San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Memorial Day for Chinatown’s war heroes
Memorial Day is a time to remember those men and women who served their country — and those who have been nearly forgotten.
Now, a new exhibition called “Chinatown to Battleground” is open at the Veterans Building in the San Francisco Civic Center, telling the nearly unknown story of the thousands of Chinese Americans who served in America’s wars.
We’ve heard about the African American experience in wartime. Movies and books have been written about Japanese Americans in World War II. But not Chinese.
Not in any war. “Nobody knew us. We were invisible,” said Montgomery Hom, who helped organize the exhibition. “Nobody knew what our veterans did. No one knew of their exploits,” he said.
“It’s a proud part of our history,” Hom said. “Chinese American history is American history.”
That’s a problem for those who tell the American story. “Most Americans don’t think of us as American,” said Janice Tong, manager of the Veterans Gallery. She thinks the exhibition can help make a difference. “It’s good for people to see this.”
Military service has been part of Chinese American life for well over 100 years, particularly with World War I, when thousands of Chinese Americans were drafted. World War I veterans founded Cathay Post 384 of the American Legion, one of the sponsors of the exhibition.
But in later years, military talk was on the back burner in San Francisco, including Chinatown. “I’m a member of the anti-war generation,” Tong said, “even though my grandfather was in World War I.”
But Hom, who grew up in Chinatown and North Beach, saw it differently. As a boy he began hanging around Uncle’s Cafe, at Clay Street and Waverly Place, in the heart of Chinatown. His uncle, Leon Yee, and his pals, mostly old soldiers, would gather every day to talk. A lot of people would see this as just old men and their stories, but Hom began to realize it was oral history. Yee, it turned out, had been a paratrooper, jumped into France four days after D-Day, and was wounded attacking a German machine gun position.
Yee and his friends were mostly vets, tough old guys, who didn’t want to talk about their wartime experience. But as Hom grew older, he drew them out. World War II had a big impact on the Chinese American community. Hom’s later research showed that about 20,000 Chinese Americans served in the U.S. military in World War II. “We were fewer than 1% of the American armed forces in World War II,” Hom said. “But 1 in 5 Chinese Americans served. Incredible.”
The country took note in 2018 when surviving Chinese American World War II vets got a congressional gold medal, 73 years after the end of the war.
Hom, 51, never served in the military himself, but the history drew him in. Yee, his uncle, introduced him to Army Col. William Strobridge, a professional military historian, who had discovered government records on Chinese Americans who served. Among those showcased at “Chinatown to Battleground” is Edward Day Cohota, who was perhaps the only Chinese Civil War soldier. He re-enlisted later and served for 30 more years in the U.S. Army mostly in the West. Cohota, born in China, was an orphan who stowed away as a child on the sailing ship Cohota. He was named for the ship and for Sargent Day, the captain who adopted him. After his Army service, he applied for American citizenship but was rejected under terms of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Hom also pointed out that Chinese Americans served in the U.S. Navy during the SpanishAmerican War and ever since. In World War I, Sgt. Lao Sing Lee, who was born in Saratoga, won the Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre for heroism. Lt. Gilbert Jerome, whose mother was Chinese American, was a pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille and was shot down by German fire.
Chinese Americans who served in World War II are legion, including Randall Ching, an Army Ranger and an expert in hand-to-hand combat. Ching, who was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 and earned a Bronze Star in action against a German patrol. Ching fought all across Europe, made it through the war and lives in Novato.
The exhibition shows newsreels, old uniforms, helmets, a bit of a Claymore mine from Vietnam, weapons, and pieces of the lives of servicemen and women.
One display, called “Boots on the Ground,” features footwear from hobnailed boots from World War I, World War II airborne jump boots, jungle boots from Vietnam and desert boots. The last have a special meaning for Hom. They were worn by his wife, a reserve Navy officer, who served in Afghanistan. Hom had another connection: His godmother, Margaret (“Maggie”) Gee, was a Air Force transport pilot. After the war, she became a physicist.
But all history is local. Bennett Liang, who was wearing a U.S. Army baseball cap, dropped by to see the show the other afternoon. He bent low to look at a panel display about the war in Vietnam.
“Look,” he said, pointing. “There’s Pfc. Alfred Louie. We went to Galileo together.”
High school pals, separated by war and years, with the memory of service to their country in common.