Eddie Fund Thesis StatementPaper

T HE A D V E NTU R E S OF E DDIE FU N G

THE ADVENTURES OF EDDIE FUNG

C H I N A T O W N K I D · T E X A S C O W B O Y · P R I S O N E R O F W A R

E D I T E D B Y J U D Y YU N G

U N I V E R S I T Y O F W A S H I N G T O N P R E S S · S E A T T L E & L O N D O N

The Adventures of Eddie Fung is published with the assistance of a grant from the

n a o m i b . p a s c a l e d i t o r ’ s e n d o w m e n t , supported through the generosity of

Janet and John Creighton, Patti Knowles, Mary McLellan Williams, and other donors.

Copyright © 2007 by Judy Yung

Printed in the United States of America

Designed by Pamela Canell

13 12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

University of Washington Press

P.O. Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, U.S.A.

www.washington.edu/uwpress

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fung, Eddie, 1922–

The adventures of Eddie Fung : Chinatown kid, Texas cowboy, prisoner of war

/ edited by Judy Yung.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 978-0-295-98754-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Fung, Eddie, 1922– 2. Chinese Americans —Biography. 3. Chinatown (San Francisco,

Calif.)—Biography. 4. San Francisco (Calif.)—Biography. 5. Cowboys —Texas —Biography.

6. World War, 1939–1945—Participation, Chinese American. 7. World War, 1939–1945—

Prisoners and prisons, Japanese. 8. Soldiers —United States —Biography. 9. Prisoners of war

—United States —Biography. 10. Prisoners of war—Burma—Biography.

I. Yung, Judy. II. Title.

e184.c5f86 2007 940.54'7252092— dc22 [B] 2007019488

The paper used in this publication is acid-free and 90 percent recycled from at least 50 percent

post-consumer waste. It meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard

for Information Sciences —Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–

1984.8A

Cover photo: Eddie lighting a firecracker in Chinatown during the New Year celebration,

1935. Courtesy San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

F O R L O I S A N D A L L M Y B U D D I E S I N T H E L O S T B A T T A L I O N

C O N T E N T S

P R E F A C E · I X

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S · X V

I N T R O D U C T I O N · X V I I

O N E · G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 3

T W O · A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 4 5

T H R E E · A G O O D S O L D I E R · 6 8

F O U R · A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 9 6

F I V E · A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 3 9

S I X · L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 6 3

C H R O N O L O G Y · 2 0 9

N O T E S · 2 1 1

B I B L I O G R A P H Y · 2 1 9

I N D E X · 2 2 3

P R E F A C E

I first met Eddie Fung in the summer of 2002. I was working on my fifth

book, Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present, and

I needed a World War II story, preferably one told from the perspec-

tive of a Chinese American veteran. I asked Colonel Bill Strobridge, a mil-

itary historian who had conducted a study of Chinese Americans in World

War II, if he could find me someone to interview. He came up with two

possibilities. The first person had fought heroically in the front lines at Nor-

mandy, but he turned out to be a poor storyteller, one who gave short

answers and stuck to the facts. Even though I conducted the interview in

Chinese and did my best to make him feel comfortable, I could not get him

to elaborate on the story or share his feelings on the matter. So I made

arrangements to meet the second possibility, Eddie Fung, hoping that he

would prove to be a more engaging storyteller.

We agreed to do the interview at Colonel Strobridge’s home in San Fran-

cisco. Prior to the interview, I did some background checking on Eddie Fung.

I found out that he was an American-born Chinese who had grown up in

San Francisco Chinatown like me, only he had preceded me by two

decades. I was fifty-six years old, and he had just turned eighty. Colonel

Strobridge also told me that Eddie had the dubious distinction of being

the only Chinese American soldier to be captured by the Japanese during

World War II and that he had worked on the Burma-Siam railroad made

I X

famous by the film Bridge on the River Kwai. Not knowing much about that

history, I made a point of seeing the film before the interview. I was horrified

by the brutal treatment of the prisoners under the Japanese and impressed

by the courage and heroic actions of the POWs in the film. I hoped that

Eddie would be forthcoming with details about how he as a Chinese Amer-

ican had fared and survived under such circumstances. The other inter-

esting thing that I found out about Eddie was that he had run away from

home to become a cowboy when he was sixteen. I was intrigued—a Chi-

nese American cowboy ? Although it was the World War II story I needed,

I decided I would start at the beginning with his family history in order to

get a fuller picture of his life and to put his World War II experience into

a larger context.

Having conducted over 400 interviews with Chinese Americans for var-

ious book projects by then, I thought I had allowed plenty of time for his

story—three whole hours. This interview, however, turned out differently.

A solidly built man of short stature—5 feet 3 inches, and 120 pounds, to be

exact—Eddie proved to be a natural storyteller with a fantastic memory

for details, a precise way of expressing himself, a wonderful sense of

humor, and a strong determination to tell the story right. In essence, he is

every oral historian’s dream come true. He also proved to be an unusual

interviewee in that he was both introspective and analytical in his responses.

I soon found out that he had an indirect way of answering my questions,

often recreating conversations and connecting specific incidents from the

past to make his point. Regardless of how long-winded he got, Eddie was

never boring. In fact, he held me spellbound at our first meeting, and before

I knew it, three hours had passed and we had not even gotten to World

War II ! Somehow, I got the rest of the story out of him in the next two

hours before I had to leave for my next appointment. He gave me a pile of

books to read about POWs and the Burma-Siam railroad, and I promised

to send him the transcript and edited story for his approval.

It was not until I transcribed his interview that I realized what a gold

mine I had found. I thought, this had to be how historian Theodore Rosen-

garten must have felt when he happened upon Nate Shaw, an illiterate black

sharecropper in Alabama with a story to tell, or how Alex Haley felt when

he was asked to write Malcolm X’s autobiography. They both spent hun-

X · P R E F A C E

dreds of hours interviewing their subjects and countless more writing their

classic oral histories, All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw and The Auto-

biography of Malcolm X. I knew instinctively that there was a larger book

to be written, although I did not think at the time that I was the right per-

son to write it. Six months later, after I had completed a draft of his World

War II story for Chinese American Voices, I contacted Eddie and hand-deliv-

ered the transcript and story to him for his approval. At the same time, I

urged him to consider writing his memoirs, but he said with modesty that

his story was not that unique or interesting. “Besides,” he said, “I’m not a

writer.” I continued, however, to press him, and suggested that we do a

longer interview. “If nothing else,” I said, “we could deposit the tapes and

transcript in an archive for the historical record and for the use of other

researchers.” He reluctantly agreed. Retired and a recent widower, he had

the time. For me, the time was right as well, because for the next nine months

I was on sabbatical from my job as professor of American Studies at the

University of California, Santa Cruz. Until then, my research and writing

had primarily focused on Chinese American women. I never thought that

I would be working on a book about a man’s life, but the opportunity was

too good to pass up.

We began meeting on Saturdays in the kitchen of his North Beach flat.

I would set up the tape recorder and come prepared with questions about

a certain period or aspect of his life. The agreement was that we would see

how far we could take his story and that he would be completely open and

honest with me. Although I kept reminding him that he had the right to

refuse to answer any questions that made him feel uncomfortable, he never

did—not even when I asked him about how he lost his virginity. At one

point in our interviews, Eddie said, “You’re the only one who knows the

intimate details of my life. I’ve never even told my wife Lois.” I felt hon-

ored by his complete trust in me and pleased by his willingness to cooper-

ate with me fully. Each session ran for about four hours. I became enthralled

by his story and by his voice. In between our sessions, I would transcribe

the entire interview and come up with follow-up questions for our next

session. One thing for sure, I felt very comfortable with him and looked

forward to each of our weekend sessions.

Into our fifth session together, the unthinkable happened. We were sit-

P R E F A C E · X I

ting on opposite sides of the kitchen table, as usual, and were on the topic

of post-traumatic stress disorder and how Eddie had found a way to deal

with the anger he felt after the war. “The first thing to do is to admit you

have a problem and then what are you going to do about it?” Then he slipped

in, “Just like I would like to come on to you, except that I know that our

age difference—I mean, there’s just no percentage for it. So the only thing

I can do is enjoy your company while you’re here, and that’s it. You under-

stand?” Then, almost in the same breath, he moved on to an incident in

his childhood when his father taught him how to quell his flash temper.

Later, when I listened to the tape and heard what he had tried to tell me, I

felt flattered and troubled at the same time. I did not want to jeopardize

or compromise our professional relationship and the book that was mate-

rializing so well. And there was the age difference—he was old enough to

be my father. After some lengthy telephone conversations in the next few

days, we decided to give in to Cupid’s arrow but continue on with the book

project. Fifty more hours of interviews later, we were married on April Fool’s

Day 2003. We deliberately chose that date because we did not think any of

our family or friends would believe us.

In retrospect, our marriage helped rather than hindered the interview

process and my understanding of how Eddie’s character has been shaped

by his family background and upbringing, his life as a cowboy in Texas,

and his POW experience during World War II. His life story confirms the

wise sayings “We are the sum total of our experiences” and “What does

not break us makes us stronger.” As his wife and (as he calls me) “his

Boswell,” I had immediate access to him and his extensive library collec-

tion on World War II, and I was able to ask him many personal questions

as well as conduct follow-up interviews whenever I wanted. Indeed, I learned

to keep the tape recorder ready and close by in case he came up with any-

thing important and relevant in our daily conversations. In this way, we

completed another twenty-five hours of recorded testimony. I also had

access to his family and relatives, and his POW buddies, all of whom I met

after we were married. However, as I soon discovered, no one really knows

Eddie Fung very well, since he is a very private person. He has been espe-

cially reluctant about speaking of his POW experiences except to other

POWs who share a similar past. As he said, “There is a common bond

X I I · P R E F A C E

between survivors that you cannot get membership into unless you have

paid the initiation fee. This is true of all survivors —they can talk between

and among themselves, but with great reluctance and difficulty to anyone

else.”

As my husband and the subject of the book, Eddie entrusted me with

the writing of his story, but he had the final say over every word in the telling

of that story. I gave him every chapter to review and correct as I wrote it,

and we went over the final revisions together with a fine-tooth comb. Admit-

tedly, I have influenced the outcome of the interview in my choice of ques-

tions and emphasis of focus because of my interest in Chinese American

and women’s history, but I have tried to provide Eddie with ample oppor-

tunities to add subjects or delete anything he did not want included. After

transcribing all the interviews, which amounted to over 1,000 pages of text,

I edited and rearranged selections from his interviews for a smoother read,

while trying to remain faithful to his actual words and way of speaking. At

times I relied on other published accounts and oral history interviews (see

the bibliography) in order to add details or corroborate Eddie’s version of

the story. Ultimately, The Adventures of Eddie Fung is very much a collab-

orative life history project and autobiography of a Chinatown kid, Texas

cowboy, and POW survivor, as told from his memories and in his own

words. Using Rosengarten and Haley as my models and marshalling all my

knowledge, sensitivities, and skills as a Chinese American historian and

writer for this monumental task, my goal has been to do justice to Eddie’s

story as a survivor and to share with readers the many lessons in life that

his story has to offer.

P R E F A C E · X I I I

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

O ur deepest gratitude goes to the late Colonel Bill Strobridge, for intro-

ducing us to each other, and to Ruthanne Lum McCunn, the Fung

family, and the Yung family, for their unflagging support and encour-

agement from the beginning of our relationship through the end of this

book project.

We wish to also acknowledge the following people for assisting us with

our research. Members of the Lost Battalion and the Fung family who shared

their memories of Eddie’s past with us include the late B. D. Fillmore, Willie

Hoover, George Lawley, the late Paul Leatherwood, Luther Prunty, the late

Otto Schwarz, Jessie Jing, and Raymond and Fair Fung. Ronald Marcello,

director of the Oral History Program at the University of North Texas, pro-

vided us with transcripts of interviews he had conducted with Eddie’s war

buddies and guided us to other important sources of information. Harry

Ogg, librarian at the Midland County Public Library, kindly ran down

answers to our questions regarding the history and culture of Texas. Him

Mark Lai and Hiroshi Fukurai helped us with the Chinese place names and

Japanese phrases. And the interlibrary loan staff at McHenry Library, Uni-

versity of California, Santa Cruz, tracked down every book we asked for.

