When I set out for Yunnanyi on the rainy morning of Friday, August 22, I wasn’t just visiting another small town in Yunnan. I was stepping into a place that holds a piece of my family’s story. My grandfather was based here during World War II, part of the Army Airways Communications Service (AACS).

First Lieutenant Robert H. Mooney was a fighter pilot from Kansas City who came to China after Pearl Harbor.

The next stop on my journey to retrace my grandpa's footsteps during World War II in China brought me to Dali, which he referred to as "Tali" (Wade-Giles name) in his notes and photos. We took the high-speed train from Kunming, which took about 2.5 hours, and my first impression was that the lake looked huge! It was also the first time I got to see the beginnings of the famous Hump mountains, and they sure looked ominous.

Earlier this year I decided to follow in my grandfather's footsteps to China, where he served in the Army Airways Communications Services (AACS) from May 1944 to months after the end of the war in November 1945. To kick off my trip, I first landed in the city of Kunming—the largest city in the Yunnan Province with a little more than eight million people. It's also a place filled with history—the former home of the Flying Tigers—and my grandpa's first arrival point after fly