Chongqing - On August 8, 2023, commemorating events for the 140th birth anniversary of General Joseph  Stilwell kicked off in the Chongqing Stilwell Museum.

Over 150 attendees, including representatives of Chinese and American governments, academia, businesses, and media, participated in the events, including Susan Cole and Nancy Easterbrook Millward, great-granddaughters of General Stilwell.

Themed Remember Our Shared Struggle for Peace, Carry on China-US People-to-People Friendship, the commemorations include a photo exhibition, a symposium, planting friendship trees, and field visits in Chongqing.

During the event, Millward, Great-granddaughter of General Stilwell, accepted the interview by Chongqing media.

"I think that General Stilwell was a great man, and we endeavor to continue to live up to his legacy and pass it along to our children. I personally studied international relations in college, inspired in many ways by the work that he did, learning about other cultures, and I think it's very important in the world that we live in today to recognize there are so many cultures in this world, and you do need to understand everything that's happening in this very global world," said she. 

"We've tried to translate what General Stilwell did over eighty years ago and continue that not just with our family and our children but in our lives our personal lives and our professional lives to endeavor to be very much like him a man of very great integrity." 

The interviewee was deeply touched by A Great Friend – Photo Exhibition on General Stilwell's Life. "One of my favorites in seeing these photos was when General Stilwell was with the Chinese troops. When he was training them and when he went to the front line, he was really with the Chinese soldier. I really appreciate that he thought of the wounded soldiers and thought of the vocations they would need when they returned home after the war and made sure to be taking care of them as well. So really, the stories where he is a humanitarian and when he was connecting with the Chinese soldier to me personally that's are my favorite stories."

Speaking of the relations between China and the Stilwell families, Millward elaborated, "Both our grandmother as well as our father have done a number of things. Our grandmother began the Stilwell scholarship at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey, California, with her sister Alison in the 1980s, and our father has taken over stewardship of that program, where we have brought over 50 scholars from China to study in the United States. We continue to foster the US and Chinese relations over the years." 

"Another one would be my father has been very instrumental in assisting with the National Memories Photo Exhibition," she added. 

"There's been over 23,000 photos that were pulled from the National Archives and other areas to exhibit the friendship between the US and the Chinese soldiers during World War Ⅱ. This exhibit was shown here in China as well as in the United States, and I think that just continues to foster the relationship between the Chinese and the US. I think we will continue to be wonderful stewards of the Stilwell legacy."

(Guo Juntao, as an intern, also contributed to this report)