Our difficult search for photographs to go with Eddie’s story was greatly

facilitated by the resourceful staff at the Bancroft Library, California His-

torical Society, San Francisco Public Library, Southwest Collection Library

X V

of Texas Tech University, and Australian War Memorial. Assistance and

photographs were also provided by Robert Dana Charles, Philip Choy, Bill

Fung, Grace Fung, Raymond and Fair Fung, Rosalie Griggs, Fred Haring,

Herbert and Esther Ho, Ken and Yoshiko Ho, Montgomery Hom, Otto

Kreeft, Amanda Lee, Joy Rasbury McLaughlin, Luther Prunty, and Vivian

Thompson. The maps were drawn by cartographer Ellen McElhinny.

Our heartfelt thanks go to Gavan Daws, for his advice and inspiration;

to the following reviewers, who gave us critical feedback on the manuscript:

Valerie Matsumoto, Ruthanne Lum McCunn, Franklin Ng, Irene Reti, Juli-

ana Rousseau, and Helen Zia for their critical feedback on the manuscript;

and to Naomi Pascal, Kerrie Maynes, and the staff at the University of Wash-

ington Press, for their expertise and assistance in bringing The Adventures

of Eddie Fung to light.

X V I · A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I N T R O D U C T I O N

T he way Eddie Fung tells his life story, it has been one adventure after

another, beginning with the time he ran away from home to be a cow-

boy to the time he joined the army and became a prisoner of war. At

one level, The Adventures of Eddie Fung is a coming-of-age story, of a young

man’s quest to explore life to its fullest and in the process grow into man-

hood. At another level, Eddie’s story offers us valuable insights into China-

town life in the 1920s, the myth and reality of the American cowboy, and

the survival tactics of a POW.

Very little has been written about the experiences of American-born Chi-

nese in the early twentieth century. Only two autobiographies exist: Pardee

Lowe’s Father and Glorious Descendant and Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chi-

nese Daughter. Both books were published by major publishing houses at

a time when U.S.-China relations were at their best and little was known

about Chinese Americans.1 The authors go to great lengths to explain Chi-

nese family life and customs to an American audience and at the same time

recount their problems dealing with intergenerational conflict at home and

assimilation into mainstream society. Ultimately, Pardee Lowe and Jade

Snow Wong demonstrate to readers how it is possible to “blend the

conflicting streams of Chinese and American thought” and transcend racial

prejudice without feeling embittered or immobilized. As Wong wrote in

X V I I

the 1989 edition of her book, “Despite prejudice, I was never discouraged

from carrying out my creed; because of prejudice, the effort is ongoing.”2

Eddie Fung tells a distinctly different story of Chinese American life in

the 1920s and 1930s. He does not speak in the voice of a cultural ambassa-

dor, to satisfy the curiosity or assuage the guilt of white America, but from

the retrospective perspective of a wayward son who has come to terms with

his ethnic identity. Eddie has fond memories of his childhood, bathed in

the love and protection of his family and the old bachelor society of China-

town. He recalls how the family and neighbors pulled together during the

Depression and how his immigrant parents taught him to be frugal, self-

reliant, resourceful, and a responsible member of society.

There is, however, also a dark side to living in Chinatown that Eddie

shares with us. Growing up in the shadows of Chinese Exclusion, when

anti-Chinese laws prohibited Chinese immigration and severely restricted

Chinese American life, he resented the ghetto conditions and mentality of

Chinatown. Many of the Chinese were illegal immigrants who had come

to this country posed as “paper sons” of a merchant or U.S. citizen in order

to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred the further

immigration of Chinese laborers to this country.3 Eddie’s own father

crossed the Canadian border surreptitiously as the “manservant of a Cau-

casian gentleman.” He later found a way to bring his wife and two adopted

sons from China as a “paper wife” and as “paper sons.” Always fearful of

being discovered and deported, his father never explained to him why

Eddie’s older brothers had different surnames from the rest of the family

or why he could not return to Canada or China for a visit. At the time, Eddie

thought this duplicity and secrecy was just the way it was for people in Chi-

natown. Just about everyone lived in overcrowded tenement apartments

and seemed afraid of venturing outside the boundaries of Chinatown. It

was not until Eddie left home for summer camp and work as a live-in house-

boy that he realized other people did not live the same way. They had spa-

cious houses with front yards and backyards. “Okay, people don’t have to

live in Chinatown in cold-water flats,” he reasoned. Certainly, he did not

want to continue living that way, so he began to plan his escape.

Eddie had another reason for wanting to leave home—he resented his

strict upbringing. Like many other second-generation Chinese Americans,

X V I I I · I N T R O D U C T I O N

he was expected to do well in American school and Chinese school, to help

out at home, to be obedient and respectful to his elders, to follow Chinese

customs, and to never bring shame to the family by misbehaving. Yet at

American school, through books and movies, and in his contacts with the

outside world, he was encouraged to be a rugged individualist, to speak

his mind, and to pursue any line of work or lifestyle he pleased. Many Chi-

nese Americans at this time were torn between following the Chinese ways

of their parents and following the American ways of mainstream society.4

Eddie learned to accommodate cultural conflicts as they arose. “You might

say that our generation had split personalities,” he explained. “When we

were inside the house, we were completely Chinese. When we were out-

side the house, we could be either all Chinese or all American or half and

half.” Being the curious and rambunctious kid he was, Eddie could not

always meet his parents’ expectations, nor be satisfied with the restrictions

of Chinatown life. Yearning to explore the wider world and to pursue the

romantic life of a cowboy on horseback, he decided to strike out on his

own and try his luck in Texas. This decision would set Eddie apart from

his Chinese American peers, most of whom remained stuck in Chinatown

until World War II, when racial discrimination lessened and opportuni-

ties opened up for them.

By the time Eddie arrived in Texas in 1938, the Depression was drawing

to a close and the cowboy days of cattle drives and open ranges that he had

dreamed of were long gone. After the railroads came to Texas, getting the

cattle to market became easier. Fewer men were needed to drive the smaller

herds of cattle to the shipping points. Fenced ranching allowed ranchers

to keep track of their cattle and to improve on their breed, but it meant

that cowboys could no longer roam the open range with the cattle. Most

work became seasonal, when cowhands were needed for the spring and fall

roundups and branding. The rest of the year they were put to work main-

taining windmills, repairing fences, and doing farm chores. Instead of the

idyllic life Eddie had imagined, where “all you have to do is ride a horse

and maybe herd a few cows,” it turned out to be nothing but hard work.

Any experienced cowpuncher could have told him, “He [would be] poorly

fed, underpaid, overworked, deprived of sleep, and prone to boredom and

loneliness.”5

I N T R O D U C T I O N · X I X

Considering how small in stature and how inexperienced Eddie was, it

is amazing that anyone hired him. Eddie credits his success in landing a

job to his eagerness to learn and his willingness to accept the low wage of

ten dollars a month. His success also attests to the openness and friendli-

ness of ranchers who were willing to give a young man an opportunity to

prove himself. As Eddie found out, there was less racial discrimination on

the ranch than in town. In 1940, African Americans and Mexicans made

up 15 percent and 12 percent of the population in Texas, respectively. They

each formed about 14 percent of the cowboy population. Although Jim Crow

codes were still strictly enforced, cowboys of color were tolerated on the

ranch as long as they had the skills to do the job.6 In contrast, there were

only 1,785 Asians (Chinese and Japanese Americans) in Texas in 1940,

accounting for less than 1 percent of the population. Most of the Japanese

were rice farmers in the Houston area, while the Chinese operated laun-

dries, cafés, and grocery stores, and lived in segregated communities in El

Paso and San Antonio. Small in number and not considered an economic

threat to the Anglo population, the Chinese occupied a “gray area” in the

black-white racial hierarchy in Texas. They were tolerated and better

treated than African Americans and Mexicans, although in 1937 Anglo com-

petitors did try to get an anti-alien land law passed that would have driven

Chinese grocers out of business. The measure failed, however, due to oppo-

sition from the Chinese community.7

Eddie Fung may well have been the only Chinese cowboy in West Texas

at the time, and as such he was treated more as a novelty than a threat. As

he said, “I was only five feet tall and nonthreatening, so most people took

me to be nothing more than a young adventurer.” The one Chinese stereo-

type that stuck to him, however, was that of the proverbial cook or house-

boy. Eddie was offered that job more than once, but each time he refused,

even though it meant higher wages and easier work. He had come to Texas

to be a cowboy, and by the end of his second year he had proven to him-

self and to others that regardless of ethnicity or size he could do any job

assigned to him.

From the vantage point of a Chinatown kid, Eddie shares with us what

it was like to be a Texas cowboy in the 1930s. His first job at the Scarborough

ranch taught him that cowboys worked hard from sunup to sunset. He had

X X · I N T R O D U C T I O N

to be a jack-of-all-trades —part mechanic, part vet, and part carpenter—

in order to do all the tasks required of him. At his first roundup, Eddie

learned how to flank a calf that was three times his weight. He also came

to appreciate the code of conduct that most Texas cowboys still abide by—

a mixture of rugged individualism, neighborly cooperation, and a strong

sense of honor. “If a man gave you his word, there would be no need for

a contract,” Eddie said. “And if you wanted to be formal about it, you shook

hands —that was ironclad.” Contrary to the image of the uncouth and une-

ducated cowboy he had seen on the movie screen, most of the cowboys he

came to know were gentle, courteous, and knowledgeable, and they were

more than willing to show this greenhorn the tricks of the trade.8 By the

time Eddie was ready to move on to his next adventure, he realized how

much he had grown under their tutelage. What he did not know then was

how this education would help him become a good soldier and survivor

in prison camp.

Most young Texans who joined the National Guard in the 1930s did it

for the pay. Some did it for adventure or to make military service their career.

But as far as Eddie was concerned, “Here’s another place where I can be

around horses —I can join the cavalry !” By the time he got to Lubbock,

Texas, to inquire about joining the army in May of 1940, Italy had seized

Ethiopia, Japan had invaded China, and Germany had swept through most

of Europe. Unbeknownst to Eddie, the United States was heading for war,

and plans were being made to call for the draft and to mobilize the National

Guard. Too young to be admitted into the army without parental consent,

Eddie signed up with the Texas National Guard instead. Although he was

the only Chinese American in his military unit, he never felt out of place

and recalls that he got along fine with all the other men. His size posed more

of a problem than his race or ethnicity. But once he proved that he could

pull his share of the weight and pass basic training, he earned the respect

of his officers and fellow soldiers.

Approximately one million African Americans, 33,000 Japanese Amer-

icans, and 15,000 Chinese Americans served in the U.S. armed forces dur-

ing World War II. Until desegregation in the military was banned by

executive order in 1948, African Americans were segregated into separate

barracks and units and generally assigned menial duties. Because Japanese

I N T R O D U C T I O N · X X I

Americans were considered “enemy aliens” after Japan attacked Pearl Har-

bor, they were only allowed to serve in the Military Intelligence Service

in the Pacific theater or in the all-Japanese 100th Battalion and 442nd Reg-

imental Combat Team in the European theater. In contrast, Chinese Amer-

icans were integrated into all branches of the military, with the exception

of 1,200 men who were assigned to two all-Chinese units in the China-

Burma-India theater.9 With China and the United States at war against

Japan, many Chinese Americans joined out of a strong sense of Chinese

nationalism and American patriotism. Like Eddie, they experienced no

blatant discrimination, and many would agree with Private Charles Leong,

who wrote in 1944, “To G.I. Joe Wong in the army, a ‘Chinaman’s Chance’

means a fair chance, not based on race or creed, but on the stuff of the

man who wears the uniform of the U.S. Army.” 10 In truth, Chinese Amer-

icans were caught between the white-over-black paradigm of race rela-

tions in the army. They did not suffer the same bigotry directed at African

Americans, but neither were they fully accepted as equals by their white

counterparts.11

While Eddie was training to be a machine gunner at Camp Bowie, Texas,

war escalated on the two continents. Germany attacked the Balkans and

Russia, and Japan, now a part of the Axis powers, took the French colonies

of Indochina. As negotiations with Japan deteriorated, President Franklin D.

Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets in America, stopped oil supplies to Japan,

and made General Douglas MacArthur commander of the U.S. Army in

the Far East. Paralyzed financially and starved for the raw materials needed

to keep its war machine going, Japan activated its plans to take over Asia.

In November of 1941, Eddie’s battalion was sent to the Philippines as

reinforcements. En route to the Philippines, he recalls, Pearl Harbor was

attacked, and his convoy was diverted to Australia. From there, the 2nd

battalion was sent to Java to help the Netherlands defend its colonial out-

post. They were no match for the Japanese army. Within a few days, the

battle for Java was over, and Eddie became one of 140,000 Allied soldiers

to be captured by the Japanese in the Pacific theater.12 Along with 61,000

American, British, Australian, and Dutch prisoners, Eddie was sent to work

on the Burma-Siam railroad—the largest use of POWs in any single

project in the Pacific war. For the next forty-two months of captivity, the

X X I I · I N T R O D U C T I O N

men would suffer unimaginable brutality, diseases, and starvation in the

POW camps. Those who survived the harrowing ordeal would bear the

physical and mental scars of incarceration for the rest of their lives. Thus

the refrain that is familiar to all of them, “We can forgive, but we can never

forget.”

Many books have been published and films made about the Pacific war,

the experiences of POWs, and the building of the Burma-Siam railroad—

the most well known being Bridge on the River Kwai. The 1957 Oscar-win-

ning movie, however, gives a misleading account of how the bridge was

built and destroyed as well as an erroneous impression of the relationships

between the Japanese military, British commander, and prison labor

force.13 More accurate accounts can be found in Gavan Daws’s Prisoners of

the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific and Clifford Kinvig’s River

Kwai Railway: The Story of the Burma-Siam Railroad.14 By now, there are

also numerous oral histories and memoirs by POW survivors, many of

whom worked on the “Death Railroad.”15 They each tell a different story

about the life of a POW because no one was alike in their reaction to and

interaction with their captors, nor in the way that they perceived and remem-

bered the same events. Gavan Daws points out in his book, “Nationality

determined the way POWs lived and died, and often whether they lived or

died.”16 As Eddie’s story bears out, personality and ethnicity were deter-

mining factors in the matter. What makes The Adventures of Eddie Fung

different from other first-person accounts is Eddie’s unique perspective and

experiences as the only Chinese American to be captured by the Japanese.

According to Eddie, the first thing that crossed his mind after Allied forces

capitulated to the Japanese on March 8, 1942, was, “My God, what are they

going to do to Foo and me ?” Eddie Fung and Frank “Foo” Fujita were the

only two Asian American soldiers to be captured by the Japanese in what

has been termed a war between the “yellow” race and the “white” race.17

The assumption was that both would be immediately spotted by the Japa-

nese, then tortured and killed for betraying the “yellow” race. Foo, whose

father was Japanese and whose mother was a white American, was able to

hide his racial background until his Japanese surname betrayed him in

Nagasaki, where he was sent to work in the shipyards while Eddie was sent

to Burma to work on the railroad. Foo steadfastly refused to denounce the

I N T R O D U C T I O N · X X I I I

United States and participate in propaganda work in Japan, and as a result

he was brutally beaten and assigned to latrine duty.18 As for Eddie, although

he was sometimes beaten because he was Chinese, he was never tortured.

Instead, he found that his Chinese upbringing made it easier for him to

adjust to the meager rice-and-vegetable diet, and to find ways to supple-

ment it with throwaways such as animal organs and fish heads. Even his

limited command of the Chinese language came in handy. It allowed him

to trade with the local Chinese and to help his commanding officer com-

municate in writing with the Japanese engineers. Moreover, the domestic

and scrounging skills he had acquired as a Chinatown kid proved useful in

the camps. For example, Eddie was able to show the cooks how to use a

wok, and the food and medicine he scrounged helped him and others to

survive. In fact, it was while a prisoner of the Japanese that Eddie learned

to appreciate his Chinese background, “I had finally come to terms with

my past, and I was looking forward to going home and telling my mother,

‘Okay, Mom, I understand what you and Pop have been trying to get

through to me—about what it means to be Chinese—and I’m going to try

and live up to it.’ ”

Ultimately, what kept Eddie alive and what makes his story so unique

and interesting were his curiosity and desire to learn from his adventures

and encounters in life. Even the details of railroad work come alive when

seen through Eddie’s curious eyes —how the Japanese organized the work

crews, how jungles were cleared for the right-of-way, how bridges were built,

how the tracks were laid, and how the men were practically worked to death

during the “speedo” period. To Eddie, “any job is interesting as long as I’m

learning something new.” At the lowest point of his captivity, when he was

hit with dysentery and malaria and down to sixty pounds, Eddie convinced

himself to stay alive for no other reason than to satisfy his curiosity: “I

wanted to see what the next day would bring; whether it was good, bad, or

indifferent, I just wanted to know.”

After the war was over, how did Eddie deal with the scars from his excru-

ciating POW experience ? In the final chapter of the book, he talks about

going on eating binges, hoarding twenty pounds of coffee at a time, having

nightmares, going without sleep for a whole year, and losing his temper

over trifling matters. Some of his buddies became alcoholics. A few com-

X X I V · I N T R O D U C T I O N

mitted suicide. The V.A. Hospital was of no help, because at the time no

one understood what we now know to be posttraumatic stress disorder and

survivor’s guilt. Even so, Eddie found a way to deal with the problem, and

he managed to turn the negative experience into a positive learning expe-

rience. By the time we get to the end of Eddie’s story, we can discern that

he is finally at peace with himself. Upon reflection he said, “I’ve never regret-

ted the war or the hardships I’ve suffered, because it made me a better man.”

The Adventures of Eddie Fung is an important contribution to our under-

standing of Chinese American life, cowboy culture, and the experiences of

American POWs in World War II. It is also a remarkable chronicle of a

Chinatown boy’s journey to manhood that will leave a lasting impression

on our hearts and minds.

—judy yung

I N T R O D U C T I O N · X X V

T HE A D V E NTU R E S OF E DDIE FU N G

O N E · G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N

Pop named me Man Quong, which means “intellectually bright,” so my father had

high expectations of me. Years later, when I visited our ancestral village in China for

the first time, they knew right away who I was, because Pop had sent money back to

celebrate my birth and I was written in the village genealogy book. From all of this,

I suspect that he must have been very disappointed in me as I was growing up. But

unfortunately, I cannot change my nature. I don’t know why I had itchy feet, why I

was born curious, so curious that I had to see what was on the other side of the hill.

M Y F A T H E R , F U N G C H O N G P O O

M y father, Fung Chong Poo, was a wetback—he sneaked in from

Canada. According to people I talked to later, at one time he lived

in Chinatown and worked as a kitchen helper in a downtown hotel

in Nanaimo. He crossed the border posing as the manservant of a Caucasian

gentleman—that was how he got into the U.S. My guess is that it was in

the late 1890s, when he was in his early twenties. Dad was from Lei Yuen

(Pearl Garden) village in Enping District, Guangdong Province (near Hong

Kong). My mother, Ng Shee, was from Si Ji Yim (Lion’s Loin) village, also

in Enping District. The funny thing about the Enping people, if you meet

a married woman with the surname Fung, the chances are she used to be

a Ng from somewhere around Si Ji Yim. And if you meet a married woman

with the surname Ng, the chances are she was a Fung. You see, most vil-

3

lages in China at this time were inhabited by people with the same surname,

and young people in one village were often arranged in marriage to pros-

pective spouses in nearby villages. We’re so intermarried within that area,

it’s almost incestuous!

I had two older adopted brothers who were born in China, and four older

sisters and a younger brother who were born at home like me. My father,

being a progressive man, chose to use a lady doctor instead of a midwife.

The reason we had two adopted brothers was because after my parents got

married in China and before Pop came over to America, it was thought

that Mom was barren. So since he was going to find his fortune in the West,

he decided to adopt two sons to keep her company in China. But when he

finally got her over here in 1914, one year later, my older sister Mary was

born! How did Pop get his wife and two sons over here when he was ille-

gal ? He had a brother in San Francisco who had a wife and three sons in

China. As a merchant, he could have brought them to America, but he never

intended to do so. Instead, he sold the papers to my father. Mom came over

legally as my uncle’s wife, and my oldest adopted brother, Al, came as my

uncle’s ten-year-old son, Ho Li Quong.1 Somehow, Pop knew the Chinese

consul general, and in 1939 the consul fixed it so that Mom and Uncle were

divorced, and Mom and Pop got married. As to my second adopted brother,

Francis, or Pee Wee as we called him, Pop was able to buy immigration papers

for him to come in 1920 as Hom Sin Kay, the nine-year-old son of a native-

born citizen. Both Al and Pee Wee retained their paper names because it

would get too complicated. The consul general could only do so much.

This would create all kinds of problems for us later, like when I went over-

seas in November of 1941 and my mother said, “You stop in Honolulu and

find out how Pee Wee is doing.” At the time he was a seaman on the Matson

lines. We had one day in Honolulu, so I went to the Seamans Union. I was

in uniform, and I said, “I want to find out if my brother is in port.” “What’s

your brother’s name?” I said, “Hom Sin Kay.” He said, “What ship is he on?”

I said, “Lurline.” And he said, “Lurline is not in.” So he said, “Who are you?”

I said, “I’m his brother.” So I pulled out my dog tag. He said, “You’re Fung,

Edward. How can he be your brother when his surname is Hom?” I said, “I

don’t know, but he’s always been my brother.” This “paper son” business —

I just never thought anything of it because it was so common in Chinatown.

4 · C H A P T E R O N E

According to hearsay, Pop was a hell-raiser. When he was a young man,

he wore a pigtail, which was required of all Chinese subjects during the

reign of the Manchus (1644–1911). One day he was running an errand for

his boss and he was impatient. He jumped off the cable car before it stopped

and his queue wound around the stanchion. Basically, he fell under the cable

car—that was how he lost his leg. He learned to be a jeweler and watch-

maker because he had to find some job he could do sitting down. I remem-

ber when I was about eight, he gave me an alarm clock and showed me how

to get started taking it apart. I took it all apart. He said, “Now put it back

together.” I couldn’t do it, and he tried to show me. He said, “It’s perfectly

logical. This has to go in first, then this goes on top of this, and this goes

alongside of it.” It all made sense, but I couldn’t do it. And, theoretically,

the alarm clock is the easiest to repair!

My father was not the kind of man you asked personal questions about.

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 5

F I G . 1 . Studio portrait of the Fung family, 1924. Left to right, front row: Grace, Min-

erva, mother Ng Shee (holding William), father Fung Chong Poo (holding Eddie), Mary,

and Jessie; back row: cousin Tom Fung, Albert, cousin Harry Fung, and cousin Fung

Woi Quong.

If he wanted you to know something, he would let you know. But I could

tell through our little sessions —like the time he taught me how to make a

bow and arrow—that he had many experiences to draw from. One time

in 1937, when we had the coldest winter in many years, he said, “Do you

think this is cold? In Montana I was at a ranch house, and when we threw

a basin of water out the back porch, it would freeze before it hit the ground.

Now that’s cold.” In retrospect, then, you can kind of backtrack and say,

“How did he get into the United States from Canada?” It wasn’t straight

down through Washington and Oregon; he must have taken a roundabout

way, going down through Montana. Another time when I saw the movie

San Francisco, with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Jeanette MacDonald,

I came home and he asked, “What movie did you see ?” And I told him. He

started reminiscing about the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, and how

he had to stay at an encampment in the army presidio designated for Chi-

nese people. He recalled how as soon as the bugler sounded retreat, which

is the time to lower the flag, the horses would know exactly what they were

supposed to do—pull caissons in formation. He said, “Just like the fire

horses when they hear the fire alarm, they know that they have to go. All

they need is the direction from the driver as to where.” So he was telling

me about the army life that he saw as a refugee from the earthquake. Of

course, I later found out that it was an advantage for the Chinese that the

earthquake happened, because with all the birth records destroyed, they

could then claim U.S. citizenship and help bring in a number of fictitious

sons from China.

