Leah Hing

Oregon Historical Society, OrHi 58757

Quick Facts

Significance:

First U.S.-born Chinese American woman to earn a pilot's license

Place of Birth:

Portland, Oregon

Date of Birth:

September 25, 1907

Place of Death:

Portland, Oregon

Date of Death:

July 21, 2001

Place of Burial:

Portland, Oregon

Cemetery Name:

River View Cemetery

By Volunteer-in-Parks Dr. Robert Staab, updated by Marie Hashimoto, American Conservation Experience Partner

Leah Hing was born in 1907 in Portland, Oregon. Her parents were Lee Hing, an herbalist and farmer who owned a medicine and tea store, and Ah Sin Hing. While her father, Lee, had also been born in Oregon to Chinese parents, Hing's mother had immigrated to the United States from Canton, China, around 1901. In 1912, the family moved to a house in the Ladd's Addition neighborhood of Portland. Hing lived there her entire life. Ladd's Addition was one of the few parts of the city where Chinese and other Asians, along with Italians, were able to buy homes prior to World War II. Even there, however, Chinese would-be homebuyers faced discrimination, and often had to use a white person as a front to purchase the house, then later transfer the title to the Chinese buyer. 

Growing up Portland’s vibrant Chinese community, Hing was active in a variety of social organizations. Newspaper articles from the 1920s reveal her leadership in the Chinese Girls’ Club as president, member of the Campfire Girls, and the team manager of a basketball team for Chinese women, the Chung Wah, whose games raised money to support elderly and financially struggling Chinese Portlanders. She participated in many of these activities with her childhood companion Lillian Lang, who later became her life-long partner. In 1927, as a student at Washington High School, Hing started a band called the Portland Chinese Girls' Orchestra. Hing played the saxophone. After graduation, the band joined "Honorable Wu's" vaudeville troupe and toured the United States and Canada. Their signature song on this Depression-era tour was "Happy Days are Here Again." Several band members, such as Hazel Ying Lee and Virginia Wong, also became aviators.  

While playing in Chicago, Hing took her first airplane ride at a school for Chinese-American aviators. Soon after, she returned to Portland to work as a cashier in her father's restaurant, the Chinese Tea Garden, but was determined to become a pilot. 

Becoming a Pilot 

In 1932, Chinese immigrant Katherine Sui Fun Cheung began training as a pilot with the Chinese Aeronautical Association in Los Angeles. Later that year, she received her pilot's license and became the first female Chinese American pilot. Cheung became a well-known aerobatic pilot, performing spiral dives, inverted flying, and rolls. She told the audiences who came to watch her fly, "I don't see why a Chinese woman can't be as good a pilot as anyone else...We drive automobiles. Why not fly planes?"  
 
During the early 1930s, Chinese Americans across the nation joined Cheung in the skies, driven by a desire both to fly and aid the country of their parents and grandparents. In 1931, Imperial Japan invaded the Manchuria region of China and quickly overpowered the fledging Chinese air force. Concerned Chinese communities across the United States mobilized to train military pilots and send them overseas. In Portland, prominent Chinese Portlanders founded in the Chinese Flying Club, which recruited local Chinese Americans interested in aviation and furnished them with resources and training through the Adcox School of Aviation. The school trained thirty-six pilots over two terms, and twenty-five traveled to China to serve from 1932 to 1933. Although Leah Hing did not train there at her father’s insistence, two of her childhood acquaintances and former band members, Hazel Ying Lee and Virginia Wong, graduated from the Adcox School and went overseas. 

Also in 1932, as Cheung was beginning her rise to fame in California and Chinese Americans in Portland began to train to go overseas, Tex Rankin, a national figure in the world of aviation, ate at the Chinese Tea Garden and met Leah Hing. John Gilbert "Tex" Rankin started a flying school in Portland in 1923 but moved his operations to Pearson Field for the years 1924 through 1926. Rankin's school taught many early Northwest pilots. Rankin suggested that Hing should "take up flying," and Hing agreed. In a 1980 interview, Hing stated that "there was no antagonism against women pilots, for Rankin taught many women." One of Rankin's most famous students, Dorothy Hester, was an aerobatic pilot known as "Princess Kick a Hole in the Sky." Mary Riddle, a pilot and parachutist who became the second Native American woman to earn a pilot’s license, also studied with Rankin.  

