Ms. Ho’s memory of
her father was vague, who died in his mid-40s suddenly when she was three. She was raised by her mother alone on her
meager salaries as a teacher in a city elementary school. All she had of her father was a dusty box of
old pictures and literary writings, and fleeting stories from her older
relatives about him: He was a great man, they told her; he was the first native
son from a back-water village in JianXi province gone golden, climbing high up
in the political ladder of the ruling party at the time to become the
provisional governor of a southern metropolis; he was, against all odds, an
incorruptible politician leading an honorable rebellion against the Japanese
invasion during World War II; he was a gentleman scholar who loved poetry and
books, while he was wielding the big sword over the invading enemies; most of
all, he never forgot his root in the impoverished village of JianXi, and
generously opened his door at the height of his power to his friends and
relatives from his remote native village, housing them, feeding them, clothing
them, giving them money to help their ways into the world. All these great deeds failed to impress her -
They happened long ago; and in light of what she had to live through in her
daily struggles of growing up, they meant very little.
Growing up in China
during the Cultural Revolution, when your deceased father had been actually on
the wrong side of the Communist government, meant that you hunkered down, not
showing off your impeccable yet problematic lineage. “Your father would never know what to do in
this life. Nobody could save you except
for your own grit and steel,” her mother told her.
Until one day in
January, seventy odd years later, she got an invitation in the mail, “You are
invited to attend the 70th memorial celebration of the Doolittle Rescue Mission
to be held in Toledo, Ohio, as the sole surviving daughter of the great General
Ho.” It turned out that her father
spearheaded the effort rescuing the fallen American pilots of the first US
trial mission to air bomb the Japan cities after the Pearl Harbor. She was not born yet. Her mother had never mentioned the story when
she was growing up. She only connected
the dots from old tales told by her relatives defying the Communist repression,
the few surviving American pilots (in their 90s) whom she kept in touch with,
and the faded diary left behind by her father.
The Americans haven’t forgotten the Chinese general who had saved their
lives, while her Chinese countrymen had all but wiped out her father’s record
of war-time achievements.
She made the
first-ever overseas trip to attend the memorial ceremony. It was a happy occasion, a happy ending of
her long search of an undefined character in her life: the daughter has
overcome her fear of knowing who her father truly was; the daughter has found a
sort of peace having drawn closer to the inner world of her father through
time. There were only five American
pilots remained from the original seventy.
But they have done a great job keeping the memories alive, uniting the
America’s actions during World War II with her father’s courageous rescue
effort.
