Vignette 4

 On the Song Hua River

 Author：Judith Lau

On July 10, 1943, my mother and I boarded an American military transport plane from Kunming to Assam, India on our way to my father's first overseas assignment, Chicago, USA and to await my father who was undergoing 3 weeks of briefing and training in Chungking.

 

 But first, mother and I had to take a hazardous flight over "The Hump" (駝 峰)of the tallest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas. The Hump was so named by the American flyers for the 530 miles Eastern Uplift Range of the Himalayas. This dangerous route soaring up 15,000', best avoided the Japanese Zero fighter planes based in Japanese controlled Burma.

 

Unpredictable weather conditions, and turbulence, icing, the absence of reliable maps or navigational aids deemed this route the "Skyway to Hell" or the "Aluminum Trail". Over 1000 airmen, mostly Americans and 600 planes were lost from 1942-46. At times, 50% of planes were lost monthly. Later in life I learned that on August 2nd, 1943 Eric Severeid, the late illustrious CBS news correspondent parachuted to safety and was rescued while he was ferried over the Hump. Yet, this perilous route was the only lifeline between China and the outside world. The Allies were committed to keeping China in the war and tying down 100,000's of Japanese military to prevent Japan from joining the Axis front, from Russia to North Africa. Flying the Hump became the greatest airlift in military history and laid the blueprint for the less daunting but still challenging Berlin Airlift during the Cold War.

 

I still remember quite clearly, sitting on a long bench along the body of the plane and feeling unwell. I stood up and vomited all over the floor of the plane but avoided soiling my new shoes. To my surprise, I was not chastised for making such a mess. My father told me later that my 7 month pregnant mother and I flew a cargo transport on its empty flight back to India from Kunming, China having off loaded its supplies to the Chinese military forces. My new baby brother, ⽥之竺 was born prematurely on August 2nd,1943 in Calcutta, India. He was named for the ancient Chinese name for India "天竺" "Heavenly Bamboo".

 

Calcutta in August suffers temperatures over 100*F with humidity in the high 80%. My mother found cool refuge for us in the resort town Kalimpong at 4000' altitude in the lower Himalaya Darjeeling where the temperatures hovered in the 70's. Though I don't remember the Kalimpong respite, photos from the Kalimpong time show a laughing 4 year old in new clothes and shoes, a bow in her hair, with my mother's god-sister, Yan Fu-Hua, whom my mother took out of China with us.

 

Meanwhile back in Chungking, the summer bombing had lessened as the Japanese focussed their resources, following Pearl Harbor, on the war in the Pacific. The previous summer in 1942, Japan had suffered their first major naval defeat at Midway.

 

During the 1943 summer, Father undertook a condensed training course for about 200 civil service personnel, sometimes conducted personally by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Father remembers the Generalissimo usually dressed in civilian clothes, often in 中⼭裝 or ⾺褂兒, the traditional Chinese long robe but never in his military uniform. The Generalissimo was courteous to his students, using classical forms of address, however, his Ningbo accent was difficult to follow. While the Generalissimo's demeanor was austere, his sober face would occasionally break into a diffident smile. Following several weeks of training, Father bade farewell to his friends and oldest brother Tien Bao-qi and left on Sept. 30 to join mother, me and my new brother. Father flew on a Chinese passenger plane of the China Air Task Force over the western Lower Himalaya Hump as the Japanese were losing their grip on Burma.

 

 A few months after father left for India, his brother Tian Bao Qi was assigned to Iran. Uncle Bao Qi served in Iran 1943-49 followed by a year in Afghanistan before returning to Beijing in 1951. In 1952 Uncle Bao Qi retired from the increasingly factious government service in the Foreign Ministry and taught Russian, first at Tsinghua University and then at Peking University (Beida) until 1986. In 1988, my mother and I paid our respect to Uncle Bao Qi in Beijing. His wife had passed away and Uncle was living quietly in his simple but comfortable Beida faculty apartment. While my mother chatted amiably with Uncle, I scanned old family photographs trying to remember Uncle during the months when he sheltered me from the heavy Japanese bombing in his home on the outskirts of Chungking. Uncle seemed very much the mild mannered, upright man of virtue my father described but I could only remember his young daughter, my cousin ⽥之秋 (Tian Zhi Qiu), who comforted me during those savage bombing months when I clung to her, homesick for my parents. Uncle Bao Qi passed away in 1999 at the age of 94.

