Born in 1904 (a year after the Wright brothers’ first flight), Cheung arrived in the U.S. in 1921.
After only twelve and a half hours of flight training, Cheung made her first solo flight. She earned her pilot license in 1932, becoming the first Chinese-American woman to do so. (At the time, only about 200, or one percent, of licensed American pilots were women.)
She was known for performing spiral dives, acrobatic loops, and barrel rolls and flying an open-cockpit airplane upside down at county fairs.
Arthur Tien Chin
Chin is recognized as America's first ace in World War II. A half-century after the war ended, the U.S. government recognized Chin as an American veteran by awarding him the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal. About a month after Chin died, on October 4, 1997, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the American Airpower Heritage Museum in Midland, Texas as the first American ace of World War II.
After his aviation career, Chin became a postal worker in his hometown of Portland. On January 29, 2008, Congressman Representative David Wu (D-Oregon) introduced House Resolution 5220 to name a United States Post Office in Aloha, Oregon after Major Arthur Chin as the "Major Arthur Chin Post Office Building". It was unanimously approved by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. President Bush signed it into law on May 7, 2008.
