of Education degree at the University of Pittsburgh when the tragic news reached him. The news was a cruel blow; Hwa-Wei—in spite of limited time together with his brother—had shared a strong bond with Min. In desperation, Hwa-Wei searched every Chinese newspaper that he could find about the aircraft incident with his brother onboard.
Finally, a Hong Kong newspaper article was retrieved from the University of Pittsburgh Library. According to the news report, a Taiwan military aircraft was shot down by the Chinese air force and all its crewmen were found dead. The Communist officers who contributed to this successful attack were to receive awards from Mao Zedong in person. The photo of the airplane wreckage clearly identified bomber no. 815, his brother’s plane. At that point, Hwa-Wei believed that all the crew, including his brother, were dead; what he did not know was that bomber no. 815 had actually been attacked twice.
As the first attack imposed no immediate threats, the crew tried to flee toward the south at the lowest safe altitude. However, as the modified bomber had no defensive weapons, it was soon attacked by a MiG-17. Hit by an air-to-air missile, the plane exploded into pieces 2,625 feet above Enping, Guangdong Province. It was later learned that the air-to-air missiles had been recently acquired by the Communist Chinese air force from the Soviet Union.
Knowing his brother would never come back home alive, Hwa-Wei carefully saved the newspaper piece in his personal file hoping it would be useful someday in the future in locating the crash site. Meanwhile, he could not bear to tell the truth to his parents; they had, however, already learned the heartbreaking news with the assistance of a friend in a high position in the Nationalist Government. Learning of the disastrous loss of her oldest son, his mother aged rapidly. Her hair turned completely gray in just a few days, and she developed heart disease. She was deprived of joy and happiness during the later years of her life.
Min was just thirty-three years old at the time of his death; he was survived by his wife, Hsiao-Po Meng, and his son, Hao-Sheng Lee. The military uniform and leather shoes, which he had prepared for the occasion of Chiang Ching-Kuo’s visit, waited, neatly pressed and shined, in the closet on May 31, 1959, for their owner, who would never return.
On the other side of the Taiwan Strait the pilot Zhelun Jiang, who had shot down bomber no. 815 was celebrated as a hero. Jiang received a special medal from Mao Zedong, a high honor at that time. Having originally joined the air force to fight against Japanese invaders, Min ended his life in an aircraft crash while on a reconnaissance mission over Communist China.
2
In 1982, Hwa-Wei was invited by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada to join a team of library experts to conduct a special seminar: The Management of Scientific and Technical Information Centers in Kunming, China. The two-week seminar was jointly sponsored by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China and IDRC and was attended by information-center directors from national and provincial government agencies. The trip to China was the first for Hwa-Wei since his leaving China in 1949, thirty-three years before. It opened the door for Hwa-Wei to be invited back to China annually for lectures and consultation by the national library, national and regional scientific and technical libraries, and major academic libraries.
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