 

In 2015, during dinner in Taipei with the Academia Sinica editor of my father's Memoir, I learned that Uncle Bao Qi was well known to the Academia for his pioneering work on the Russian language curriculum for the two premier Chinese universities where he had taught. My father's dictation of his memoir followed the format of the memoir of his admired older brother Bao Qi. Uncle Bao Qi's daughter Zhi Qiu published her father's memoir posthumously in Beijing. Over the years during my Beijing visits, I have several times met with cousin Zhi Qiu who is as warm and gentle as I remembered when I was 3 years old and she was 8.

 

My earliest memories of life in Chunking are spotty and the stories I remember were not traditional children's legends and fairytales but sagas about Clair Chennault's Flying Tigers (⾶⻁隊) , the AVG American Volunteer Group, with their painted shark face P40's fighters patrolling the skies of Kunming and Chungking against the Japanese Zeros. My fascination with WWII military history and airmen were probably born from those stories.

 

Father's 2 younger sisters, ⽥寶聰 (Tien Pao-tsung) and ⽥寶慧 (Tien Pao-hui) married Chinese Air force pilots who survived their air battles and respectively became a major general and a brigadier general in the ROC Air Force. In my teens in 1956 when I first met my aunts' husbands, I could imagine 3rd and 4th Uncles to be quite the dashing daredevils who had swept up my 2 beautiful aunts back in old Beiping, buzzing their home with flybys to the consternation of the family patriarch, my grandfather. I last visited my two surviving Aunts and 4th Uncle in Taipei in 2015.

 

In my childhood, neither do I remember hearing children's songs but remember my mother softly crooning the plaintive 9/18 elegy "On the Sung Hua River":

 

 "九一八, 九一八,從那個悲慘的時候，

脫離了我的家鄉，拋棄那無盡的寶藏

流浪！流浪！整日價在關內，流浪！

哪年哪月，才能夠回到我那可愛的故鄉？

哪年哪月，才能夠收回我那無盡的寶藏？

爹娘啊，爹娘啊！什麽時候才能歡聚在一堂?"*

 

When we departed Kunming in 1943, my mother did not think she would never see her mother again, nor my father, his father or oldest brother, Bao Qi. I grew up abroad without feeling that poignant loss of homeland and family but my parents' deep sorrow all their lives is captured in the haunting refrains of "松花江上" -"Sung Hua River"*. ~

 

[*Note: "On the Sungari/Songhua River" is a famous patriotic song lamenting the loss of the writer's homeland during the Sino-Japanese War. Japan launched the invasion of Manchuria with The Mukden Incident on Sept 18, 1931 ("jio yi ba" 9/18 )- the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. "My home is on Songhua River in the Northeast. There are forests, coal mines, soybeans and sorghum all over the mountain. My home is on Songhua River in the Northeast. There are my fellow countrymen and my old parents. September 18, September 18, since that miserable day, September 18, September 18, since that miserable day, I've left my homeland, discarded the endless treasure. Roam, Roam, the whole day I roam inside the Great Wall. When can I go back to my homeland? When can I get back my endless treasure? My mother, my father, when can we gather together?"]

 

松花江上

          1943年7月10日，母親與我在昆明搭乘美國軍用運輸機，飛往印度的阿薩姆(Assam)，在那裡等待父親與我們會合前往芝加哥。當時從雲南到印度唯一的空中航線只有一條極危險「駝峰航線」，需要飛過喜馬拉雅山脈東邊530英里外的脊樑山脈，在崇山峻嶺、層巒疊嶂中以15,000英尺的高度飛行，以避開日軍占領緬甸後在該地所駐紮的零式戰鬥機。

