Kunming, Julia McWilliams Child, and Tad Nagaki

Sisterhood of Spies is an account of women in the OSS in the European and CBI theaters in WWII.  Author Elizabeth P. McIntosh discusses China in her Chapter 19, Over the Hump to China.  She notes that Julia McWilliams Child, of whom we have read mention in R. H. Smith's history, was stationed in the OSS HQ in Kunming from early1945.  From pp. 296-297 of the paperback edition:

At the same time that new OSS women were checking into Chungking's Green Gate, the OSS advance base in K'unming four hundred miles south of Chungking was also expanding.  I flew over the Hump in a storm-tossed flight with imperturable Julia McWilliams, who calmly read a book while all the rest of us were preparing to die. . . 

The OSS compound was located on the outskirts of town, surrounded by high mud walls.  Before the war K'un-ming had been a resort town the end of the rail line from Indochina where French colonials spent their vacations enjoying this invigorating mountain retreat, the sparkling sunshine, and the medieval ambience of the walled city itself.  To the north was a beautiful lake with a fleet of fishing sampans.  Towering above the city was West Mountain, the landmark for Hump and combat pilots nearing that welcome safe haven, K'un-ming Airport. K'un-ming was also the end of the Burma Road, closed from 1942 to early 1945 while the Japanese controlled that country.  Vital military supplies were now arriving aboard lubering trucks caked with red clay from Burma.

Most of the women at K'un-ming headquarters had special operational skills.  Julia McWilliams continued the important job of organizing Registry material, as she had done in Ceylon.  Reports were coming in constantly from OSS field missions that were gradually spreading out to China's coastal cities.  One priority target was the pinpointing of prisoner-of-war camp sites.  Later this specific intelligence data enabled OSS rescue teams to zero in on these camps accurately and liberate Allied prisoners held by the Japanese.

The liberation to which McIntosh refers is specifically the rescue of Allied military and civilian POWs held by the Japanese as quickly as possible after the Japanese surrender, before the POW camp commanders had time to kill them.

The mission undertaken by Tad Nagaki, a Nisei OSS commando who rescued civilian prisoners held at a concentration camp in Shantung province, provides an example.  From an account written up years later when rescuer and rescuees maintained their friendship when back in the USA:

Reports had reached American headquarters in China the summer of 1945 that Japan planned to kill all Prisoners of War (POW). To prevent the massacre, seven-man rescue teams that included medics, communications specialists, and interpreters were hastily organized to find and evacuate POWs in China, Manchuria, and Korea.  

Determined to make one last difference as World War II came to an end, especially since so many lives were at stake, Nagaki immediately volunteered for the mission. As the “Armored Angel” droned toward Weihsien Concentration Camp in the Shantung Province, he remembered how he almost didn’t get the chance. 

It's an excellent story.

Lake Dian and West Mountain; Kunming

An earlier Kunming post includes photos of OSS personnel there to train the Chinese.  One of them I think is our EJZ.