On the morning of August 16, 1945 a small boy ran through the Shantung Compound in North China shouting that he’d spotted a plane in the sky. All the able-bodied internees ran outside and looked up at the clouds. These men and women had suffered through years of isolation, deprivation and anxiety, imprisoned by the Japanese as citizens of enemy European nations. For many, only one thing had kept them spiritually alive: the hope that someday the war would end.

An electric current shot through that crowd of 1500 surviving internees as they realized this plane might be coming for THEM. As the hum of the aircraft grew louder, someone yelled, “Look, there’s the AMERICAN FLAG painted on the side!”

And then in an unbelieving daze, voices cried out, “Look, they’re WAVING at us! They know who we are. They’re coming to get us.”

At this point the excitement was more than these ragged, weary, homesick survivors could contain. Pandemonium broke loose. People were running in circles, shouting at the top of their lungs, waving their arms and weeping.

Langdon Gilkey recalled his feelings: “This plane was OUR plane. It was sent here for US, to tell us the war was over...we were again included in the wider world.”

Suddenly the crowd gasped and stared in silence. The underside of the plane suddenly opened and men began floating down in parachutes. This seemed too much to believe. Their rescuers weren’t just coming someday; they were coming today, NOW to be in their midst!

The crowd surged toward the compound gate. No one paused to think of the machine guns pointed down from towers. Years of frustration and loneliness turned into a human avalanche. They broke through the gate and rushed to where the paratroopers were landing.

Soon this flood of humanity turned and poured back into camp—with the soldiers on their shoulders. The camp commander surrendered without a fight. The war was indeed over. Freedom had come. The world was brand new again.