Preface

Having been lucky enough to have been jockeyed through the skies of China, Burma and India in mostly good weather by careful pilots, I had very few of what veterans would call exciting experiences. I also lie badly. So here's a true story told to me by the guy involved:

The Japanese army had controlled Shanghai since 1937 but American and European foreigners had continued carrying on such relations and commerce as was permitted by the invaders.

As international tensions increased, the British owner of a Ford automobile sales and service franchise in the city pondered how he might survive if war should break out between his nation and Japan. One day, as he heard the sabers of battle rattle louder, this Britisher walked out to his display lot. There he picked out the latest model and drove it into the repair garage next to his salesroom. He immediately set his mechanics to the job of disassembling the never-used car. As the parts came off, they were artfully interspersed among the used and spare parts which were already stored in full view. A few days later, shortly after the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese expropriated this property and interned the owner.

It was a late September evening in 1945 when I met this singular enterprising individual. Our crew had just delivered another planeload of Chinese troops at a Shanghai airfield. We were eating supper at an American mess hall which was available to lately-freed Allied military and civilian personnel. Among the tales told by many of these released prisoners, none was related with more relish and satisfaction than that by the British car dealer.

The invaders from the Land of the Risen Sun had plundered what they could find. Funny, but their eyes never could comprehend what they surely were seeing every day. Meanwhile, for almost four years, the captive doggedly bided his time. And so in the autumn of 1945 the released prisoner returned to his place of business. With the help of re-hired employees, the scattered parts were reassembled into a "brand new" 1941 Ford sedan, the only "new" one in all of China.

by R.A.Stumpf