Double-sided color maps on silk: No. 35 Northeast China and, on verso No. 34 Southeast China, with an inset of Formosa (Japanese Empire) [AAF Cloth Map, Asiatic Series: US Army Map Service, 1944] 20 x 25”
The two maps together cover the China coast from Hong Kong to present day Yantai, then called Chih-Fou. These were issued to US Army Air Force pilots during World War II to be pocketed or worn as neck kerchiefs under their flight suits as part of their survival gear, to evade enemy capture in the event they were shot down.
Less detailed, and slightly smaller, than the British Royal Air Force escape maps of Southeast Asia which we offered in these Galleries two years ago, the legend shows cities, towns, rivers, marshes, roads, trails, railroads, telephone and telegraph lines and electrical power lines, and includes the caveat, that location of minor highways and towns was “uncertain”.
This map is unusual in that unlike the RAF maps, which were uniformly printed on silk, the USAAF maps were often printed on more coarse cloth, given the scarcity of wartime silk in the US. Perhaps the silk was procured from the Chinese mainland.