Two weeks after Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Chennault's 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) arrived in Kunming. Yee clearly remembers the first U.S. counterattack on Dec. 20 like it was yesterday. It was a great moment and a very powerful way for China and America to bond, he said with a smile.
"It was a warm December day, and the skies were clear. The third (air raid warning) alarm had been blasting for several minutes. People were yelling and running for cover... From high above, we saw a P-40 diving straight down out of the clear, blue sky. Its guns were blazing. Suddenly a Japanese bomber started smoking, and spiraled downward. Everything happened so quickly," Yee said.
The remaining Japanese planes turned tail and sped back toward Vietnam. But the P-40s became pursuers and eliminated them all, except for one that managed to fly back to Hanoi, Yee said.
"The Kunming Daily News reported we shot down a total of nine bombers and lost only one," he said. "The reporter described the P-40s 'like tigers flying through the sky.'" Chennault liked the nickname, and the "Flying Tigers" were born. Soon the American pilots were painting the noses of their P-40s with red mouths and menacing, white fangs.
The 1942 movie "Flying Tigers" starring John Wayne immortalized the group, especially the aces, pilots like "Tex" Hill and James Howard, both of whom Yee knew very well.
"Chennault was recognized for striking the first blow against Japanese military forces after the Pearl Harbor devastation, and is statistically the most successful military air commander in world history," Yee said.
"We all jumped with joy when we read the news in the Kunming Daily News... We knew we now had a very powerful ally to fight Japan," Yee recalled.
Yee's personal life was also legendary. He was born in 1921 and adopted by English Methodist missionaries Alfred Evans and Bessie Bull when he was three in Zhaotong, a small city north of Kunming, and raised in a highly-educated British family.
When the arrival of Chennault and the need for interpreters was announced in the summer of 1941, Yee's foster father got him an introduction letter and told him to work for the Americans to help the Chinese.
For months, Yee worked in the control room as a top interpreter, watching Chennault engineer and execute a nearly flawless operation that destroyed 300 Japanese aircraft with only 14 pilots lost in combat.
Chennault, who helped Yee gain U.S citizenship after the war, was called "Old Leather Face" by his fellows. He married a Chinese woman after the war, and is still considered one of the most intriguing, brilliant military minds in U.S. history.
Yee earned a degree in history from the University of Denver in 1955 and started teaching high school history the next year.
As one of the first high school teachers in America to teach Chinese history to American teenagers, he taught thousands of students over his career, and in 2011 the National Association of Asian American Professionals in Colorado honored him with a lifetime achievement award.
In 1980, Yee was engaged in getting Kunming named Denver's eighth sister city, and the Denver-Kunming Sister City Committee is still very active today.
