recognition if him across China. After World War II, the unit returned to Qinghai and was reorganized as the 1st Regiment of the Reorganized 8th Cavalry Brigade of the Nationalist Reorganized 82nd Division. Xining was subjected to aerial bombardment by Japanese warplanes in 1941. The bombing spurred all ethnicities in Qinghai, including the local Qinghai Mongols and Qinghai Tibetans, against the Japanese. The Salar Muslim General Han Youwen directed the defense of the city of Xining during the air raids by Japanese planes. Han survived an aerial bombardment by Japanese planes in Xining while he was being directed via telephone from Ma Bufang, who hid in an air raid shelter in military barracks. The bombing resulted in human flesh splattering a Blue Sky with a White Sun flag and Han being buried in rubble. Han Youwen was dragged out of the rubble while he was bleeding, but he managed to grab a machine gun. Although he was limping, he fired back at the Japanese warplanes and cursed the Japanese as dogs in his native Salar language. Chiang Kai-Shek also suspected that the Tibetans were collaborating with the Japanese. Under orders from the Kuomintang government, Ma Bufang repaired the Yushu airport to prevent Tibetan separatists from formally declaring de jure independence. Chiang also ordered Ma to put his Muslim soldiers on alert for entry into Tibet in 1942. Ma Bufang complied and moved several thousand troops to the border with Tibet. Chiang also threatened the Tibetans with bombing if they did not comply. Ma Bufang was openly hostile to the Tibetan Ngolok peoples. His Muslim troops launched what David S. G. Goodman calls "a campaign of ethnic cleansing" in Tibetan Ngolok areas in Qinghai during the war and destroyed their Tibetan Buddhist temples. During the war, the American Asiatic Association published an entry in Asia: journal of the American Asiatic Association'', Volume 40, concerning the question of whether Chinese Muslims were Chinese or a separate "ethnic minority." It addressed the issue of whether all Muslims in China were united into one race. It came to the conclusion that the Japanese military spokesman was the only person who was propagating the false assertion that "Chinese Mohammedans" had "racial unity." The Japanese claim was disproved when it became known that Muslims in China were composed of a multitude of races, as separate from one another as were the "Germans and English", such as