Although Rankin may have welcomed female aviators, many women still faced opposition from some male pilots and trainers, who believed that they lacked the endurance and talent necessary to fly. Writing in the Oregonian on September 20th, 1936, Portland aviator Bessie Halladay recounted stories of instructors who mandated that female students complete more training hours than their male counterparts out of a fear that they were more likely to go “haywire” when allowed to pilot solo. While Halladay stated that many in the aviation field believed that women were “physically and emotionally unsuited” to become pilots, her article profiled the growing community of women, including Hing and Hester, whose flying careers disproved such ideas.  

Hing started her lessons at Rankin's tiny airfield in the Vanport section of Portland. She also passed a written test based on ground and navigation requirements. According to Rankin, Hing was a natural. He stated, "She did everything right. That's unusual for the first time for anyone." 

The beginning of Hing's training was a source of interest for newspapers nationwide. New York's Post Star published a short article and photograph in its April 1, 1932, edition, calling Hing the "Chinese Miss Lindy," after aviator Charles Lindbergh. The article further stated that "Leah says her people must develop much further in the field of aviation, because 'a country sees only through the eyes of its fliers.'" A short article also appeared on April 10, 1932, in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, which reported that Hing wished to earn her pilot's license "so as to return to the Orient and become an aviation instructor for women." As the Sentinel stated, Hing had initially planned to train pilots in China once she obtained her license like others in Portland’s Chinese community, but at her father’s insistence, she remained in the United States. On March 6, 1932, the Oregonian quoted Hing as saying, "I believe that women can learn to fly as easily as men...eventually there will be just as many women flying as men." 

Hing also trained with Pat Reynolds, a reserve officer with the 321st Observation Squadron at Pearson Field. In 1934, she received her pilot's license, #2741, making her the first U.S.-born Chinese-American woman to earn one. 

Flying Career 

As she worked towards earning her pilot's license, Leah Hing trained with various biplanes. After obtaining her license, in 1936 she purchased a 1931 Fleet Model 2 (later modified to a Model 7) from the Chinese Flying Club of Portland, who had previously used it to train Chinese pilots like those at the Adcox School. However, in 1936, while Hing’s unoccupied aircraft was parked at Pearson Field, Washington Highways Director and plane hobbyist Lacey V. Murrow accidentally taxied his plane into Hing's, causing her plane to catch fire. The damage amounted to $500. Hing sold the plane to Murrow and purchased a more capable Travel Air biplane from fellow female aviator Dorothy Hester. Over the years leading up to World War II, she housed her planes in a hangar at Pearson Field.  

Hing flew passengers (one at a time, since her aircraft was a two-seater biplane) in the Portland-Vancouver area, and sometimes as far north as Seattle. She did not strive to become an aerobatic aviator, as Hester and Cheung had been, or race planes, later stating that she did not feel that she was a "dare devil in the sky." However, she became an accomplished and capable flier, once flying to Eastern Oregon "for breakfast." 

Like many pilots of that period, Hing did suffer some mishaps. In addition to the 1936 Murrow accident, she crashed while landing at Seattle's Boeing Field in 1937; her open cockpit plane was damaged, but she was not injured. 

In 1939, she joined The Ninety-Nines, an organization for women aviators founded by Amelia Earhart, and two years later, became the secretary-treasurer for the group's Northwest chapter. 

With the advent of World War II, Hing, along with other private plane owners, was directed to either sell or dismantle her plane to assist the war effort. She sold her aircraft, but continued her time in aviation, working with the West Coast Civil Air Patrol to do ground training and helped in the repair of navigational instrument equipment at the Portland Air Base. 