My father spoke fairly good English and he was a Christian, so I gather

the reason I was named Edward was because of Reverend Edwards, a

Methodist minister who had taught him English. When we were kids, every

Thanksgiving my father would roast a turkey with all the trimmings, and

he would also bake pumpkin pies. Then the whole family would take the

streetcar and troop out to Sixth Avenue, where the Edwards sisters lived

after the minister died. We always had Thanksgiving dinner with the spin-

ster sisters until they went to live in a retirement home. We knew from that

that Pop felt an obligation to Reverend Edwards. And when Chinese incur

an obligation, it’s lifelong—it’s never paid off.

I also learned later from old-timers about how my father made his first

6 · C H A P T E R O N E

$10,000. They said that during World War I, he was buying and salvaging

gunnysacks used for bagging potatoes. If they were in good shape, he would

pay a penny for it. If not, people would give it to him and he would spend

his nights patching them. Everyone thought he was crazy because he

rented a warehouse to store all these bags. He foresaw the scarcity of gun-

nysacks (used for bagging potatoes) after the war—that’s how he made his

first bundle of money, selling gunnysacks. Pop was one of these guys who

in the 1920s could see “strip cities,” all the way from San Francisco to San

Jose. He was always traveling to Vallejo, Walnut Creek, and all sorts of places

outside San Francisco, scouting out business opportunities. But if he made

any money, he would use it to help people, not hoard it.

I think Pop helped at least four kinsmen come to the United States. I

used to ask him why, because we could have used the money ourselves. He

said, “No matter how rough you think you have it here, it’s much worse

than you can imagine in China. So anytime I have a chance to help bring

someone over, I will.” And he said, “I will not deprive you of any food,

shelter, or clothing—you have the basics. All I want to do is give someone

else the opportunity to have the same things.” He used to buy land in China

from my uncle, who wanted the money more than the land, since he had

no intention of ever going back to China. Pop was always helping out his

village. I think they had some bandit problems one time. I remember so

distinctly—Pop and Al were wrapping cartridges of .38–caliber bullets in

toilet paper. Then they hid them in a grindstone before shipping it to China.

I asked Al years later what that was all about, and he said, “We had to smug-

gle these cartridges to the villagers who had guns but could not buy any

ammunition. Bandits were extorting money from the villagers for so-called

protection.” So that was why they needed the bullets —to try and fend off

the bandits.

My father kept a book of the monies that he had lent or expended to

help bring people over from China. Theoretically, there was an agreement

that the person’s family would pay him back if and when they could afford

it. In other words, the debt was on the book. When my father passed away

in 1940, Mom asked Al to try and collect some of the money. It turned out

that people were not as ethical as Pop had thought. Many of them said,

“We’ve already paid the debt back and your father must have forgotten to

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 7

mark it down.” Other people would deny that they were even indebted to

my father. So after a couple of weeks of that, Mom told Al, “Put a notice

in the Chinese papers that the Fungs do not owe anyone, nor are the Fungs

owed by anyone else.” In other words, the slate’s wiped clean. She figured

if anyone was going to honor his debt after the notice, he would still pay

it. And it was at that point that the Fungs got a reputation for being choi

gee lo (wealthy people), because they could afford to write off the debts.

But that wasn’t true—Mom just didn’t want the aggravation.

You might say that my father was progressive in the way that he treated

the girls in the family. Whenever his friends kidded him about having so

many girls, he would say, “My girls are better than any of the sons you have.”

Back in those times, that was high praise because girls didn’t really count

for much. But he was that kind of a person. He didn’t care whether you

were male or female. If you brought pride to him, you were bringing joy

to him. When my sisters graduated from the prestigious Lowell High School

and they wanted to go on to college, my father encouraged them to do so.

All his peers laughed at him, “Why are you letting your girls go to college ?

They’re just going to get married and raise families.” He told them that

education was something no one could take away from you. It didn’t mat-

ter if his daughters got married and had families, they could still be edu-

cated. All the girls went to the University of California, Berkeley. Mary went

for optometry in 1938, and upon graduating she opened her own office

at the corner of Sacramento and Grant. Jessie majored in anthropology

and worked as a bookkeeper for Sherwin–Williams Paint Company before

marrying Bill, an electrical engineer, and moving to Bakersfield. Number

three, Minerva—we called her Mints — studied literature at Cal. She met

and married Jim, a Caucasian guy who later became a psychologist. My

parents did not approve; neither did his mother. Back then, they could not

get married in California, so they got married in the state of Washington,

where it was allowed.2 My fourth sister, Grace, never attended college

because she had asthma. Early on, when she was twelve or thirteen, she was

sent to live with a family in Fresno, which would hopefully help her asth-

matic condition.

Although my father was gentle and supportive of his daughters, he was

hard on his sons. Have you ever heard the term sa heng? It’s a rattan whip.

8 · C H A P T E R O N E

That was what Pop used on my younger brother Bill and me whenever we

did something bad—the usual kid stuff, like fighting or sneaking into the-

aters without paying or shoplifting at the dime store. We didn’t have any

toys, so naturally when we were in a variety store and saw all these things,

we would shoplift. Whenever Pop found out about it, he would whip us in

no uncertain terms, saying that he didn’t want this sort of thing happening

again. Anytime he whipped us, we had given him a reason—there was no

question about that. It wasn’t child abuse. He was just trying to get a point

across: there was proper behavior and there was improper behavior.

I would not go so far as to say that my father was a dictator. He often

tried reasoning with me. One time after I had been reported fighting again,

he took me aside and said, “Men reason, animals fight.” Another time he

admonished me by saying that my behavior reflected poorly upon him as

the father, and, by extension, the family name and the clan. He never went

any further than that. He probably decided, if nothing else— even if I were

puzzled by what he had said—maybe I would start thinking about it. I

remember I used to have a flash temper and I would go around slamming

doors in the house. One day my father was home and he saw that I was

mad about something. After about four doors, he said, “Do you feel bet-

ter now?” And I said, “What ?” He said, “All that door slamming, what are

you mad about?” And he said, “After you’re done slamming all those doors,

do you feel any better ? Has your problem gone away ? Whatever you were

angry about, it’s still there, right ?” And I knew he was right.

M Y M O T H E R , N G S H E E

If Pop was the head of the household, Mom was the heart of the house. If

we had a scrapped knee or a skinned elbow, we would go to Mom, and she

would kiss it and make it well. If we had a problem that needed solving,

we would go to Pop, although he just basically handed out edicts. Mom

came from a fairly poor background, judging by the fact that she did not

have bound feet.3 As far as I know, Mom’s father was an itinerant herb dealer,

and her brother was physically handicapped, so she had to take care of him

all the time.4 She never talked about herself except in a very peripheral way.

For instance, when Bill and I would come in hot from play and we would

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 9

stick our heads under the faucet to drink cold water, Mom would be hor-

rified, because she had seen cholera in her village. Of course, we told her,

“Mom, this is America. Things like that don’t happen.” Every morning,

she boiled a pot of water, put it in the tea caddy, and that was the water

she drank. It was only when I saw the effects of cholera in the POW camps

that I realized why it had made such a deep impression on her. When the

girls started working and had a little money set aside, they asked my mom,

“Would you like to go back to China for a visit ?” She said, “Me go back

there, where there’s no running water and flush toilets? Absolutely not!”

So Mom didn’t have any romantic notions about what she had left. She

was perfectly content, even though we didn’t have much. One of the things

I remember she always said when people were having problems adjusting

to a new environment, she would always say jun sui, meaning “change of

water.” In other words, they had gone to an area where the water was dif-

ferent. I will never forget that, especially later in the camps, where every

drop of water that passed our lips had to be boiled.

My mother was a housewife and she worked as a seamstress at home. She

did very fine hand sewing of tailored suits, where she put in the linings in

the suit coat, the vest, and the pants. And she hand made the buttonholes

and sewed on the buttons. All she got was twenty-five cents a suit. It was con-

sidered a favor by the tailor to even give her that kind of work, because there

were lots of people who would have been glad to have the work. She also

made all our clothes —pants and shirts — on a Singer foot-treadle machine.

When she found out from the sewing ladies that there were such things as

hemmers and buttonhole attachments, she expressed one time that she wished

she could have these attachments. So Pop went down to the Singer sewing

machine display room and looked to see how these things were made. Then

he came back to his shop and with scrap pieces of tin and copper, he tried

to make what Mom wanted. Now these things were for electrical machines,

so he would make it, try it out on Mom’s machine, and if it didn’t work exactly

the way it was supposed to, he would take it back and modify it until he got

it just right. So Mom got all these attachments meant for electrical machines

for her foot-treadle machine, and that made her job a lot easier.

My dad never went to school, but he was self-educated. My mom, on

the other hand, was illiterate in both Chinese and English. I guess with all

1 0 · C H A P T E R O N E

those kids, she never had time to learn English, even if Pop were willing to

teach her. So when we started learning to speak English, Pop said, “Inside

the house you will speak Cantonese, because it would be disrespectful to

your mother. She would not understand a word you’re saying.” He also

told us that in the company of strangers we should not speak Chinese

because, regardless of what we were saying, they might take it the wrong

way. When Mom wanted to go shopping, like at the Emporium, she would

come to Commodore Stockton School and ask for me. The principal would

know why she was coming. I would take her wherever she wanted to go

and help her carry the packages. Then, of course, she always bargained.

My sisters would tell her, “If the Emporium says it’s nineteen cents a yard,

you can’t bargain.” She might buy ten yards and she would say, “Ask the

salesgirl if it would be cheaper.” So I said, “Mom, they won’t.” She said,

“Ask them anyway.” I loved my mom dearly, so I would always ask. And

the salesgirl would inevitably say, “No, it’s not our policy.” I would tell Mom.

Then she was happy that I had asked. She couldn’t make change, so she

would hold out the money in her hand. She was never cheated, as far as I

could see. We were never embarrassed by what my mom did because we

realized that there was something in her background that made bargain-

ing a part of her character. I remember her saying that in China she saw

meat for sure once a year, and that was at New Year’s, and maybe on her

birthday. None of us, even living as we did in Chinatown, could quite pic-

ture that, because we always had food on the table.

My fondest memory of my mom has nothing to do with her working

and slaving her fingers to the bone. My oldest brother’s wife and Mom both

had long hair, and we’re talking about as far down as to the waist if it’s hang-

ing free. I remember Ah So (Auntie) and Mom would sit sort of side by

side and they would groom each other’s hair. Then, of course, they would

braid it and wear it in a gai (bun). Mom had enough hair that she had to

have two buns. Back in those days, we didn’t even have shampoo. Mom

used Chinese soap to wash her hair and pow fah (paste made from wood

shavings) to dress it. Then I think it was around 1933 or ’34 when the girls

talked Mom into cutting off her hair. I know that for a lady it is a lot of

weight on her scalp, and the care of the bobbed hair is a lot easier, but I

sure missed that long hair.

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 1 1

My other fond memory of my mother would be her cooking. Mom was

a good cook. I don’t know where she got the training or how she learned

it, but whenever relatives from Stockton came to town, they would hand

Mom fifty dollars and all they wanted was for Mom to cook her special-

ties. And we all got to be participants in this feast—we were all going to

eat. Now, her specialties were always bird’s-nest or shark-fin soup—

depending on which one the relative wanted: fried squab; West Lake duck;

fried prawns; a dish of sea cucumber, abalone, and mushrooms; steamed

chicken; steamed fish; and a vegetable dish.

The chicken and squab had to be fresh. There used to be poultry stores

on Grant Avenue, right across the street from the old opera house. Mom

would feel the breast and pick the one she wanted. She never had the mar-

ket do the killing or cleaning— same thing with the squabs, even though

she might be buying as many as four or six, depending on the size. She didn’t

want me to see her kill the squab, so she would strangle it inside a bag. Then

we would defeather them, which was made easier by dipping them in hot

water first. The reason she retained the blood in the carcass was so that when

she deep-fried it, it would have that nice moist, dark color. With the chicken,

she would cut the throat and drain the blood. That was when I learned about

blood pudding. She would put the blood into a bowl and steam it. Blood

pudding wasn’t served at the banquet; it was just a question of not wast-

ing it. Then Mom would have me help her pluck the chicken, and she would

clean the insides and save the gizzards, the liver, and so on. If she had time,

she would even save the chicken intestines and clean them thoroughly on

the outside. Then she would take a chopstick and turn the intestines inside

out and clean the inside, and then do the outside again, do the inside again,

and make sure it was thoroughly clean. The intestines she would serve as

a side dish to the family on another day. I learned early on from my mother

that nothing should be wasted. So it was fairly natural for me, when I was

in the prison camps, not to waste anything either.

