Hazel Ying Lee: W.A.S.P. pilot of WW2

When Hazel, born in Oregon in 1912, took her first flight with a friend she was hooked on flying. She took flying lessons and became the first Chinese American woman to earn a pilot’s license. When the Japanese invaded China in 1933, she flew back to China to aid in the war against them. They would not let her fly and she ended up at a desk job, flying occasionally in a commercial side job. When WW2 erupted, she had to flee back to the United States and enlisted in the W.A.S.P. program that was under the command of the “Queen of Speed” Jacqueline Cochran. There she was given tough dangerous jobs like ferrying open cockpit planes in the dead of winter to various air bases. During her instruction to modern fighting aircraft, her instructor took an unexpected loop and she fell out of the plane, nearly to her death, but was wearing a parachute and survived. She was once forced down in a cornfield in Kansas and chased by a farmer with a pitch fork who thought she was Japanese. Her last flight was to Fargo, North Dakota where she was ferrying a P-63 Airacobra. Tower miscommunication and bad weather caused her to crash into another P-63 and two days later she died of burns due to the crash. Three days later, her brother was also killed in France as part of a U.S. tank battalion.

Hazel did not let her circumstances dictate her direction. She is a model of American exceptionalism. Valor is in you. Set it free.