The air force is to hold a ceremony in September to symbolically “bring home” 52 Air Force Academy cadets who were killed during World War II and buried in the US, a military source said yesterday.
On Sept. 3, Armed Forces Day, memorial plaques honoring the cadets are to be placed at the Air Force Cemetery in the Bitan (碧潭) area of New Taipei City’s Xindian District (新店), the source said, adding that a ritual to symbolize the return of the cadet’s spirits is to be part of the ceremony.
The decision to erect the memorial plaques was disclosed on Saturday by Wang Li-jen (王立楨), a retired Taiwanese aerospace engineer based in the US.
Wang wrote on Facebook that the cadets were among many who had joined the Air Force Academy in Kunming, China, during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), which was part of the wider Pacific theater of World War II.
Some of the cadets were later sent to the US for flight training under the US Lend-Lease Act of 1941, which allowed the US president to direct war supplies and aid to Allied forces during World War II, Wang said.
The accident rate among pilots then was high, and 52 of the Air Force Academy cadets were killed in air crashes in the US between 1942 and 1946, he said.
Their bodies were buried at Fort Bliss National Cemetery in El Paso, Texas, and a plan was made for their relocation to China.
Initiation of the plan was prevented by a confluence of events, including the Chinese Civil War, he said.
The war resulted in the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government of China relocating to Taiwan.
Furthermore, under US law, only the next of kin is permitted to relocate a body buried in the country, he added.
After several years of efforts by Taiwanese academic Wang Zhi-hui (汪治惠) to “bring home the spirits” of the cadets, the air force in April approved a plan to hold a symbolic burial on Sept. 3 at the Bitan military cemetery, including the installation of memorial plaques to honor the soldiers, Wang Li-jen said.
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