My mom hardly left home except to go shopping. Naturally, every chance

we had, we would try to get Mom out of the house and basically not be so

concerned about whether all the clothes had been washed and ironed. I

mean, the chores were endless when you consider there were six kids and

no modern conveniences. Aside from the Chinese opera, she loved the

1 2 · C H A P T E R O N E

movies, especially the comedies, so every once in a while, my sisters would

take her downtown to see movies like Alice in Wonderland or Tom Sawyer.

The girls said Mom couldn’t understand a word of English, but she knew

exactly when to laugh and when to cry. Once they found out that she could

enjoy a movie without understanding a word of English, they would take

her more often. But usually her movies were confined to Chinatown. There

were at least three theaters that showed Chinese movies during the day-

time because at night they were converted to opera houses. She went maybe

once or twice a month. I know it was only a nickel for me, and maybe ten

cents for an adult. I didn’t especially like the Chinese movies, but since Mom

enjoyed them, I didn’t mind going with her. But she definitely liked slap-

stick, and we never figured out how she picked that up.

G R O W I N G U P P O O R A T 8 4 2 W A S H I N G T O N

Our family was not dirt-poor. There were no luxuries, but we had the

basics —a roof over our heads, clean clothes — even if they were mended—

and nutritious food. For the first nine years of my life, we lived at 842 Wash-

ington Street, on the third floor. There were five families on that floor. We

had two rooms, for a total of nine people. All four girls slept in one room,

and the three boys had the front room, which served as the living room in

the daytime, the dining room at night, and our bedroom after dinner. There

was a hall closet in between, where Mom and Pop slept. And they cut off

an area no more than two feet by three feet for Mom’s three-burner gas

stove—that was her cooking space. There were two toilets and one com-

munity kitchen on our floor, and all the water came from that kitchen. Every

Saturday night, we would bring water in by the buckets and use every con-

tainer we had to boil water, and everyone would take turns taking a bath

in the number-two washtub. It was a continuous water-bucket parade!

Everyone in Chinatown lived like this. There were people in the building

who lived in more restricted circumstances than us —four or five people

in one room. Yet they managed as we all did.

I remember hand-me-downs in the sense that we didn’t always have new

clothes and new shoes. There was one pair of shoes that I just hated. I don’t

even remember where they came from. They had no shoelaces and required

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 1 3

a buttonhook to connect the mating hooks together. I could have sworn

the shoes were made out of iron, because they never showed any signs of

wear. Thank goodness I finally outgrew them! Even when we bought new

shoes, we always bought them much larger so that we could grow into them.

The one thing that I resented about hand-me-downs was sometimes I had

to wear my sister’s undies. Hand-me-downs, that’s exactly what it means —

handed down. When the girls had outgrown them, they were passed down.

And if it just happened you were a boy—that was tough!

With my father’s earnings as a watchmaker, we always managed. I don’t

remember ever eating breakfast until we started junior high school, but for

lunch we had a piece of pastry or bread with milk. Our main meal together

was supper, and that was when Mom would cook rice, soup, some veg-

etables, and a little meat. She would send me down to the Chinese grocery

store to buy two and a half cents’ worth of beef, two and a half cents’ worth

of pork, and that would be the meat ration for the day. Then, of course,

1 4 · C H A P T E R O N E

F I G . 2 . Storefronts below 842 Washington Street, where Eddie lived in the 1920s. The

waiter is delivering a tray of restaurant food that he balances on his head. Courtesy

Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

the vegetables —two bunches of gai choy (mustard greens) for a nickel, three

bunches of bok choy for a nickel. In our time, you could chaan (ask for

free) some chong (green onions), mien seen jeong (bean paste), or some liver.

Any of the animal organs were free. Butcher town was down on Evans Street,

and every Friday a big truck would come to Waverly and Washington with

all these organs —tripe, hearts, stomachs, livers, kidneys, and so on, from

all kinds of animals —and we could take anything we wanted. Any other

time we wanted liver, we would go to any Chinese grocery store, prefer-

ably one that relatives ran or had shares in, and we would ask for a piece

of liver for our cat. Everyone knew that the Fungs didn’t have a cat, but

they knew that we had six kids, so they would give us a commensurate-size

piece of liver. That was so that we didn’t lose face. We were going to help

each other out, period. Otherwise, nobody was going to survive.

The only time we ever splurged was at Chinese New Year’s. Mom would

make the traditional vegetarian dish, jai, and we would have chicken for a

change. She would also take out the beautiful, ornate wooden case with the

compartments for the various sweetmeats. We could look, but “no touch,”

and definitely “no take.” We knew it was for display and to impress the

guests. Even the guests never really took things from the trays. If someone

were visiting with kids, the parents would make sure that they didn’t try

to empty out the compartments. Later on, we would get a treat, and my

favorite was the sugared coconut peelings. Of course, we always looked for-

ward to getting li see (lucky money in a red envelope) from the adults. This

was how we worked it: We had six kids in our family, and the Wong fam-

ily on our floor had two girls. Now, suppose Mrs. Wong gave six of us a

quarter each—that would be a dollar and a half. So Mom would keep track,

and what happened was that Mom would make sure that the Wong fam-

ily got back a buck and a half. The Wongs couldn’t afford to give us a buck

and a half, and we couldn’t afford to give them six bits for each girl. But

on the other hand, if we kind of kept track, we could each follow the tra-

dition of giving kids li see, and there would be no net loss. We never kept

the money from the li see, but every once in a while, Mom would say we

could keep a nickel. The money was usually kept in circulation.

Everyone was expected to help out as much as they could. Mom sewed

at home, and I remember the girls started out picking shrimp at a factory

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 1 5

on Clay Street. But after they got lice in their hair, Mom said, “No, no, we’re

going to do this at home.” They basically worked in the living room of our

small apartment. But after a year of that, my father put a stop to it, saying

that it was more important for the girls to keep up with their schoolwork.

I remember one other job we all took a hand in was wrapping Chinese char-

acters that were printed on sheets of paper for the Chinatown lottery. We

would all sit around the dinner table and bundle up sets of Chinese char-

acters and put them in boxes. It was a lot of work for a penny a box. Later,

the girls took on babysitting jobs outside Chinatown to bring in extra

income.

If you didn’t help out earning spare change, you could always help out

at home— cleaning house, getting water from the common kitchen, cook-

ing, and so on. But everyone was expected to help in some way, and as we

got older, we had more responsibilities. So I never had what was called a

“childhood.” I started helping around the house when I was five or six years

old, and I started working as a shoeshine boy when I was eight. It was a

nickel for a shine. I would go over to Portsmouth Square with my shoe box

filled with shoe polishes and brushes and ask people if they wanted a shine.

Another place I would go to was the bail bond office on Merchant and

Kearny, where the policemen sometimes hung out. By and by, I developed

a steady clientele, and certain people would wait for me to come by to give

them a shoeshine.

Then, when I was about nine years old, I started delivering newspapers.

Tommy Yip, who lived across the hall from us, had a paper route with about

100 papers or subscribers. He offered me ten dollars a month to deliver half

of the papers. Tommy was responsible for delivering the other half, and

also for collecting from each subscriber. Later, I found out that each sub-

scriber paid seventy-five cents a month for their subscription. So, for 100

papers, that would be seventy-five dollars. From that seventy-five dollars,

Tommy paid San Francisco News fifty dollars, so he got twenty-five dollars.

Well, he paid me ten dollars, so he was still ahead by fifteen dollars. But

then, he could lose money if a subscriber defaulted, and ten dollars seemed

like pretty good money to me. The first month I got my ten dollars, I walked

up to Mom and I handed her the ten dollars, and I told her how I had earned

it. She said, “No, Man (my Chinese name), I keep half and you keep half.”

1 6 · C H A P T E R O N E

That’s the way it was — she would never take all my money. When I got my

own paper route and was making a little more money, she still only took half.

T H I N G S G E T B E T T E R A T 1 3 0 T R E N T O N

Somehow Pop saved enough money to buy a two-story house at 130 Tren-

ton Street in Chinatown, and we were able to move there in 1931. Com-

pared to 842 Washington, it was luxurious. We had four bedrooms — one

for Mom and Pop, one for the girls, one for Al and his family, and one for

Bill and me. There was a living room, a kitchen with hot running water,

and a bathroom with a bathtub and toilet. The house also came with a back

yard that Pop made into a garden. He loved to garden, and I remember

he had a camellia bush that was the envy of Chinatown. We had a light

well and windows in the front rooms, so the place was well lighted and

ventilated.

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 1 7

F I G . 3 . Two boys —possibly

Eddie and his brother Bill—

shine shoes in Portsmouth

Square, 1930s.

I remember my sister Grace telling me years later that as soon as she got

her first full-time job, she decided, “I’m going to get Mom a treat.” She

went to Montgomery Ward and she picked out a range and a refrigerator.

She told the store to deliver it to 130 Trenton and set it up. She came home

that night from work, looked around—no range, no refrigerator. She asked,

“Mom, didn’t someone deliver anything today?” She said, “Oh, some crazy

lo faan (foreigner) tried to bring a stove and an icebox in here. I told him

I didn’t order anything and shooed him away.” She said, “But Mom, that

was for you, I got them for you.” She looked at Grace and said, “I don’t

need a range; I don’t need an icebox— don’t spend your money that way.”

Finally, Pop went down to the used furniture store on Pacific and Stock-

ton and picked up a range for ten dollars, and, of course, like any sensible

Chinese woman of her time, Mom used the oven for storing pots and pans.

As for the range, Mom said, “I don’t need a range; gas burner is fine.” Pop

said, “No, now you have four burners.” So, okay, she won’t fight it, and

she went ahead and started using it.

After my sisters started working and making more money, they asked

her, “Don’t you want a washing machine ?” She said, “I don’t need that.”

We’re talking about hand scrubbing the sheets and cleaning all our com-

forters every once in a while. She would have to unbaste the linen and the

cover, and she would wash all those and air out the batting, and all this by

hand. Mom was one of these people who can always manage, even if a catas-

trophe were to hit. I mean, as far as she was concerned, she had hot water

that came out of a tap, she didn’t have to boil it on the stove—that was

good enough for her. Mom taught us to work under any condition. Most

people would call it primitive, but I think to her, it was just basic survival.

I never heard her complain, although she had plenty of reasons to. She just

took the attitude, “What good is it going to do to complain? The condi-

tions aren’t going to get better because you complain.”

It was strange that I got to be so close to my mom, because it’s usually

the girls who get close to their moms. What was it Oscar Wilde said? “All

women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s

his.” You know, he’s right! The first time I realized I could help Mom out

was after we had moved to Trenton Street. She was washing sheets and

clothes for at least eight people in a number–two washtub. She now had a

1 8 · C H A P T E R O N E

hot water tank, but she still had to heat up the water, because the hot water

heater couldn’t keep up with her. After she rinsed out the wash, I would

help her turn the crank on the mangle while she fed the sheets or clothes

through. Then I would help her hang the wash on the line to dry out over

the backyard. She would be in front, and I would hand her the sheet so that

she could clip a clothespin on it before feeding the line out. When it was

dried, I would help her fold it up. Then I also found out that when she was

preparing the evening meal, I could help her wash the vegetables, cut them

up, and so on. That was my way of being close to my mom without being

in her way. Of course, the girls were busy with schoolwork and trying to

maintain good grades, so it felt almost natural that helping Mom would

fall on me. She never complained, she never asked me, but, on the other

hand, whenever we worked together, we coordinated pretty well.

