China Girl 1942

In Luzhou, China, news cameraman Johnny Williams is taken into custody by the Japanese military. He is offered $20,000 to photograph the Burma Road, a vital link for Allied supply that had been built to support the Chinese war effort, but he remains uninterested and resolute in staying independent.

Back in his cell, he is kept with a Canadian, Major Bull Weed, who claims to serve as a Chinese irregular. The two men escape when Captain Fifi smuggles a gun in during a faked farewell, and they rendezvous with her at a nearby location. Fifi says she spotted a plane at an abandoned airfield, and Johnny—an ex-barnstormer with expert biplane skills—pilots them through a hail of Burmese anti-aircraft fire to safety in Mandalay. There, he runs into his old pal, Shorty McGuire, a mercenary pilot with the U.S.-led Flying Tigers who defends China against the Japanese, and whom Johnny initially declines to join.

Johnny resists taking sides, but he discovers that the document he grabbed on the way out isn’t press credentials at all—it’s something the Japanese want returned, and Bull can decipher only two words. He soon meets Haoli Young, who has just returned from New York and is funding a mission school in Kunming. She tells him about her father, Dr. Young, and Johnny is drawn to her and to Kunming, but their encounter is complicated: Haoli is reserved, and when Johnny presses his luck, she remains cool. After a tense night, he finds himself betrayed by Fifi and Bull—who are Japanese agents—and realizes he must outmaneuver them to secure the camera gear and a bigger payday from the Western press.

Johnny stays in Mandalay, waiting for Shorty McGuire to fly him over the Burma Road for reconnaissance. Over a week of courting, he falls in love with Haoli Young, only to have her leave with her father for Kunming, as a Japanese bombing raid looms. He races after them with Shorty, arriving just after a brutal air raid that kills Haoli’s father. In the catastrophe, Johnny helps rescue children trapped in a toppled building, but Haoli herself is killed, a blow that drives him toward a personal, blazing confrontation. Grief-stricken, he climbs to the top of a building, guns in hand, and downs a Japanese fighter, signaling the birth of a personal war against the Japanese.