Hazel Ying Lee, WASP Pilot

Hazel Ying Lee's official WASP photograph. U.S. Air Force photo illustration / John Turner.

Hazel Ying Lee was one of the first Chinese American women to earn a pilot's license, and the first to fly for the U.S. military. In World War II she served with the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) — one of only two Chinese American WASP, with Margaret "Maggie" Gee. Women couldn't fly in combat or overseas, but the WASP ferried planes between bases, test-flew aircraft and ran training exercises for combat pilots.

Facing racial and gender discrimination, Lee became one of 1,072 highly skilled WASP. When she died on November 25, 1944, she was the last of the 38 WASP who died in service.

Lee in front of a plane, 1932. U.S. Air Force photo.

The dream

• Born: August 24, 1912, in Portland, Oregon, to immigrant parents; her father had left China's civil conflict and entered the U.S. despite the Chinese Exclusion Act. The family had eight children.
• Flying lessons: after high school she worked as an elevator operator to pay for them, then joined a flight program sponsored by the Portland Chinese Benevolent Society, with support from the Chinese community.
• October 1932: licensed at just 20.

Turned away twice

• 1933: angered by Japan's invasion of Manchuria, she went to China to join its air force — and was refused because she was a woman.
• She stayed several years, working in a military office, teaching in her father's hometown, and flying commercial freight when she could.
• 1937: when Japan invaded China, she tried again and was refused again. In Canton she helped friends find shelter from air raids.
• 1938: back in the U.S., she worked for the Chinese government in New York, buying war materials, thanks to her fluent Chinese and English.

WASP service

Lee joined the Women's Flying Training Detachment, which in August 1943 merged with the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron to form the WASP. Their job — ferrying new aircraft from factories (often converted automobile plants) to bases for shipment to the fronts — freed more men for combat.

• Training: from February 1943, at Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas — thirty weeks of flight training and 560 hours of ground school.
• Discrimination: some male pilots doubted women's strength and stability; WASP earned less, paid for their own living costs and uniforms, and were sometimes handed unwanted missions such as open-cockpit flights.
• Reputation: known for fearlessness, humor and skill, Lee taught fellow WASP about Chinese food and culture and wrote their names in Chinese characters on their planes — in lipstick.

Lee reviews a training flight with an instructor. U.S. Air Force photo.

In October 1943 she married fellow pilot "Clifford" Louie Yim-qun, a major in the Chinese Air Force, and they spent long stretches apart.

Posted to the 3rd Ferrying Squadron at Romulus Army Air Base, Michigan, she flew all kinds of aircraft — Stearman PT-17 biplanes, T-6 Texans, and big C-47 transports carrying up to 6,000 pounds.

Taking risks

WASP duties grew from ferrying trainers and liaison planes to mock missions, cargo runs, target towing (dragging fabric targets for anti-aircraft gunners — hard on plane and pilot) and test flights. In 1944, Lee attended Pursuit School in Brownsville, Texas, becoming one of 134 WASP qualified on fighters such as the P-51 Mustang, P-63 Kingcobra and P-39 Airacobra.

She had only two forced landings. After one, in a Kansas farm field, the farmer took her for a Japanese agent and menaced her with a pitchfork until she convinced him she was American.

A Bell P-63 Kingcobra. U.S. Air Force photo.

Final flight

Identified as a Bell Aircraft assembly line near Niagara Falls, taken between 1940 and 1946. Office of War Information; Library of Congress.

On November 10, 1944, Lee picked up a new P-63 at Bell's factory near Niagara Falls for Great Falls, Montana — a stop on the Alaska–Siberia Lend-Lease route that sent American planes to the Soviet Union. Lee and other pursuit pilots delivered more than 5,000 fighters to Great Falls, where men flew them on to Alaska.

Weather delayed the trip. On Thanksgiving morning, November 23, she left Fargo, North Dakota, and was cleared to land at Great Falls — but other P-63s were also landing, confusing the tower. Just after she landed, another P-63 collided with her plane. Rescuers pulled her from the burning wreck, but she died of her burns two days later, on November 25, 1944.

The Congressional Gold Medal honoring the WASP; reverse design by the U.S. Mint.

Recognition, late

As civilians, the WASP and their families got no military benefits; the Army Air Forces wouldn't even pay for funerals of those killed in service. A 1944 bill for veteran status failed after male pilots opposed it; it came more than 30 years later. In 2010, the WASP received the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation's highest civilian honors.

Sources

Based on "Hazel Ying Lee," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. It draws on K. Scott Wong, Americans First (Harvard, 2005); Kathleen Cornelsen, Journal of Women's History 17, no. 4 (2005); Deborah G. Douglas, "Nieces of Uncle Sam" (2004); Alan Rosenberg, "For Her Countries, Both," Aviation for Women (2010); Heather Burmeister, "Hazel Ying Lee," Oregon Encyclopedia; Katie Hafner, New York Times (2020); and Kali Martin, National WWII Museum (2021). The appearance of Defense Department images does not imply its endorsement. A class photograph credited to an individual is not reproduced. The source dates her application "the fall of 1943" though her training began in February 1943, and dates the medal both 2009 and 2010.