There was only one time Mom got peeved at me. She was making rice

wine, and, of course, any Chinese knows that rice wine is not wine—it’s

distilled whisky used for cooking. So Mom got everything started, and we

were in the distillation process. She had all these empty bottles waiting, and

it was drip, drip, drip. She told me, “I want you to watch these, and when

a bottle gets full, I want you to slip in an empty bottle.” It was going so

slowly that I went out to play. I didn’t realize I was out that long. When I

came back, there was wine on the floor. I had never seen my mother so

mad— she was ready to kill me! But she finally simmered down, and she

said, “I want you to sit right here and watch. No going outside.” She never

struck me, but I knew she was peeved at me, and I knew she had cause to

be peeved. So from then on, whenever she made rice wine, Mom would

make absolutely sure I had a chair so that I could sit right there and watch

every drip, drip, drip.

Things got better after we moved to Trenton Street, but our parents con-

tinued to stress the importance of being frugal and self-reliant to us. There

were never leftovers as such. The only thing that we needed the cupboard

for was Pop’s marmalade, the unused butter, and a can of evaporated milk,

usually with a piece of wax paper stuck into the opening. That was all we

needed; everything else was in daily use. Once in a while, we got canned

goods like corned beef from a family that was on welfare—this was dur-

ing the Depression. I remember asking my father, “Why don’t we just go

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 1 9

ahead and apply for welfare and get it ourselves?” He said, “No, these people

are giving these things away because they don’t want to waste it. We’ll take

it, but we’re not going to ask for anything as long as we can get by.” To this

day, I call it haan (being frugal), and other people may call it something

else. There are people who have thrown away canned meat or boxes of cereal.

And when I see anything thrown away, I’ll pick it up because I can’t stand

wasting food. I would literally throw away a five-dollar bill before I would

throw away food, because food is food in hand; the five-dollar bill only rep-

resents the purchasing power to buy food.

I wasn’t designated to be the scrounger for the family; it just came about

naturally. The produce section used to be on Davis Street—a five-block

spread between Jackson and California streets — before they moved to South

San Francisco. When we needed vegetables, I would go down to the pro-

duce section, because I knew it from my paper route. I would scrounge car-

rots, potatoes, tomatoes, and whatever was available and bring them home

to supplement our vegetable diet. On Clay Street, right below Kearny Street,

was the poultry and fish wholesale area. The poultry market would put

chicken feet, duck feet, and turkey feet in separate fifty-gallon drums, and

anyone could come by and grab a sackful. Turkey feet were the primary

pick because they had eatable tendons; then duck feet next. The fish mar-

kets would filet the fish, and fish being one of the cheapest meats you could

buy at the time, they didn’t worry about taking every bit of meat off. I would

bring home fish heads and fish tails, and Mom would make a stew or use

them to make a fish stock to go with the vegetables. The first time I brought

vegetables home, Mom said, “Where did you get these ?” I said, “From the

produce section.” And she said, “How much did it cost you?” I said, “Noth-

ing, it’s free. Anytime you want vegetables, I can get it for you.” I added,

“Different kinds, too.” She said, “I understand.” She didn’t say, “You have

to do it.” She just appreciated the fact that I did it; the same thing with the

fish heads, the turkey feet, and so on.

We never bought fresh bread or fresh pastries. On a weekly basis, my

mother would hand me a quarter and I was supposed to run down to Eighth

and Howard, where the day-old Langendorf Bakery was, and buy the weekly

supply of bread and breakfast rolls. I had acquired a pair of roller skates,

so without my mother’s knowledge, I would use the roller skates to skate

2 0 · C H A P T E R O N E

down to Eighth and Howard. It was a pretty fast trip if I didn’t fool around,

except that I usually did. Crystal Palace used to be at Eighth and Market.

It was at least half a square block, and it was all enclosed. They had different

vendors selling cheese, smoked meats, bacon, hams, and staples —anything

that you wanted to buy in the way of food. There were, of course, people

like the snake oil salesman, who would put on a show to attract customers

to their stands. And there were always free samples of squares of cheeses

and salami, boloney, or whatever they were trying to push. So once I got

to Eighth and Market, I would take off my skates and casually walk through

Crystal Palace, taking in the food displays and spectacular demonstrations.

Then I would put on my skates again and go to Eighth and Howard to do

my shopping and come back. The bread was used to make sandwiches and

the rolls for breakfast. Every afternoon at 4:00 Mom and Pop had toast and

coffee. That was their daily ritual, when they both sat down for half an hour

and relaxed.

We didn’t start celebrating birthdays until we got more settled on Tren-

ton Street, and, of course, with six kids, there was always someone’s birth-

day or another. Mom had one rule—we could pick pork chops or

hamburger, and there was always a cake from Victoria Pastry. If we wanted

hamburger, she would go down to Duck Hing, which was on the corner

of Washington and Wentworth. The butcher would say, “How many

pounds do you want, Mrs. Fung?” And she would say, “X number of

pounds.” He would cut up a big chunk of chuck and show it to her. Then

he would go and grind it. She didn’t want hamburger that was already

ground; she wanted to know exactly what went into that hamburger.

Strangely enough, we would usually all pick hamburger. She would cook

it and serve the patty on a sourdough bun—a regular American hamburger,

but no French fries. I’m not sure where Mom picked it up, but she decided,

“Okay, now that we can afford it, we’re going to do it.”

F A M I L Y R E L A T I O N S

The birth order in our family was Mary, Jessie, Mints, Grace, me, and Bill.

Regardless of the birth order, there’s always someone who takes more

responsibility than the other siblings, and in my family that was Jessie. She

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 2 1

was always the one who looked after us outside the house. She was bossy,

but not to the point where it would bother me. There was no question

that if she wanted you to do something, she would make sure you knew.

When she and Mary were going to UC Berkeley, and on their way home

one afternoon they encountered a masher, Jess took off her shoe and just

beat him over the head. That’s the kind of person Jess is. I mean, if you

don’t bother her, she’s a perfectly cordial person, but if you bug her, you

better stand aside because she’s going to do something about it. I never

could figure out why my father felt that I had to be the chaperone when

Jess was perfectly capable of handling any situation. But then again, my

father was old-fashioned. He believed that it was the responsibility of the

2 2 · C H A P T E R O N E

F I G . 4 . The interior of the Crystal Palace Market at Market and Eighth streets, 1935.

Courtesy San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

men in the family to protect the women. “I don’t care if you blush, I don’t

care if you’re standing one foot to the other,” he said to me. “You’re a man

in the family, and you’re to fulfill your obligations.” And that was that!

When I was at the playground and people asked me who Grace was, I

would say, “That’s my dei (older sister). I always liked that about the Chi-

nese family system. There was no question about whether your sister was

older or younger, or whether an uncle was on the maternal side or the

paternal side, and so on. I loved it because it was so orderly and you knew

exactly where you stood in the family. When we were growing up, I didn’t

just say, “Hey, you, kid,” to my brother Bill. I always addressed him as

“sai lo (younger brother),” and he would call me “gor (older brother).” It

was perfectly natural, and each member of the family would look out for

the others in the family. All my sisters would have the responsibility of

looking after me, and I would have to pay attention and answer to their

authority. And I was supposed to take care of my younger brother. If I

said anything to him, he was supposed to respond to my authority. But

Bill, being much taller than I, always resented the fact that I was big brother

and he was little brother. That was enough for us to get into a fight every

day. Then, of course, Pop would hear about it. We always thought he was

omnipotent. Here he was stuck in his watch repair shop, but he knew

exactly what we had been up to because Chinatown was such a close-knit

community.

In a way, I hated the fact that the boundaries of Chinatown were limited

by Sacramento Street on the south, Pacific Avenue on the north, Kearny

Street on the east, and Powell Street on the west. It was basically twelve square

blocks. I didn’t know the word “ghetto” then, but I knew that we were

confined to living within these boundaries. On the other hand, the thing I

loved about Chinatown was the fact that we were a very close-knit com-

munity. Everyone looked out for all the kids to make sure that they didn’t

get into trouble and that no one tried to molest them. And if any of us got

into a fight, it would be reported to our parents. Just like this business about

“It takes a village to raise a child,” it was literally true in Chinatown. In our

time, Chinatown was comprised largely of bachelors, because men couldn’t

bring their wives over for one reason or another, so all children were loved

and appreciated. We knew that everyone cared.

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 2 3

G O I N G T O S C H O O L

It was a big deal for me when I started preschool at five years old. It was

held in the backyard of the Gum Moon school for girls on Washington

Street— only a block away from home. I was only there from 9:00 to 12:00

in the morning. But I remember it was a big adventure, because when my

mother took me to school in the morning, we had to cross Stockton Street.

Then when I started first grade at Commodore Stockton Elementary

School, I remember some of the kids who were homesick started crying

almost immediately. But I loved school because of the novelty of being in

a new situation. We were exposed to so much that we didn’t know about—

the multiplication tables, English grammar, classical music, geography, and

so on. We used to read the Kiplinger newsletter, which showed us statis-

tics on what a lawyer, doctor, engineer, or teacher earned—I guess to start

us thinking about career choices. The teachers also exposed us to current

events and economics —it was all new to me.

The only time I was ever absent from school was when my mother needed

me to go downtown to interpret for her. Well, there was one other time I

missed school. I remember it was a nice day, and I decided I was just going

2 4 · C H A P T E R O N E

F I G . 5 . From left to

right: Eddie with his

nephew Raymond,

sister Grace, and

brother Bill, 1930.

to take a walk and enjoy the day. The next day, the principal, Miss Crow,

called me into her office. She said, “Eddie, do you have a written excuse

from your parents?” I said, “For what ?” She said, “You were a truant yes-

terday.” I said, “What’s a truant ?” And she said, “You know, playing

hooky.” I said, “I didn’t think I was playing hooky. It was such a nice day,

I just wanted to enjoy it.” She said, “Okay, I’m going to let it go this time,

but until you graduate from Commodore Stockton, you’re supposed to

attend school every day no matter how nice the day is.” So I never did that

again, because all she had to do was threaten to notify my parents, and that

was enough to put the fear of God in me.

One other time, when I was in the third grade, Miss Crow asked the

school nurse to measure our height and weight. The nurse was completely

befuddled because we all refused. She didn’t know what to make of it, so

she consulted the only Chinese teacher at that time—Miss (Alice) Fong.

She told her, “I’m coming across a disciplinary problem that I’ve never had

before. All I asked them to do was to come up to the nurse’s office to have

their height and weight recorded. The kids all refused and they said,

‘Tomorrow, we’ll do it tomorrow.’ ” So Miss Fong told the nurse, “If you

had come to me with the assignment, I would have told you not to do it

today but notify the class that you’re going to do it tomorrow.” The nurse

asked, “What’s the problem?” And she replied, “The problem is that they

want to be sure that they come to class with socks that don’t have holes in

them, or at least mended. That’s why they’re not willing to do it today,

because some of the kids may have holey socks.” The nurse thought that

was real funny because she didn’t care and she couldn’t understand why

we cared. We were only nine, ten years old, but we were already conscious

of the fact that we had a standard to uphold. Sure enough, the next morn-

ing, the class marched right up to the nurse’s office, took their shoes off,

and had their height and weight recorded. I guess the teachers were learn-

ing about us at the same time we were learning from them.

I loved going to American school, but Chinese school was another mat-

ter. It went from 5:00 to 8:00 Monday to Friday, and from 9:00 to 12.00 on

Saturday morning. I was probably seven when I started at Nam Kue, which

was supposed to be the best Chinese school. Unfortunately, I was not a good

student because I just had no interest in what they were trying to teach me—

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 2 5

things like Chinese calligraphy, literature, and history. By then, I had dis-

covered a wider world outside of Chinatown, and that was what I was

interested in. I flunked out of three Chinese schools before I finally per-

suaded my father to let me drop Chinese school altogether. When I real-

ized it was costing him a buck and a quarter for each child he sent to Chinese

school, I told him, “You’re just wasting your money. I’m not getting any-

thing out of it.” So he decided, “Okay, we’ll let you drop out before they

throw you out again.”

You might say that our generation had split personalities. When we were

inside the house, we were completely Chinese. When we were outside the

house, we could be either all Chinese or all American or half and half. When

we were in American school, one standard applied, whereas another stan-

dard applied when we were in Chinese school. If I were out at a formal

dinner, I would naturally spoon my soup outwardly and I would not slurp.

