researchers, schools, and memorial communities on both sides of the Pacific continue to carry the record forward.
Courage met courage
Help arrived person by person.
Local residents found airmen in fields, villages, hills, and coastal waters. They offered shelter, medical care, translation, transport, and protection.
The cost of rescue
Those acts of courage brought devastating retaliation.
Chinese communities paid an immense price after helping the Raiders. The full toll remains debated; the National Museum of the United States Air Force notes estimates as high as 250,000 Chinese people killed in retaliation for the raid and the assistance that followed.
Read the museum's account
The living bridge
Memory keeps crossing the ocean.
Modern memorials, school programs, research, reunions, and descendant visits continue a relationship formed under extraordinary danger.
Explore the Quzhou scholarship storyAcross the recovered collections
Photographs connected to China.
