Thirteen Minutes and 250,000

On April 18, 1942, the B-25 squadron led by Doolittle dropped bombs of revenge over Tokyo. Those thirteen minutes that changed history began a life-and-death saga spanning the Pacific. Five American airmen who crash-landed near Ningbo were rescued at great risk by A-Fu, a Chinese villager.

To protect the Allied airmen, the boy Xiaodouzi pulled the pin on a grenade and died taking the enemy with him. A mute woodcutter gave his life to draw the pursuers away. Then the Japanese launched a savage campaign of retaliation, costing 250,000 civilians in the Quzhou region their lives. When the pilot Jack chose to join the Flying Tigers and keep fighting, and A-Fu swore amid the flames, “This debt will be repaid,” the fates of two peoples became inseparably bound.

In 2015, Tom's son returned to Quzhou carrying his father's bamboo cigarette case and embraced the now over-ninety-year-old A-Fu at the martyrs' cemetery. From the flames of war to the spark of a new generation, from saving lives to educating the young, this bond forged in blood was finally passed down across a century in the sound of children reading aloud.