"...for exemplary courage and bravery while saving the lives of all passengers aboard a crashed burning aircraft.
"At great personal risk to herself, Miss Wang remained on a burning aircraft which had crashed at Manila International Airport, to assure the safe evacuation of all 135 passengers on board. Because of the rapidly progressing fire, and after she had verified that all passengers had left the airplane, Miss Wang was forced to jump to safety because the evacuation slide had burned. With her clothes on fire, Miss Wang suffered burns for which plastic surgery was necessary. Her heroic actions and devotion to safety deserve the highest recognition of her peers and others concerned with night safety."—Flight Safety Foundation, September 17, 1980
Thus did 25-year-old Wang Wen-hua, formerly a stewardess with China Air Lines (CAL), become the recipient of the Heroism Award, one of the highest of world aviation honors, presented by the international Flight Safety Foundation.
Like many other young junior high girls, Wang indulged in day dreams. She saw herself wearing a graceful figured chi pao aboard a big airplane, flying to all the big cities of the world. When asked, she always listed "stewardess" as her career choice. A decade new by in a twinkle, and her youthful fancy not only came true, but also ended in the rending experience which forever changed her life.
The date was February 27, 1980. A CAL 707 airliner was in the landing pattern at Manila International Airport. Inside the cabin, Wang was busy attending to 135 mostly inexperienced passengers—almost all elderly Chinese tourists. When she had finished her routine work, she decided to make a final check to assure that all passengers had fastened safety belts. But glancing out a window, she noticed that the descent appeared exceptionally fast. She sat down and fastened her own belt. Within seconds, the plane crashed with a great roar. Flames immediately billowed up from the wings.
The crying, shouting, panicked passengers blocked the walkways. No one was able to move. Wang kept shouting: "All of you be calm! Don't squeeze. I will be the last to leave, after everyone has been evacuated." Disciplined and touched by Wang's seriousness, most of the passengers relaxed, and with the help of the CAL stewards, began to escape down the evacuation slide in good order. Then, a black smoke-thick, choking, and hot-swept through the cabin. Brave Wang, more anxious than afraid, hectored passengers into giving up their luggage, which impeded the exit slide, and pushed those still motionless from panic out of the plane. "I had to be fierce, even savage, at that moment," Wang recalled.
When the last passengers left the cabin, Wang made a final check, to make absolutely sure that no one had been left behind. But when she finally made her own way toward the exit, she found the rubber escape slide almost consumed by fire. With no other choice, she closed her eyes and leaped from the 13-foot-high cabin, her landing site a pool of naming oil. Her clothes caught on fire, and the names burned her arms, legs, and torso. With one ankle injured by the fall, Wang struggled to the off-runway turf about 100 feet away, to roll out the names.
The young stewardess was burned over forty percent of her body—much of the burns, third degree. Her two arms were most seriously injured, but her legs and back were badly burned too. A cluster of blisters covered her face. After to days' emergency treatment at Manila Hospital, Wang was transferred to Taipei's Chang Gung Memorial Hospital. She began to undergo a series of skin grafts and an intensive physical-therapy program in the intensive-care unit of Chang Gung's Linkou Medical Center. During this period, she was allowed to receive visitors only 30 minutes a day. Her mother was always the first to enter and the last to leave.
Talking now about her two-month ordeal there-the hydrotherapy-Wang trembles still with visible fear. "It hurt terribly, even though an anesthetic was administered in advance." Whenever the nurse told her, "It's your turn," Wang felt as if they were sending her to the guillotine. Strong as Wang was, she broke into tears from time to time in the face of her daily torture.
Furthermore, the initial fear remained alive in her inner heart. Whenever she closed her eyes, blazing flames roared and clawed toward her, twisting through the windows, coming closer, inch by inch.... Every night she lay sleepless, waiting daybreak when, fatigued, she would cycle off again into nightmare. At times she cried for her family to bring her back home; she could not stand it.
Meanwhile, letters of sympathy were swarming in from all over the world. Flowers, fruit, and other items, often from anonymous donors, added to the mail, played an important role in diluting her travail. Pan American Airlines even sent a special representative to Taipei to convey their concern. An American couple wrote they had named a tree in their garden the "Wang Wen-hua Tree," and were telling everyone of her heroism.
In recognition of Wang's bravery, numerous commendations came to her from both at home and abroad, among them, the prestigious Heroism Award for 1980. And though three years have now passed, Wang still clearly remembers every detail of that unforgettable occasion: About 500 major international aviation figures, meeting at the Flight Safety Foundation's 33rd congress at Christchurch, New Zealand, rose to their feet four times to indicate their admiration of her courage and fortitude. After receiving the citation and the accompanying symbol-the Graviner Sword Wang conveyed her thanks with tears in her eyes: "What I have done is nothing but a stewardess' obligation."
Wang was later sent to Hoover Memorial Hospital, a subsidiary medical center of Stanford University, for special skin grafting operations to improve the functioning of her arms. However, she is no longer able to do a stewardess' work as a result of the impairment of her arms and hands. Even so, she has now completed another CAL training program and is ready to resume work on the ground.
The recent news of Wang's marriage to senior CAL steward Tsao Chiang-ling has, in the wake of her ordeal, deeply affected an attentive public. Tsao, Wang's instructor when she first underwent flight training, was her major spiritual support in the dark swamplands of medical care. When Wang was finally transferred to a regular room from the intensive-care unit, Tsao was the first to accompany her. In the beginning, Wang was afraid to receive Tsao because of the burns on her face. Fortunately, her facial skin has returned to normal, except for a very small area near her right ear. Tsao's devotion, evidenced in his tireless investigations into the latest plastic surgery techniques as well as his faithful attendance at her bedside, won Wang's heart.
Ms. Sun Tan-ling, a well-known Hongkong news columnist, spoke for many when she said of the couple: "Wang saved many people and brought herself unbearable physical pain. She did this at the great expense of her own physical beauty, the attribute most cherished by ordinary girls, and without any complaint. And Tsao's behavior proves that he was responsible to the fact of his love. Together, they show us the highest morality...."
On her changed feelings toward life after the accident, Wang remarks: "Originally, I was not aggressively ambitious. My experience now further convinces me that it is meaningless to struggle for fame and wealth. Many other people in the world have contributed much more than I, and remain unknown. What I did was purely out of human instinct, and compared to many other physically disabled people, I am already terribly lucky. The encouragement and warmth I experienced not only helped me overcome my adversity, but also nourished my optimistic views toward life. I hope I will have the opportunity to return all the real love and kindness to others in our society."
Some journalists have compared Wang to the fabled phoenix of Greek mythology, rising from the ashes with renewed youth and beauty. But "Wang's fire," passing on, left permanent scars on her body; it is her mind that is like the phoenix, sparkling with enthusiasm for each arriving day.