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[[Column 1]] [[Image]] MISS LEE YA CHING Spirit of The New China --- Exemplified by Girl Pilot Typical of the spirit of that China which, not content with an incredibly courageous resistance, is building for peace in the midst of war and for the future from a wrecked and tragic present, is the soft-voiced, exquisite Chinese girl pilot, Miss Lee Ya-Ching, who arrived here on Friday afternoon for a two-weeks visit before going on the Chile. Born in Hong Kong and educated in Shanghai, and London, Lee Ya-Ching took up flying as a career, trained in Switzerland and the States, and returned to her own country to undertake her self-imposed task of "making it air-minded." That was in 1937. Very shortly afterwards, she, together with hundreds of thousands of eager, well-educated young people like her, found themselves caught up in the war and called upon to perform tasks they had never dreamed of. The Japanese invasion found Shanghai desperately ill-equipped to provide for the enormous number of wounded. Theatres, schools and dance-halls in the foreign concessions the only reasonably safe areas--were converted into emergency Red Cross Hospitals. Supplies came in from all quarters -- the Belgian Institute sent three doctors and six nurses and a complete set of X-ray and operating equipment. As administrator for Emergency Hospital No. 24, Le-Ya-Ching collected bedding and blankets from big city stores, raised money from friends, was responsible for obtaining food for two hundred patients, helped in operations and in the training of hospital orderlies. Save for the six Belgian nurses, none of the young women had only previous experience and there dozens of hospitals. In some of them, she said, the conditions were truly awful. The (Continued on page 8) [[Column 2]] wounded were stacked in piles in the corridors as they were brought in, for lack of space. Many died of asphyxiation. But No. 24 set out to be a model of neat and efficient cleanliness, its staff striving by every means in their power to five their wounded a good chance of recovery. Incoming casualties had to be smuggled through the Japanese lines at night, and patients fit to be sent back to their regiments had to be rigged out in civilian clothes. There was no end to the tasks the Chinese girls in the hospitals had to face. In addition, over the radio and in magazines Lee Ya-Ching urged the people of China to increase their resistance. Shanghai fell, she escaped down-river in a motor-launch, the target for Japanese rifle-fire, the ship that was to carry her to Hong Kong. Five years ago she went to the United States, and continued to work for her country there, collecting funds for the China Relief, flying her own Beechcraft aeroplane to forty-six states in the Union, crossing the continent from coast to coast and pleading China's cause on innumerable platforms. 27. AGO. 1944 "LOS DIARIOS" - SARMIENTO 1236 THE STANDARD (Buenos Aires) 485
