Kong Gets a German

The frustrated Nazi was at 27,000 feet, madly popping his Focke-Wulf's guns at U.S. bombers well out of his range. A U.S.

P-51B Mustang turned into him and the Nazi peeled off into a diving turn. Ten thousand feet farther down the Mustang pilot nailed his man with a long close-in burst. First the FW's wheels fell out, then the plane exploded and its pieces tumbled earthward. Second Lieut. WauKau Kong, pilot of "Chinaman's Chance" and one of the U.S. Fighter Command's hottest aero-bats, had made his first kill.

"The handsomest Chinese fighter pilot in the European Theater of Operations" is what slight, Hawaiian-born Lieut. Kong calls himself (he is the only one; there are a few Chinese-American bombermen). He got into flying by way of the Corps of Engineers, for which he worked as a chem ist after he finished the University of Hawaii. Between missions he tries to teach other pilots Hawaiian without nota ble success. They cannot even learn to say "Hemakana Hewahewa Okalani Yim," which is his niece Shirley's Hawaiian name.

Lieut. Kong has his own troubles with all languages except Hawaiian American.

He lags a sentence behind the actors when he goes to the English theater ; his mother is Cantonese but he cannot speak Canton ese well enough to get along with Chinese waiters; and he dares not call on the Chi nese Ambassador in London because "He'd probably expect me to speak Mandarin . . . jeepers!"

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