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General Arthur Fook Yuen Lym was born in San Francisco in 1890. In 1911, he enrolled in the Curtiss Wright School of Aviation in New York. Two years later when he graduated, he was selected by the newly formed Chinese government to help teach officers in the Chinese Army to fly. The first of many Chinese Americans to return to their ancestral lands, Lym trained many pilots for the budding Chinese Air Force. The contributions of Chinese Americans, especially Bay Area Chinese, to the Chinese defense against the Japanese during the Invasion of Manchuria is unquantifiable, and provided the foundation of the Chinese Air Force. General Lym became an advisor to the growing Air Force and joined the U.S. Department of Strategic Command to help the Allied Forces. Arthur married fellow San Francisco native and Chinese American, Sarah Law in Shanghai in 1924, His daughter, Renée Lym Robertson was born in Shanghai in 1928. After the communist revolution, the family settled in Hong Kong. Arthur Lym died in 1962, at age 72. Renée Lym Robertson graciously donated many materials from her father’s life to preserve his legacy and the contributions of Chinese Americans to the history of aviation.
This image was posted on May 18, 2022.