by Lisa See
On a Saturday morning in late 1941, Ngon Hung worked the woven frogs through their corresponding loops until each one had been fastened into place at her daughter’s neck, armpit, and down her side. Then Ngon Hung pinched Sumoy’s cheeks until they were a pleasant rosy color. “You’re ready now,” Ngon Hung said, gently pushing Sumoy through the room with the old organ and out into the main room of what had once been the Methodist Mission’s main sanctuary. “He’s waiting for you. Go on, walk with the old man.”
Sumoy did as she was told. Born in 1935, Sumoy was the youngest girl in the family—the sweetest one, the most cherished. She was always good-tempered and never cried. Every day until she was old enough to go to school, she’d taken this walk with her father. Now she did it just on weekends and holidays.
Sumoy and her father left the apartment, walking down the two flights of dimly lit stairs. Pa took firm hold of her hand, reminding her, “Don’t let go.” Today they walked over to Soochow Restaurant, down to Dragon’s Den, then to the Jin Hing Jewelry Store, the Eastern Grocery Store, and the Hop Sing Tong, where she sat on her father’s lap and listened to him talk to the other old men.
On their way home, they stopped to visit “Mother” downstairs from where Sumoy and her family lived. Mother’s store was a lot like Pa’s. Mother was an old ghost woman. Even though she had many wrinkles, she was still very pretty. Sumoy knew Mother was part of the family; she just didn’t know how or why. Sometimes Sumoy sat quietly while Pa and Mother chatted. But today Pa said, “You sit out here. Go over there and play.” Mother handed her a toy butterfly on a stick. Then Mother and Pa disappeared behind a curtain that tinkled when they walked through it. Sumoy sat outside and waited.
Sumoy waved the butterfly back and forth, watching its paper wings flutter soundlessly. She had done something like this many times before, because Mother always gave Sumoy a book or crayons and paper to amuse herself. She never knew what Mother and Pa talked about. Even though Sumoy was only six, she knew she shouldn’t ask.
Sumoy was in school and had learned that not everyone lived the way she did. She remembered her first day of kindergarten. Her mother had dressed her in Chinese cotton pants and a crossover frog jacket, just like today. When she’d gotten to school, all the other girls were wearing dresses. That night she’d begged her mother to let her wear a dress. But it had taken a long time for her parents to relent.
They didn’t want her to do a lot of things. Pa didn’t want her to join the Girl Scouts. “You’re not the type of person to go on an overnight trip,” he said. “Besides, I don’t want my daughter to be viewed as sleeping on the ground.” He didn’t want her to go to the library: “If there’s a book that’s important for you to read, then you will get it at school. Otherwise you don’t need it.” He didn’t like for her to go to church: “Don’t spend active time there. No one should make up your mind for you. Don’t give up your life for someone else.”
Instead, her father wanted her to do her embroidery. He wanted her to learn how to knit. He wanted her to take piano lessons. She wasn’t interested in those things. She watched her mother making shirts for her older brothers. She saw how her older sister, May Oy, was passive and shy, a good listener. May Oy was so quiet she was hardly there. Her oldest sister, Jong Oy, was lively. But everyone was always upset with her. They wanted Jong Oy to sit quietly and string macaroni necklaces to sell at Olvera Street.
Find joy in your family members only, Pa said. Sumoy thought that was okay for her older brothers and sisters; they had cousins their same age. Sumoy didn’t. She was alone, so she spent her time with the adults. But she liked it when Pa took her over to China City to see Uncle and Auntie for lunch. Auntie was so nice to her! “Sit down,” Auntie said when Sumoy visited. “Sit in this chair, because it is most comfortable.” Auntie always asked Sumoy if she was happy. Auntie always retied the Shirley Temple bows in Sumoy’s hair and whispered sweet words into her ear. Then Auntie would bring out sweets—sponge cakes, dumplings, coconut candies, or moon cakes made from winter melon and cut into thin slices. Sumoy would sit there feeling utterly content, because at home her father was so domineering and her mother always scolded, “Too many sweets. That’s too sweet for the children. Why do you let them give those to her?”