           難以逆料的天候狀況、亂流、結冰，加上缺乏精確的地圖和導航系統，這條駝峰航線被稱為「空中地獄」(Skyway to Hell) 或「鋁途」(Aluminum Trail)，因為飛行員在航程中屢屢看見墜落飛機的金屬片的反光，在滿目的鋁片銀光中飛行。這條危機四伏的航線是當時中國和外界唯一的「生命通道」。我還記得當時上了飛機坐好後，感覺很不舒服，於是站了起來，卻立刻吐了滿地，可是我還很小心不要弄髒新鞋。父親後來告訴我，我們搭的那架貨機運送了物資到昆明，之後要飛返印度，所以空蕩蕩的。那時候母親已懷孕七個月，沒想到一個月後，8月2日弟弟提早在加爾各答誕生，所以他的名字取自印度的古名「天竺」，叫做田之竺。

           加爾各答在8月時溫度高到華氏100度，濕度也高達80%。我們住在喜馬拉雅山脈的大吉嶺附近，海拔四千英呎的葛輪堡 (Kalimpong) 一個蔭涼的住處，氣溫舒適宜人，大多維持在70度左右。那段時間的生活我已不復記憶，但葛輪堡的照片中，四歲的我穿著新衣新鞋，頭上綁了蝴蝶結，笑得很開心。

          那段時間重慶的轟炸不若以往激烈，日軍已把焦點放在太平洋戰事，因為前一年 (1942) 日本海軍在中途島首度慘敗。我和母親在印度時，父親留在重慶與其他大約200名公職人員接受蔣委員長親自主持的密集訓練。父親說蔣委員長通常穿著中山裝或馬褂，對學生很好，講話也很客氣，但是學生不太能聽懂他的寧波口音。委員長上起課來十分嚴肅，但偶爾也會露出微笑，稍稍紓解學生的壓力。幾個星期的訓練結束之後，父親於9月30日飛往印度與我們會合。父親搭的是中國空中特遣部隊的客機，當時日本已經從緬甸撤退，所以飛機航行取道喜馬拉雅山西側比較低的駝峰路線。

    父親被派往美國，大伯田寶齊則在1943年到1949年被派到伊朗，之後派駐阿富汗一年，於1951年回到北京，先在清華大學教書，後轉至北京大學，一直到1986年。母親和我曾在1988年到北京拜訪大伯，大伯母已仙逝，大伯住在北大宿舍，過著安靜、簡單、舒適的生活。我聽著母親和大伯愉快地話舊，想起當年父母把我帶到大伯家躲避日軍轟炸的往事，大伯還是那麼和藹可親，仍舊是父親口中那個正直的大哥。大伯父在1999年去世，享年94歲。

           重慶生活在我的記憶中是片片段段的，而我的童年所聽的故事既非傳奇也非童話，而是陳納德的飛虎隊，以及機身以鯊魚為標誌的P40戰機如何保護昆明和重慶。我對二次大戰軍事史和飛行員非常著迷，很可能就是根源於此。父親的兩個妹妹，田寶聰和田寶慧，都嫁給空軍飛官，兩位姑爹在戰後都晉升中華民國空軍的將軍。1956年見到三姑爹和四姑爹，十幾歲的我想像著他們出生入死的英勇，那時心裡想，一定是他們無畏的氣魄擄獲了兩位漂亮姑姑的心。

    童年的兒歌在我記憶中也是付之闕如，腦海裡唯一熟悉的歌曲就是母親常常輕聲吟唱的：

 "九一八, 九一八,從那個悲慘的時候，

脫離了我的家鄉，拋棄那無盡的寶藏

流浪！流浪！整日價在關內，流浪！

哪年哪月，才能夠回到我那可愛的故鄉？

哪年哪月，才能夠收回我那無盡的寶藏？

爹娘啊，爹娘啊！什麽時候才能歡聚在一堂?"

          母親根本沒有想到，當時昆明一別就再也見不到自己的母親，而父親也沒有料到自此與爺爺、大伯此生不復相見。我自己在國外長大，無法體會父母回不去自己的家鄉，見不著自己家人的悲痛。這首感人肺腑的「松花江上」，道出了他們一生所承受的那股深沉的哀傷，以及魂縈夢繫的思念。