Long before the United States entered World War II, China was battling Japan in a brutal fight that would eventually cost the lives of over 15 million Chinese people [1]. Seeking to help free their beleaguered homeland, Chinese student pilots ventured to San Carlos for flight training. The Cooley brothers, William and Charles, who operated the flying field at that time, trained the pilots depicted in this photo. Sometime later, these men returned to China and an unknown fate.

The above photo was contributed by the daughter of Charles Cooley, Ms. Corinne C. Derringer, who writes The men in the back row of the photo are: Walter Van der Kamp, whom my father taught to fly. Like everybody in flying in the USA when the Battle of Britain was going on, Walter wanted to get in it, and joined the RCAF. Not long after he switched to the Army Air Corps and was a bomber pilot. He was shot down over Bavaria and died, last to bail out. (Another student, William Nichols, was shot down and spent most of the war in a German prison camp.) In the middle is my uncle William L. Cooley, with my father on the right. He looks very serious. He had not much hope for the lives of those young men, who would be going against the Japanese military, with only civilian flying training.

The grit and determination of these men to succeed is shown by 21 year old Roy Gin who had a landing accident on Aug. 18, 1937 (described in the articles shown below) in which his plane flipped over on its back.  He was shook up but still said that he expected to join the Chinese air force and fight Japan.

San Mateo Times, Aug. 18, 1937.

Tyrone PA Daily Herald, Sept. 3, 1937.