Robert Yost

Circle Three Times and Land in Chihkiang Robert Yost

Chihkiang, Peishiyi, Kweilin - names remembered by few. Dialing back to World War II, Chihkiang, Peishiyi and Kweilin air bases, stationed in south China's far reaches of nowhere, were posted to support US Army Air Force missions in the Asia-Pacific Theater. Together with more than 90 period photographs, "Circle Three Times and Land in Chihkiang" traces the journey of one soldier tagged, shipped, and consigned to duty with the 397th Air Service Squadron in General Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force and the regrouped Flying Tigers. Hurled over "The Hump" in a C-43 transport from northern India to Kunming, China, this untested conscript became part and parcel of the massive logistics needed to sustain crucial US and Chinese flight operations based in this far-flung region. The story documents this wartime effort and the teeming Chinese masses trapped in it, wracked by war-inflicted poverty, ruthless Japanese invaders, and the utter degradation of Shanghai's International Settlement. The narrative ends with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, ramrod straight, greeting thousands of Chinese partisans marshaled in the grounds of Shanghai's immense racetrack, celebrating the Nationalist victory over Japan. At that same moment, Chiang's bitter opponent, Mao Tse-tung, was busy seizing the north. The tectonic plates of history were shifting beneath everyone's feet.