If I were home, it would not matter how I dipped my spoon, but I would

know to pick food from the part of the communal dish nearest me. In that

sense, we always behaved according to where we were. But gradually I

became more comfortable speaking English than Chinese. That is why my

Chinese is frozen more or less as if I were an eleven-, twelve-year-old Chi-

nese kid, and why I am not proficient in Chinese even though I grew up

in Chinatown.

R E C R E A T I O N A L A C T I V I T I E S

Growing up as we did, recreation was something that required ingenuity.

In other words, everything we did, we did with anything. If we needed some-

thing like a shuttlecock, we made it—we didn’t buy it, or we used a bean-

bag instead of a shuttlecock. Basically, aside from playing jacks, hopscotch,

and double jump rope with my sisters, we boys played “kick the shuttlecock”

and flew kites. When I was nine, I joined the Boy Scouts at the Chinatown

YMCA. I remember distinctly one of the group leaders was Chester Lee, and

he helped us through tenderfoot class, where we were taught how to tie knots,

how to camp and start a fire without matches, and basic things like that. I

remember that they tried to get us to buy uniforms, but we didn’t have the

money. They said it was possible to buy just one piece of the uniform to

2 6 · C H A P T E R O N E

2 7

F I G . 6 . The Nam Kue Chinese School at 765 Sacramento Street.

Courtesy California Historical Society, FN-23698.

F I G . 7 . Eddie (center right) trying to light a firecracker in Chinatown

during the New Year celebration, 1935. Courtesy San Francisco History

Center, San Francisco Public Library.

indicate that you were a member. So we decided on the kerchief, since it was

fairly reasonable in price. But I only stayed about a year because I didn’t par-

ticularly care for the group activities. The other thing was that you had to

pass a swimming test. I tried, but I was so lean and had so little body fat that

I literally did not float. Now, they say that’s impossible—you fill your lungs

with air and you’re supposed to float. But for some reason, I swam like a

rock.

I remember spending a lot of time at the public library in Chinatown,

and that was how I accidentally found J. W. Schultz. He wrote about the

Plains Indians, particularly the Blackfeet, who were enemies of the Crows.

No one told me about his books, but I read everything he wrote and just

got more and more interested in the Plains Indians and how they lived off

the land: “You’re not a farmer, you’re a hunter, and maybe a gatherer.” It

seemed like such a natural way of life: “You’re not trying to conquer nature,

you’re part of nature.” Indians didn’t feel that they owned the land; rather,

they were stewards of the land. They respected what Mother Nature had

provided for them, so they only killed animals for their own survival and

subsistence, not for profit. However, I didn’t care for the part when they

went on raiding parties against the Crows. I never thought of Indian life

in those terms. I just thought it seemed like such a neat way to live.

I especially enjoyed Seizer of Eagles, a story about how this Indian boy

hid himself in a hideout near the eagle’s nest and waited for the chance to

get his hands on some eagle feathers that he needed for a war bonnet. When

the eagle landed, he reached up and grabbed both the legs, and held the

bird until the eagle got tired of beating its wings or pecking at his hands to

get free. Then he was able to take the feathers. Stories like this attracted me

to the Indian way of life. A bow and arrow was just a natural implement

to help them survive. And the way they utilized every bit of the buffalo for

making teepees or clothing or moccasins, and boiling the hooves for

glue—to me, it was just a natural way to live. Of course, I probably would

not have lasted a week with the hardships that they had to endure every

day. But on paper it sounded very romantic.

I remember one time we had a school project to design an Indian head.

I don’t know where I developed this tendency to go right to the source,

but I decided the way to go about it was to ask an artist directly. So my

2 8 · C H A P T E R O N E

classmate Ronald Ong and I marched over to Maynard Dixon’s studio on

Montgomery Street, and I said to him, “Mr. Dixon, we have a school project

to try and design an Indian head for a trademark. Can you help us out ?”

Maynard Dixon was a well-known painter of Western art, and he had just

returned from a painting trip to Boulder Dam. He started pulling out arti-

facts from his loft to show us —like Indian headdresses, blankets, peace

pipes, and moccasins. He said he had done a lot of paintings of Indians,

and he proceeded to show us some of the things that he had done. Then

he made us a sketch. Here I had been exposed to the writings of J. W. Schultz,

who wrote about the Blackfeet Indians, and now I was lucky enough to find

an artist who not only specialized in painting Indians, but he had been up

in Montana living and painting among the Blackfeet Indians! That evening

I ran home and told my mom, “There’s someone who’s willing to teach me

how to paint.” Mom said, “No, no, no, you can’t make a living doing that.”

Of course, she was right. In our time, we had to be very practical.

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 2 9

F I G . 8 . The Chinatown public library at 1135 Powell Street. Courtesy San Francisco

History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

One of the customers on my paper route was a friend of C. S. Howard,

who owned the famous racehorse Seabiscuit. Noticing my size—I was about

four feet eight and eighty pounds soaking wet at the time—he asked me,

“Do you like horses, Eddie?” I said, “Yes, but I’ve never been around them.”

And he said, “My friend C. S. Howard is looking for an exercise boy.” I

said, “What’s an exercise boy ?” He said, “Well, he’s the person who takes

the horses out in the morning and exercises them.” So I went home and

told my mother, “I can be a jockey !” And she said, “I don’t want you hang-

ing around with those gangsters.” To this day, I still wonder how in the world

did she know horse racing was an unsavory trade when she lived and died

in Chinatown, she didn’t read English, and she didn’t socialize with a lot

of people ? But my tendency has always been to do what I’m told not to do.

So when Mom said I couldn’t be a jockey, I decided to find out what it was

all about. I went out to the polo fields and began walking the horses between

chukkers. For that, I got two bits per horse.

A T A S T E O F L I F E O U T S I D E C H I N A T O W N

The school nurse was always concerned about the fact that some of us were

underweight, so every summer they would send a group of us —about forty

Chinese kids —to Hills Farm in Marin County to try and fatten us up. The

farm was run by the school district, and there was no cost to our families.

It was my first exposure to an American diet. We had things like prunes

and cornflakes for breakfast, sandwiches and fruit for lunch, and spaghetti

or macaroni and cheese for dinner. On Sundays we would have something

special, like pot roast. I remember distinctly the first time we had beets. I

thought it looked pretty bloody, but when I tasted it, it was sweet. I thought,

“Holy smoke, this is entirely different from Chinese vegetables!” We ate

three American meals a day, so that I gained four or five pounds by the end

of summer. But within a month after I started school again, I would go

back to my normal weight, which was underweight by the school nurse’s

standards. So every summer for the next three years, they would schedule

me to go to Hills Farm, and that was basically where I spent my summer

vacations.

At Hills Farm, we had to take showers and recite the Lord’s Prayer before

3 0 · C H A P T E R O N E

we went to bed each night. There were planned group activities, but I was

allowed to roam around on my own as long as I made it back in time for

the meals. That was when I discovered things like lizards and dragonflies,

and when I got interested in archery. I would cut a piece of rattan and string

it, use reeds for the arrow, and put acorns on the tip of the arrow for the

arrowhead. They had a dairy farm, and I would go out early in the morn-

ing to watch them milk the cows. That was my first encounter with rural

life and the outdoors, and I was fascinated by it, mostly because I was a city

kid who had always lived in very crowded quarters.

Later, Bill and I began spending our summers in Stockton, where Pop

had a financial interest in a potato farm. We would stay there for a month

or two, and that exposed me to farming life. Of course, Stockton was god-

awful hot, and during the Depression years, you couldn’t make money in

potatoes, but it was all a matter of timing. The farm employed thirty Chi-

nese and Filipino men, who mainly worked out in the fields, plowing with

horses. We got to feed the horses, drive the horse-drawn wagon, play around

with a Caterpillar tractor, and learn to trap fish with a basket. We had chores

to do, like gathering firewood, getting the eggs from the chicken coops, tend-

ing the vegetable patches, and helping the cook prepare meals, but it wasn’t

hard work. Most of the time we went fishing and just ran around the farm.

The cook grew long beans, tomatoes, and bok choy to feed the farmhands,

and that was when I found out how sweet fresh vegetables could taste. It

was also my first time using an outdoor privy, and I learned how human

waste could be used for fertilizer.

At least once or twice during the summer, we would go into town with

the workers after they were paid. Most of them would give us a nickel or

dime to buy candy or go see a movie. While they went to the brothel or

gambling house, Bill and I would cool off at the movie house. Most of the

Filipino workers would dress up and spend their money freely in town, but

there was one Filipino who never went to town and never gambled. I noticed

that in his spare time in the evenings, he would make fishnets. He told me

that he was hoping to go back to the Philippines and start a small fishing

business. I always wondered what happened to him. Did he make it back to

the Philippines and realize his dream? I couldn’t help but admire the man.

Here he was working at slave wages during the Depression, but instead

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 3 1

of blowing his earnings in town like the others, he was saving to build a

future.

There were other occasions when I got a taste of life outside Chinatown.

One time we drove to San Jose to visit the Duk family. It was a weekend

adventure because it took us half a day to get there on the two-lane road.

Mrs. Duk had fig trees, and we were there at the right time of the year when

the figs were ripe. Of course, we overdid it and had to run to the john fre-

quently. A bunch of the ladies, including my mother, had a balut party. I

was horrified when I saw these half-hatched eggs, and I thought, “Holy

smoke, they’re going to eat the things, feathers and all !” I found out later

that they were supposed to be a delicacy.5 That was the first time I had ever

seen anyone with a house, a front yard, and a backyard. I thought, “Okay,

people don’t have to live in Chinatown in cold-water flats and conditions

like that.” That was also the first time I had ever met someone who looked

Chinese but was, as I heard the ladies saying very softly, boon tong faan. I

didn’t know what that meant, so I asked my mother after we got home.

She basically said, “He has a white father and a Chinese mother.” And she

told me that sometimes they look more Chinese and sometimes they look

half and half, but very seldom do they look white. That was my first expe-

rience, besides Hills Farm and Stockton, going outside San Francisco. Those

were the kinds of experiences that got me thinking, “There’s got to be

another world outside Chinatown!”

A H O U S E B O Y I N A N T I O C H

I was determined to get out of Chinatown. The first time I ran away from

home, I was thirteen. I got a job as a houseboy in Antioch with Dr. and

Mrs. Nevius. Mrs. Nevius had a sister who worked at the Emporium, and

she had put an ad in the paper for a houseboy. When I saw the ad, it said,

“Five dollars a week and found.” Well, the only definition I knew for “found”

was the past tense of “find.” So I went to the public library and there was

this big unabridged dictionary on the stand, and I was looking for the word

“found.” The librarian saw I was puzzled and asked if she could help me.

I said, “Well, I’ve got this word, ‘found,’ and I’m trying to find out what it

means.” I showed her the ad. She said, “Oh, I understand. That means you

3 2 · C H A P T E R O N E

get room and board.” She said the reason they used that word was because

“room and board” involved three words, and they were paying by the word

for the ad. Anyhow, that was how I found the job.

Mrs. Nevius had to teach me how to be a houseboy. Like the first morn-

ing, when she was cooking breakfast, she fried some bacon. So, naturally,

I expected her to fry the eggs in the bacon grease, because that was what

we always did at home. What happened instead was that she took the bacon

out and put it on a piece of paper towel to drain. Then she set out another

pan, put in a pat of butter, and fried the eggs in that. And I was thinking,

“Holy smoke, these Americans are strange people!” When it came to wash-

ing dishes —here I was used to bowls and chopsticks, and that was it. We

wound up with a bowl of soapy water, and she told me, “First we wash the

glasses, because they’re the least dirty. Then you go from the least dirty to

the dirtiest—pots and pans.” All this was new to me. Like vacuuming—

that was strange too. But she was very patient, and she eventually got me

to do what she wanted me to do.