The beaded curtain tinkled again, and Pa stepped out. Sumoy said good-bye to the ghost woman called Mother and followed her father. “Take my hand,” he said when they got to the door. With one hand in her father’s dry, papery palm and the other holding her butterfly on a stick, Sumoy went back out onto the street, blinking a few times as her eyes readjusted from the dimness of the store to the bright California sunshine.
Today she was too tired to remember her manners, and began asking questions. As they walked the few steps to the stairwell that would take them back upstairs to their apartment, she asked, “Pa, why don’t you get a car so you can drive us around instead of walking all the time?”
“I’m too old to learn how to drive,” he answered.
They began climbing the stairs. “Pa, why do we have to live here?”
“In fifty or one hundred years from now the city will still be growing,” he said. “We are near the railroad. You want to be where people are coming and going. If we stay here, we will always be in the forefront of things.”
Her father paused on the first-floor landing to catch his breath.
“Pa, don’t you ever get tired of walking up and down these stairs?”
“We live up,” he responded. “This building could be taller. If City Hall can be thirteen stories high, then other buildings can be higher than that.”
“They’ll be too heavy. They’ll fall down,” Sumoy said.
Pa turned the key in the lock and pushed her through the doorway into the comforting familiarity of their apartment in the old Methodist Church. “Sumoy, one day the whole city will be filled with buildings so tall that you and I can’t even imagine them. We need to be ready for that.”
*
From the day Fong Dun Shung left South China to become an herbalist on the railroad, the See and Fong family destinies had been deeply entwined in the political and economic conditions of the times. Some of these periods—Exclusion and the Driving Out—had been directed solely at the Chinese. Others—the Depression and World War II—had affected everyone across the country, including the Sees and Fongs.
December 7, 1941, marked several changes for the See and Fong families. The waterways remained virtually closed for the duration of the war, with the result that, through 1945, little new merchandise crossed the Pacific. No antiques. No water chestnuts. No silk. For many of the mom-and-pop shops in Chinatown, this meant buying cheap goods from Mexico. For stores like F. Suie One and F. See On, it meant a shift from high-grade merchandise imported from China to things that could be picked up at auction, items of lesser quality dredged up from the deepest and darkest depths of warehouses, even curios. At the end of 1941, neither Fong See nor Ticie could know how this would affect business. Nor could Ray and Bennie, for whom Pearl Harbor also marked a turning point. The See Manufacturing Company, which had flourished making bedroom suites for movie stars, was converted to the war effort, and this would change their lives.
CHAPTER 16
THE MISSION FAMILY GETS A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW
1942–45
WHEN the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, 42,000 native-born Japanese lived in California, as did 97,000 Germans and 114,000 Italians. The three groups were classified as “enemy aliens,” and were forbidden to enter military installations or the Canal Zone—as if anyone were traveling down there. They weren’t allowed to fly in airplanes or change residences within their own cities. They could no longer purchase or possess firearms, cameras, short-wave radios, codes, or invisible ink. Soon all enemy alien funds were frozen, and banks owned by enemy aliens were locked up—regardless of who the depositors were.
In addition to these governmental restrictions, the populace at large—petrified by the possibility of rad
io-directed air raids—began making life difficult for the most easily recognizable enemy, the Japanese. Landlords evicted Japanese families; wholesalers stopped supplying products to Japanese businesses. The Japanese couldn’t get driver’s licenses, credit from banks, or milk delivered.
On February 2, 1942, federal troops sealed the drawbridge and commandeered the ferry between Terminal Island and Long Beach. Of the four thousand people who lived on Terminal Island, more than half were Japanese farmers. The heads of all Japanese families were put under presidential arrest. On that same day, Attorney General Earl Warren recommended and received approval for a plan to have all Japanese aliens moved two hundred miles inland for the duration of the war. On February 19, a little over two weeks later, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to establish military zones within the United States from which any person might be excluded, subject to military regulation.
