Today many Americans may not know who the Doolittle Raiders were. In April 1942, these 80 airmen delivered America's first blow against the Japanese homeland after Tokyo's attack on Pearl Harbor. Altogether 16 B-25 bombers took off from the USS Hornet, bombed Tokyo and other cities, then mostly bailed out or crash-landed in eastern China. It was a much-needed morale boost for Americans.
However, the airmen who landed in Japanese-occupied areas were in grave danger; they relied on local Chinese rescuers -- civilians and military, farmers and fisherman, total strangers -- to survive. It would be understandable if the Doolittle Raiders and other American aviators were totally unknown to many Chinese today. However, the largest free-standing memorial hall commemorating the Raid is actually in a low-profile city of Zhejiang Province, called Quzhou.
And the population of some cities in eastern China have erected memorials to raiders who landed nearby and restored a vintage British missionary hospital which had provided life-saving medical treatment to crew 7. In Western China, battlefields and cemeteries have been preserved to honour those who fought and died during Japan's two-year occupation. Liu will reveal how the memory of Flying Tigers, Doolittle Raiders and Hump pilots survives in China, 80 years after the Allied Victory in Asia.
The Speaker
Melinda Liu: Beijing Bureau Chief at Newsweek, foreign policy commentator, film director, RASBJ Vice President
Award-winning foreign correspondent Melinda Liu has lived and worked in Beijing for a total of three decades. She was named Newsweek's Beijing Bureau chief in 1998, returning to a city where 18 years earlier she had opened Newsweek's first bureau in the Chinese capital since 1949.
One of Newsweek’s most experienced foreign correspondents, Liu covered many aspects of China's post-Mao modernization; the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban; the 1991 liberation of Kuwait; and U.S. military interventions in Somalia and Haiti. In 2003, she was one of few American journalists in Baghdad's Palestine Hotel as a firsthand witness to the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing of the Iraqi capital and the fall of Saddam Hussein. Liu won the 2006 Shorenstein Journalism Award in recognition of her reporting on Asia.
The daughter of Honorary Doolittle Raider Tung-Sheng Liu, she also helped establish the Doolittle Raid Memorial Hall in Quzhou, Zhejiang province; co-directed the documentary film “Doolittle Raiders: A China Story” and advises Yunnan’s Flying Tigers Research Association. To mark the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory in Asia in 2025, Liu and her husband, RASBJ founder Alan Babington-Smith. have curated a series of journeys for the travel company WildChina, focusing on the legacies of Western aviators in WWII China.
PROGRAMME
Time: 7:00 - 8:00 pm (Reception starts at 6:30 pm)
Admission: $175 for members, $220 for guests /non-members (Light refreshments are included in the admission fee)
Please email <membership@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk> and provide your membership number, if applicable, at the time of registration. Please kindly complete your registration by advance payment via Stripe's payment links below (using your Credit Card):
Members ($175):
Stripe payment link for members
Non-members / Guests ($220):
Stripe payment link for non-members and guests
Details about the other payment option will be sent on registration. Upon receipt of payment, your registration will be confirmed by email. Registration will be closed at 12 noon on 12 February 2025.