Who was first rescued from the sea?

Mrs Ruth Li, a Chinese woman, was living in Hong Kong with her baby girl when the Japanese attacked Hong Kong. But their ship sank during their voyage when they left Hong Kong. Mrs Li placed her six-year-old daughter on a bit of floating wood. Later the mother was rescued, but her little girl could not be found.
    Many months later, four thousand miles away, a group of American soldiers found a Chinese girl who was half dead. No one could tell how she had got there. She refused to talk or give her name after she recovered.
    When the New York Times told about the finding of the girl, Mrs Li’s sister, then in New York, read the news and wrote to her sister about it. Could the girl be the lost child of Mrs Ruth Li? The mother made the long voyage to find out. The girl was indeed her own daughter.