At the end of February, the worst fears of Angelenos seemed to be realized when an unidentified submarine sent a few shells into an oilfield near Santa Barbara. The next night an unidentified airplane was spotted farther south, sending the Los Angeles air-raid system into action. The night sky was pierced by sirens, while searchlights arced across the sky. Residents panicked, turned on their lights and ran out into the streets, totally invalidating the blackout. The army, meanwhile, fired 1,430 shells at the would-be attackers. No planes were hit, but five people died in the pandemonium—two from heart attacks, another three in car accidents. A few garages, patios, cars, and outbuildings were destroyed when the antiaircraft shells fell back to earth. The hysteria subsided only when it was determined that the “attack” had been a false alarm.
On March 18, Roosevelt created the War Relocation Authority, to be headed by Milton Eisenhower, the brother of General Dwight Eisenhower. “I feel most deeply that when this war is over and we consider calmly this unprecedented migration of 100,000 people,” Eisenhower said, “we are as Americans going to regret the avoidable injustices that may have occurred.” A few weeks later the evacuation began. On that occasion, General DeWitt, who was in charge of the evacuation, stated, “A Jap’s a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. There is no way to determine their loyalty. … It makes no difference whether he is an American; theoretically he is still a Japanese, and you can’t change him.”
The 42,000 native-born Japanese in California also had families—many with American-born children. This meant that 94,000 Japanese from California—and another 24,000 Japanese from Washington and Oregon—were viewed as “potential enemies” and subsequently interned. Amazingly, despite their internment, 33,000 Nisei—American-born Japanese—served in the U.S. armed forces.
Eddy’s old friend Benji Okubo went—first to a place in Pomona, then farther inland to Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Another friend stored his paintings, promising him that she would return them when the war ended. Others weren’t so lucky. Many Japanese had to sell their businesses or homes overnight. Others just walked away. Eddy, Stella, Richard, and Ted rented a house on the Micheltorena Hill from a Japanese family, the Okis, who were interned. They promised to take care of the house until the Okis were released.
While the Japanese suffered, many of the Chinese profited—in business, in status. The Woo family, for example, bought their produce company from an interned Japanese family, changed the name to the Chungking Produce Company, and went on to make a fortune. Another man bought a large quantity of rice at the beginning of the war. When imports from China ceased, he was able to sell his rice for greatly inflated prices.
The See Manufacturing Company, which had been in operation for a little more than twenty years, was converted to the war effort. In the past, Ray had designed furniture for Mae West, Anna May Wong, Edward G. Robinson, and Howard Hughes; Bennie had executed those designs with precision, speed, and cheap materials. Now, instead of making end tables, the factory turned out plywood map holders to fit snugly against an airplane’s fuselage. Where once it had made intricately carved headboards, the factory now built airplane wings. Like the Woo family and the man with his warehouse filled with rice, Ray and Bennie were suddenly making a lot of money.
In a whole other category were the new opportunities for jobs that opened up as large numbers of white Americans shipped out. During the war, it was estimated that thirty percent of all Chinese American men in New York’s Chinatown were working in defense plants. On the opposite coast, Haw, Uncle’s third son, who now had a son and a daughter of his own, wanted a deferment. He got his nerve up, went to Fong See, his longtime employer and benefactor, and told him he was leaving the company. “I can’t help it. They’re going to start taking men with children.” Haw took a job as a tool designer in a Culver City defense plant. His salary was doubled, then doubled again, so that he was earning one hundred dollars a week. “That’s a lot of money,” Haw boasted.
Odds were that after the war, Haw, like others who had gotten better jobs in the outside world, wouldn’t come back to Chinatown. This would prove to be an accurate guess. Between 1940 and 1950—while the percentage of Chinese men working in restaurants and laundries would remain high compared to the rest of the population—Chinese men in craft occupations would increase from 1.4 percent to 3.5 percent, and in professional and technical occupations from 2.5 percent to 6.6 percent.