Life After Flying and the Aero Club 

In 1947, Hing’s pilot’s license expired. Unable to join Portland's Aero Club, a social club for private pilots and aviation enthusiasts, because she was Chinese, she instead worked as a "hat check girl," switchboard operator, photographer, and receptionist for the club. For decades to follow, she lived with her partner Lillian Lang, and the two traveled and worked together at the club until Hing retired at age 70. Hing later said that she was not anxious to fly again, and "enjoyed flying as a passenger." 

Leah Hing remained active in Portland's Chinese community, coaching girls' basketball, raising money for the elderly, and aiding in the citizenship process for immigrants. A family friend, Patsy Lee, recalled that Hing “helped those who couldn't speak English get citizenship,” drilling them “for months” to ensure that they would pass the citizenship tests. According to Lee, Hing was so successful that “instead of going to a lawyer, people would go to her.” Leah Hing died at home in 2001 at the age of 94, surrounded by friends and family. She thought of herself as "sort of a rebel" who liked doing challenging things. As her sister-in-law remarked, "She was going to do what she wanted to do."  

Today, visitors can learn about Leah Hing’s story at Pearson Air Museum. Her first plane, the Fleet Model 2 she purchased from the Chinese Flying Club, is on display in the museum. Along with a variety of historic planes, the bright orange aircraft invites visitors to discover the stories of other 1930s aviators who shared the skies above Pearson Field with Hing, including the many Chinese American aviators who trained on the biplane before flying to China. The maintenance hangar where Hing would have taken her planes for repair and inspection still stands and now serves as an event venue. Pearson Field is an active airfield, and visitors standing outside the museum might catch a glimpse of departing and arriving planes that continue the legacy of Leah Hing and her orange biplane.  

Bibliography

Alley, Bill. Images of Aviation: Pearson Field, Pioneering Aviation in Vancouver and Portland. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.

“Campfire Girls’ Secretary Home from Conference.” Oregonian. 4 May 1924, 52.  

"Chinese Girl Flying Pupil Quick to Acquire Knack." Oregonian. 6 March 1932, 4.

"Chinese Girl Pilot not Injured but Her Plane Damaged, Seattle Crash." Statesman Journal. 16 September 1937, 1.

“Chinese Girls to Dance.” Oregonian. 30 May 1927, 22.  

“Chinese Hoopers Set Benefit Tilt.” Oregonian. 17 November 1935, 47.  

"Chinese Miss Lindy." The Post-Star. 1 April 1932, 18. 

"Escaped Uninjured In Plane Collision." The Billings Gazette. 3 July 1936. 

Federal Census. Year: 1920; Census Place: Portland, Multnomah, Oregon; Roll: T625_1498; Page 1B; Enumeration District 6.

“If the Hereafter has Rules, Leah Hing’s Breaking Them.” The Oregonian. 29 July 2001, A01.  

"Lea Hing." Santa Cruz Sentinel. 10 April 1932.

Leah Hing Oral History Interview, with Patricia Keith, 2 June 1980. At the Oregon Historical Society. OrHi/Cassette/629.13092/H663k/1980. SR 9130.

"Named Vice Chairman." Albany Democrat-Herald. 15 January 1941, 2. 

Nicola, Trish Hackett. “I think I am going to fly: Chinese Pilots Trained in Portland During the 1930s.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 122, no. 4 (Winter 2021): 532-545.  

Portland, Oregon, City Directory, 1931.

Roberts, Dmae. "My Turn." The Asian Reporter. 21 March 2016. 

Walker, Jon. A Century Airborne: Air Trails of Pearson Airpark. Rose Wind, 1994.

Wang, Amy. "6 Portlanders' family stories of exclusion for being Chinese." The Oregonian. 21 February 2016. 

Yarne, Lynn. "Artist Talk with Lynn Yarne: Honoring Leah Hing's Legacy Through Art on Vimeo." Portland Chinatown Museum on Vimeo, 23 June 2023, https://vimeo.com/839387698.