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THIS IS US
How My Chinese Uncle Became an All-American Hero
Fighting to be an American in World War II
My uncle Herb was an American war hero. Except, he was Chinese. The explanation for this seeming contradiction will sound familiar to many immigrants, but it came as a shock to me. Born and raised an American, I took my family’s right to U.S. citizenship for granted until I grew up and learned just how varied and fraught that “right” actually can be. For Herb, it was life-threatening.
Now, I realize that my uncle’s story is far from unique. But that’s all the more reason, it deserves to be told and shared, especially among Americans who believe that patriotism and heroism are in any way dependent on race.
The “choice”
I only learned my uncle’s full World War II story after my father died in 2007, when I inherited Dad’s trove of wartime correspondence. This included letters from family all over the world to my parents, then living in Washington, D.C.
Dad’s little brother Herb, like my father, was born and raised in China and moved to California in his teens. But unlike Dad, who was too old at 30 to be much use to any military force, Herb was just 20 when America joined World War II. That made him a prime target for combat duty. Though still a Chinese citizen, in 1943 my uncle was given the “choice” of securing an American passport by fighting for Uncle Sam, or of being deported to China to fight for Chiang Kai-shek.
That choice was more complicated for Herb than it might appear. His father, my grandfather Papa, was descended from a long line of Chinese officials and devoted his entire adult life to transforming China from a dying empire into a modern republic. Papa remained in China to continue working for the Nationalist government. But Herb’s American mother, my grandmother Mama, had taken her children and left after 20 years in her husband’s war-ravaged country, swearing never to return. Now settled in Los Angeles, she was constantly pressuring my father to quit his job with the Chinese press corps and apply for American citizenship. I can just hear her laying down the law for her youngest son, telling Herb he’d go fight for China “over my dead body.”
