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I remember September 10, 1945,
the day six of us Chefoo children were flown out of the camp from the
air strip beyond the walls -- Raymond Moore, David Allen, and four Taylors
-- Kathleen, Jamie, John, and me. We were only the second planeload out.
For how many weeks the B-24s and the B-29s had been dropping food and
clothing into the camp. It seemed so easy. So onto the plane I carried
my own tiny relief and memory package to drop to the girls who for almost
three years had been my dorm mates in the Lower School Dormitory. Sorrow
of sorrows! When the plane got into the air, Weihsien shrank to a tiny,
unreachable target beneath us and I don't think the airplane windows opened.
I curled up and went to sleep on a heap of used parachutes piled on the
floor of the plan. When the plane touched down in Sian, the men at the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) base served us ice cream and cake and
showed us a Humphrey Bogart movie . I think it was "Casablanca."
Kathleen and I slept that night in an officer's tent -- unaccompanied
by bedbugs. The next night -- 9/11 -- we were home. We hadn't seen our
parents for 5 1/2 years. |
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