{"id":623766,"date":"2026-11-14T06:09:29","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T06:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/story\/623766\/tracing-a-shared-uschina-memory-of-world-war-ii-the-documentary-skies-of-valor-will-premiere-online-in-december-2026.html"},"modified":"2026-11-14T06:09:29","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T06:09:29","slug":"tracing-a-shared-uschina-memory-of-world-war-ii-the-documentary-skies-of-valor-will-premiere-online-in-december-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/story\/623766\/tracing-a-shared-uschina-memory-of-world-war-ii-the-documentary-skies-of-valor-will-premiere-online-in-december-2026.html","title":{"rendered":"Tracing a Shared U.S.-China Memory of World War II – The documentary Skies of Valor will premiere online in December 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

NANJING, China – November 14, 2026 – <\/strong>Skies of Valor<\/em>, a new documentary about Chinese and American cooperation during World War II, will premiere online in December 2026. Filmed over more than a year in China and the United States, the film draws on archival material and the accounts of ordinary people and their families to piece together a history the two countries share.<\/p>\n

The production filmed in nine cities, including New York, Beijing, Nanjing and Kunming, and interviewed more than 30 people, most of them descendants of World War II veterans. One of the film’s main threads follows the family of Donald MacInnis, an American who went to teach in the mountains of China in the 1940s. He later joined the U.S. military and was posted to the Chinese coast to observe Japanese positions. After the war, he returned to China to teach. At her home in Rhode Island, his daughter-in-law, Elyn MacInnis, showed the crew items from that time, among them cartoons MacInnis drew in Fuzhou during the war and a photograph of his young son asleep in a bamboo basket at one end of a carrying pole, with supplies balanced at the other.<\/p>\n

The film also revisits the 1942 Doolittle Raid. That April, after bombing Japan, 75 American airmen bailed out over or crash-landed in eastern China. Chinese villagers hid and helped them, and 64 eventually reached safety. The crew filmed in Quzhou, Zhejiang province, where local families still pass down accounts of the rescue. In one, a villager’s grandson describes how his grandfather helped carry the injured navigator Charles Ozuk out of the mountains on a bamboo chair, then cleaned his wounds, gave him dry clothes and cooked for him. At the Memorial Hall to the Doolittle Raid in Quzhou, descendants of the American airmen stood for the first time in the area where their relatives had come down, and were welcomed by local residents.<\/p>\n

Beyond the archives, the film looks at how these memories are handed down. Xing Haifan, a Chinese pilot who trained in the United States after Pearl Harbor and later served as a navigator for the flyover at the 1949 founding ceremony of the People’s Republic of China, is remembered on camera by his descendants, who speak publicly about him for the first time. Descendants of Flying Tigers veterans also retrace their relatives’ wartime service.<\/p>\n

The trailer was first shown in July at the Nanjing Anti-Japanese Aviation Martyrs Memorial Hall, during an event marking 85 years since the Flying Tigers came to China’s aid. Those attending included Jeffrey Greene, chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, along with descendants of Flying Tigers veterans and students from both countries. Greene said the history of the Flying Tigers belongs to both peoples, and that by telling it through individual stories, the film can bring it to the attention of a new generation.<\/p>\n

More than 80 years on, the world looks very different, and few of the people in these stories are still alive. What they left behind is a reminder that, despite differences in culture and the many shifts in relations since, China and the United States once fought as allies, and the goodwill between them did not end with the war.<\/p>\n

About Skies of Valor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Skies of Valor, a new documentary about Chinese and American cooperation during World War II, will premiere online in December 2026. Filmed over more than a year in China and the United States, the film draws on archival material and the accounts of ordinary people and their families to piece together a history the two countries share.<\/p>\n

Media Contact<\/span>
Company Name:<\/strong> Skies of Valor film crew
Contact Person:<\/strong> Song Renxian
Email:<\/strong> Send Email<\/a>
Country:<\/strong> China
Website:<\/strong> https:\/\/www.163.com\/dy\/article\/LBI4U6NI0553UZX0.html<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NANJING, China – November 14, 2026 – Skies of Valor, a new documentary about Chinese and American cooperation during World War II, will premiere online in December 2026. Filmed over<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.olympiajournal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}