Tang Xiaomei describes herself on her business card as Vice President of the Yunnan Provincial Research Association of History on Returned Nanyang Volunteer Drivers and Mechanics in the War Resistance against Japanese Aggression. However, before she retired in 2002, she was an accountant and had hardly anything to do with historical research.

Now, she runs from one historical archive to another searching for information. She also flies all over the world trying to find and interview still-living volunteer drivers and mechanics who returned to China from Nanyang (the geographical region south of China). She collects all the historical data and associated relics she can lay her hands on in an effort to memorialize that stirring piece of history.

“It is through my research of this tragic history that I have got to know my father, Tang Yaorong, she says.

“When I was one year old, father was taken to hospital directly from work. He died on the operating table at the age of 38. Later, my mother rarely mentioned him again. Not until a history researcher interviewed Nanyang Drivers and Mechanics did I learn father’s story for the first time. I have gotten to know a lot of heroes ever since then, and I have made it my career to remember their deeds during the War.

“As I dug deeper in my research, father’s image as a Nanyang mechanic began to come together in my mind.”

“Father used to live in Penang, Malaysia. Each time when people saw off Nanyang Drivers and Mechanics that were returning to China to join in the war, they passed father’s house. The farewell music played by the Penang High School harmonica team would echo down the street to the pier.

“As a 24-year-old man, father had wanted to join the Nanyang Drivers and Mechanics in the War, but my grandfather and grandmother died early, leaving my great-grandmother and father on their own. Father did not have the heart to leave my great-grandmother, so he hesitated. However, like other overseas Chinese, he believed that ‘every man is responsible for his country’. Now that he had to choose between great-grandmother and the motherland, his final choice was the latter. On July 14, 1939, he left a letter entrusting the care of my great-grandmother to an apprentice, and then returned to China with the sixth batch of Nanyang Drivers and Mechanics. At the street corner, father kneeled down before his relatives and shed bitter tears.

“Father was an expert mechanic. He could tell whether anything was wrong with a truck simply by its sound. At that time, Tang Yaorong from Penang, and Wang Wensong from Singapore, were famous repairmen on the Yunnan-Myanmar Road. Father witnessed Japanese bombing of the Yunnan-Myanmar region and did various jobs under extremely harsh conditions. After the war, in the 1950s, father, a man of spare frame, continued driving relief supplies, in spite of an illness. Once when he drove to Chuxiong, his health deteriorated further. He arrived in Kunming and had two consecutive operations , but failed to make it through.”

“From my studies of the Nan- yang Drivers and Mechanics, I have rediscovered my father’s life and understood the definition of country in his mind,” said Tang Xiaomei while choking back sobs.

As time goes by, many Nanyang Drivers and Mechanics have receded into the shadow of history. Tang Xiao- mei said, “As the children of Nanyang Drivers and Mechanics, we should pass on the patriotism of our fathers, and at the same time make more people aware of this indelible historical period.”