By Bill Yee
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the Continent.” —?Winston Churchill
As a Baby Boomer I remember the impact that the Cold War had on our generation from weekly testing of the air-raid sirens in my San Francisco neighborhood to duck-and-cover drills in schools to registering for the draft and then worrying about getting drafted and sent to Vietnam!
The Cold War was a part of our psyche and our lives. Vietnam would be our war as America fought to stop the spread of communism.
The Olympics and the Space Race were also evidence of the competition of the Cold War. There was fierce rivalry in sports when the Russians beat the U.S. in basketball in 1972 and the Americans beat the Russians in hockey in 1980. We won the Space Race when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
In the late ’70s before I obtained a full-time teaching job, I worked as a job developer with the Oakland Chinese Community Council. Many clients were Vietnamese boat people who were persecuted ethnic Chinese fleeing Vietnam after the country was taken over by the communists.
The boat people were part of one of largest mass migrations in history. About a million of these refugees settled in the U.S., many ending up in California. As a result, communities such as Little Saigon in Orange County emerged.
My job was to teach these refugees English and find them entry-level manufacturing or office jobs. While interviewing them for skills and background, they told me gut-wrenching stories of escaping from Vietnam and being attacked by pirates on the open seas!
As these refugees sought a better life in the U.S., they adapted and lived the American Dream. Their children became high achievers in public schools, colleges, and major universities.
The circumstances of my family would have been completely different if World War II and the creation of the People’s Republic of China had not happened. My family was also affected by historical events. Like the boat people, I am a product of the Cold War.
My father entered “Gold Mountain,” aka the United States, in 1928 as a “paper son.” Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which limited Chinese immigration, my father had to find another path to enter the U.S. He purchased the identity of a man named Chen Teung Yee, who was registered as an American citizen. Our faQmily name was really Wong.
My great uncle had paid for his false papers and he assumed the identity of Chen Tsung Yee. Thus he was what was called a “paper son.” In essence, my father was an illegal immigrant. In exchange, he worked at the laundry my great uncle owned on Webster Street in San Francisco.
Despite the Great Depression, my father prospered enough to return to China in 1937 to find a wife and later build a house. It was an arranged marriage. My dad was 28 and my mom 18. They married and a year later my brother Benny was born on Jan. 9, 1938. My father never returned to China as world events would prevent that.
My brother Benny and my mother survived World War II. After the war in 1947 my brother Benny immigrated to the U.S. to join our father. He had no memory of our dad since he was an infant when they were last together.
It must have been strange for him to be greeted by a man he hardly knew. Benny remembered that when he arrived it was around Thanksgiving and it was the first time he had turkey.
In 1949 the communists took over China as the ruling government. My mother was faced with the choice to stay in China and live under communist rule or join her husband in America.
She decided on the latter and fled to Hong Kong in 1949. It was the last time she would see her mother. My grandma died the year I was born.
It was during this period that there was a revision of the immigration laws that allowed American citizens of Chinese descent to bring their wives and children from China.
It took three years for my mom to finally arrive in San Francisco in 1952. It changed her life! In China she was the wife of a “wealthy” overseas Chinese man. In America, the new reality was that she was the wife of a poor laundryman.
My parents did not waste time adding to the family. I was born Christmas Day 1952 followed by my sister Helen in 1954 and, finally, the youngest sibling, Teddy, in 1956.
In later years she would lament the loss of her good life in China. Coming to the U.S. meant working long hours at the laundry and life became even harder after my father’s early passing.
We are glad she did come, however. We may not have been born if she had stayed in the village and had lived under communism.
If I had been born in China, I too would have lived under communism, maybe as a poor peasant with a water buffalo growing a small crop of rice.
This story was common among my generation. Many of us have a sibling born in China much older than those of us born in the U.S. My brother Benny is roughly 15 years older than me.
World events do determine our futures as evident in my family’s and my whole life history.
Addendum: Want to thank reader Ko Nishimura of San Jose (formerly of Pasadena), who responded to a previous column and wrote to say his wife made all of the big decisions, except one. He decided, with his wife’s permission, to leave a good job at IBM and go to a start-up. Glad for Ko that the start-up was extremely successful!
Bill Yee is a retired Alhambra High School history teacher. He can be reached at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are not necessarily thoseof The Rafu Shimpo.