But, given their history in the country, the Chinese knew they had to be careful, too. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association printed up insignias with flags of the United States and China flying side by side and the words “Your Allies” printed below. The association also distributed registration certificates stating that the holder was a member of the Chinese race. The people of Chinatown snapped up these items to paste in the windows of their homes, businesses, and automobiles. The Chinese wore pins with the Chinese flag and armbands that read “China” or “Chinese.” About this, the Los Angeles Examiner wrote, “Make no mistake about it, a Chinese is a Chinese—and not a Jap.” “Those lo fan,” people in Chinatown said, mystified, bemused, and a little fearful, “they can’t tell the difference between a Chinese and a Japanese.”
The fact that the Exclusion Act remained on the books undermined the United States’ stance as the protector of democracy. It didn’t help that even though the Chinese population in the United States had sunk to between 75,000 and 78,000—of which men still outnumbered women three to one—nearly one-fourth of the men were engaged in the war effort at home and abroad. (It must be noted, however, that many Chinese armed-forces recruits were sent straight to cook school.) Many enlisted, not through any great sense of patriotism, but as a way of automatically gaining their citizenship, and thus opening the door ever so slightly to the possibility of going to China one day and bringing back a “wife of an American citizen.”
Many joined the fight for repeal of the exclusion acts—from Ng Poon Chew, the Chinese journalist and lecturer, to Pearl Buck, who had become a celebrity after the success of the book and screen versions of The Good Earth. In San Francisco, the city board of supervisors—reflecting the attitude of the area’s citizens—passed a special resolution encouraging repeal. But for every voice raised in support of repeal, numerous others opposed it, including the American Federation of Labor, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Native Sons of the Golden West, and the Crusading Mothers of Pennsylvania.
In late June 1942, Mrs. Leong—language teacher, active fund raiser for China Relief, and mother of Gilbert Leong—sat in the main dining room of Soochow Restaurant, preparing for the banquet to celebrate the marriage between her son and Sissee See. She pulled out a bobby pin, scratched her scalp with it, then tucked a few loose strands of hair into the tightly woven bun which lay at the nape of her neck. Ignoring the high-pitched chatter in the kitchen, she tried to concentrate on the list of chores that would occupy her in the next few days. For fifty years now—ever since the missionaries had taught her how to harness her brain to shut out trouble—she
had focused her energies on work during upsetting times. But today her heart was so broken that her mind wandered as if looking for that injured organ.
She knew what the people of Chinatown thought of her: that she was rich, that she would not mind her own business, that she put too much importance on old things, that she was too crazy liking that American football, that she kept her children—Ed, Gilbert, Elmer, and Margie—under her thumb. She knew the kinds of words they spoke behind her back. “Mrs. Leong wears the pants in the family.” (Not true.) “She’s a tough old dame who’ll go clear to hell and gone to buy a leg of pork for the restaurant.” (True.) “Mrs. Leong is controlling of her children. No wonder they’ve come out the way they have.” (This made her mad!) Even her daughter Margie laughed off these stupid comments. “Ah, Mom, you don’t run the family. You’re just business-minded.” But now Mrs. Leong’s neighbors would see how she had failed. She knew they would laugh and jeer. She knew also that she would continue in her service to them, because, above all else, she was a good Christian woman.
For almost twenty years she had held classes at the Methodist Mission on the second floor of the building at the corner of Marchessault and Los Angeles streets, directly above the F. Suie One Company. Each day she had driven herself from her house on Ivadel down to this last remaining block of Old Chinatown, climbed the narrow stairs, and drilled her students on their memorization and written language skills. Every evening she had walked down the block past Fong See’s store to her family’s Soochow Restaurant, where she’d looked over the books, made sure the kitchen ran smoothly, and written up the order for the early-morning run to the wholesale stalls at City Market.