This was during the summer, when I got the job, and my brother found

me within one day. I asked Al years later how he found me so quickly. He

said, “It was very simple. I just went down to the bus station and asked if

they had seen a Chinese kid, four and a half feet tall, going anywhere.” He

said he hit it on the first try because there were only two bus stations —

Trailway on Fourth Street and Greyhound on Seventh Street. He went to

Fourth Street first, and, sure enough, they said, “Yes, a little Chinese kid

got on the bus to go to Antioch.” After he found me, he called my dad. Pop

said, “Okay, let him finish the job this summer, but he’s to come back and

finish school in the fall.” When I got home, he said, “Aren’t you happy at

home ?” I said, “Yes.” Then he said, “Then why did you run away ?” I said,

“Well, you’ve always taught us to be independent and self-reliant.” And he

said, “There’s a time and place for that. Not now ! I want you to finish high

school first.”

L I V I N G I N G R A S S V A L L E Y

In the fall I went back to Francisco Junior High School. I didn’t really need

the money from the houseboy job because I was making better money with

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 3 3

the paper route, but I had wanted to strike out on my own. As it turned

out, I didn’t finish junior high because my father retired from the watch

repair business, turned it over to my brother Al, and became a partner in

a butcher shop in Grass Valley. One reason he got into the butcher busi-

ness was because my brother Pee Wee was a meat cutter on a passenger

liner. He wanted to see if he could entice Pee Wee to be a land lover instead

of a sailor. My father asked if I wanted to go along, saying how nice it would

be to see snow in Grass Valley. He wasn’t foolish enough to try and get me

up there to work. He knew the change was what I wanted. So I went up

there and started working in the meat market while I went to school.

The butcher shop was in the Hills Flat area, in a market that was owned

by a Chinese family with the surname Yee. We just owned and operated

the butcher shop. There were four meat cutters, my dad, and me— six people

altogether. Basically, the shop was open from 8:00 in the morning to 10:00

at night. I remember the last thing we did at night was to put everything

back into the walk-in icebox, so that the first thing we did in the morning

was to put everything back out in the display case. It was kind of like a jew-

elry store, where the jeweler would put all the jewelry in a safe at night, and

in the morning, he would put them back out. During the school day, I would

get up early in the morning and start the display case. That would basically

be the lunchmeats, hot dogs, bacon, and the hams —things that didn’t

require a lot of finesse— because the butchers preferred to put out the chops

and the steaks themselves. Then I would head for school at around 7:30,

stay there until 3:00 and sometimes 4:00, then come back to work at the

meat counter until closing time. On weekends, I would put in full days.

I basically did all the grunt work, like slicing the lunch meat, keeping

the meat trays full, grinding the hamburger, making sausage, and washing

the windows on the display case inside and out. When the meat cutters were

through with their jobs at the end of the day, they would take off. It was

my job to stay behind and scrape off the butcher blocks, clean up the meat

grinders and all the hand tools, put the knives away, and make sure that

things in the walk-in icebox were neatly arranged. I was fourteen when I

learned to be a meat cutter—that’s really the only trade I know. The first

thing I learned to do was how to bone—take the meat off the bone. That

was how I learned to handle a knife, because I couldn’t do any harm get-

3 4 · C H A P T E R O N E

ting pieces of meat off the bone. We used to get calves with the skin on and

Pop would always take care of the skinning. I would watch him and he would

show me what he was doing and why he was doing it that way. I learned

that it was important not to cut the skin; otherwise, it would lose its value

after it was cured. There was a knife for everything in the butcher shop—

boning knife, skinning knife, steak knife, all kinds —and I learned how to

use each one of them.

I was also given the responsibility of tallying the receipts at the end of

the day. We had a lot of charge accounts, because most of our customers

worked in the gold mines and they would get paid either by the week or

the month. Every Friday night I would take all the checks and the monies

and make up the deposit slips. This was even before I had had a business

class in high school, and Pop would just show me what to do. He would

check me out the first few times to make sure I had done everything right

and that I had totaled everything up correctly. Then I would put every-

thing in a tin cottage-cheese can and walk it over to the bank on Saturday

morning. Here I was, no more than five feet tall and eighty-five pounds,

walking from Hills Flat to downtown where the bank was —about a mile

and a quarter. I was carrying money in this tin can— sometimes as much

as $400—and not once was I ever accosted. We were living at a time when

you could do that.

We lived behind the supermarket in two cabins that we rented from a

Mr. Coffin. I’ll remember that name until the day I die! The cabins were

at least ten feet wide and about sixteen feet deep, so we basically had two

rooms easily. One room was for the bunk beds, and the other we used for

eating, reading the newspaper, and so on. We had a cooking arrangement

in the middle of the room, with cupboards, sink, and stove, so that was a

natural partition between the two rooms. Mom, Pop, and I stayed in one

cabin; Pee Wee and the other butchers stayed in the second cabin. As I recall,

my mom was there about four months out of the year. She would prepare

the meals, and people would eat in shifts because we couldn’t all leave the

shop at the same time. Other times, Pop would cook so the guys wouldn’t

have to do their own cooking. We were eating high on the hog because we

could eat almost anything we wanted. We could have hamburger every day,

or steaks and chops —that was something new for me. And I would use all

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 3 5

the scraps from the lunchmeats to make all kinds of sandwiches to take to

school.

I started my first year of high school in Grass Valley. The thing I

remember the most was English class, because they had a wide range of

reading material that I probably would not have gotten in the San Fran-

cisco schools. It was all about old England, knighthood, and chivalry, like

Ivanhoe and “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” I also remember reading

Scaramouche and A Tale of Two Cities—mostly historical novels. I proba-

bly had history, math, and science, but I don’t have any recollection of those

classes. But in woodshop, I remember guys were making their own skis. I

asked Mom if I could learn to ski, and she said, “Oh, no, you’ll break a leg,

you’ll break an arm, or break your neck.” She was always so protective; her

hair would probably turn gray if she knew what I had been doing without

her knowledge. But as much as possible, I tried not to make her too appre-

hensive. So I didn’t get a chance to ski—not even bobsledding or any of

the snow sports. The other thing that was memorable was the fact that the

creamery was about a block away from high school and they gave you a

milkshake that was all you could do to finish for ten cents. Because they

had their own dairy, the ice cream was homemade and fresh. I often ate

my lunch there, but since I was lactose intolerant, it wouldn’t do for me to

have a milkshake every day.

As far as I can remember, most of the students were white, which was

different from junior high school in San Francisco. But I had no problems

with that. I remember one boy—a Jewish refugee from Germany—told us

stories about how regimented life was in Germany and also how badly Jews

were treated. That was why his family left, and that was the first I had ever

heard of things like that happening in Europe. Except for another Chinese

kid, George, I had very few friends. But then, even when I was attending

school in San Francisco, I had no close friends. George and I weren’t what

you would call buddies. He was a year older and he had his own interests.

But he had a car, so if I needed a ride, I would ask him. One time, we drove

to San Francisco together for the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge—the

only time I got away from Grass Valley.

It was in Grass Valley that I first started learning how to run. In P.E.

they required everyone to get into some kind of physical activity. But when

3 6 · C H A P T E R O N E

I asked the gym teacher if I could take archery, he said, “No, you can’t,

you’re not a girl.” I said, “How about fencing?” And again he said, “Girls

only.” So I had to let that go too. I didn’t want to play baseball, football,

or any team sports like that, so I decided, “Okay, running is one activity

I can do by myself.” In the beginning, I would be lucky if I could make a

quarter of a mile around the track. So the coach said, “What are you try-

ing to do, Ed?” I said, “I’m going to try and run a mile.” I was thinking

of Glen Cunningham, who had overcome injuries from a fire at fifteen to

become a world-renowned miler. He said, “Well, you’re going to have to

learn to jog first. If you have to, just walk.” I said, “I already walk a lot.”

He said, “Jog then.” So he showed me what to do. Pretty soon I could jog

a mile. And he said, “Now, go for two. What you have to do is build up

your legs so that you can go for five, six miles.” This was long before the

jogging craze took over. He said, “What you want to do is be able to get

your second wind.” That was the first time I had ever heard the term “sec-

ond wind.” He explained to me, “What happens is that you get to the point

where you think you can run forever—that’s when you have your second

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 3 7

F I G . 9 . Eddie’s parents with one of the butchers (left) behind the store in Grass Valley

in 1937.

wind. Once you do that, you can start thinking about running. You’ll be

doing good if you can do a mile in six minutes. If you can do it in five,

you’ll be in top class.” And he said, “Don’t worry about the time. Try to

build up your stamina first.”

Well, I never did get my second wind. He would tell me, “You’re push-

ing too hard. Just work on it gradually. Don’t worry about the time. Just

build up your stamina.” So that’s what I did—I would just run to build up

stamina. I would jog at about nine minutes to a mile, which is very slow,

but it was more important to me that I jog long distances rather than run

distances fast. I wasn’t running for the team, relays, or anything else. I was

just running for the enjoyment of it, even though I didn’t enjoy it at the

beginning, because it seemed like I wasn’t making any progress. I was hop-

ing to run five-minute miles, but I knew that I wasn’t even close to that.

So I just kept jogging.

The other thing I learned to do in Grass Valley was to shoot. I think it

was one of the customers who first told me about the NRA club down-

town. We were talking, and he found out I was interested in shooting and

that I owned a single-shot, Irving .22 rifle— something I had purchased

with earnings from my paper route. Back in those days, they weren’t that

strict about gun control, and the weapon only cost me a dollar and a half.

Mom and Pop allowed me to keep it, after telling me to be sure not to

hurt anyone with it. So this customer told me about the indoor course

they had at the NRA, and he said, “They have people there who can teach

you how to take care of guns and all the safety rules.” I never became a

member, but I would go there and try to learn to shoot accurately in their

indoor range. That was when I got the most use out of my Irving .22. I

wasn’t interested in shooting game. I just wanted to learn to use a weapon,

and that was all.

The first time I experienced snow was not in Grass Valley but in San

Francisco in 1931. I remember Bill and I went out to an empty lot behind

Chinese Hospital and we tried to gather up enough snow to make a snow-

ball. But it was so soft and fluffy that by the time we put our hands on it,

it would melt. So when Pop told me that Grass Valley had a lot of snow, I

was fascinated by the idea of just seeing snow. I was only there for one win-

ter, but it turned out to be one of the harshest winters they had ever had

3 8 · C H A P T E R O N E

in the Grass Valley and Nevada City area. In fact, the whole city was closed

off for several weeks, and supplies were running low, so they were kind of

worried about that. On the other hand, they knew that sooner or later, the

weather would break and they would be able to get trucks up and back from

Sacramento, where they got their supplies. But the first time it snowed, it

was great because I didn’t know what was involved. Eventually, I found

out that there was snow to be shoveled off the sidewalk, and when I walked

to school, I had to be careful about slipping or falling on the icy spots. Then

I found out that even out in the hills, I couldn’t just walk around, because

I would be waist deep in snow. But still, it was a new experience for me,

stomping around in the snow.

Living in Grass Valley was quite an experience, because coming from

San Francisco Chinatown to wide-open country turned out to be a reve-

lation for me. In San Francisco we had had to live in segregated quarters,

whereas in Grass Valley we could live like other folks. Even though I didn’t

have all the time in the world to enjoy the outdoors, I didn’t have to go far,

because the Hills Flat market was in the outskirts of town. All I had to do

was walk a couple of blocks and I would be out in the forest, so I did a lot

of hiking. Since then, I’ve always enjoyed being outdoors and more or less

by myself.

L O S I N G M Y V I R G I N I T Y

I was fifteen when I lost my virginity at a house of prostitution in Grass

Valley. I used to deliver their order from the meat market and the grocery

store, usually in the late morning or early afternoon. The ladies were not

working during those hours. They were more or less just getting up and

having their coffee, cigarettes, and so on. The first time I delivered their

order, they kind of teased me. At that time, I blushed easily, and, of course,

the more I blushed, the more they teased me. The madam came in and said,

“Girls, girls, girls, don’t tease the help.” So that was basically my first

encounter with the ladies.

Now, I had never had what is now commonly known as sex education.

I had never asked my older brothers, who were raising their families, and

I didn’t talk to other guys about it in school. I knew nothing about sex. So

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 3 9

gradually, each time that I delivered an order, the ladies would tease me.

Then they invited me in for coffee. That was how we got started as casual

acquaintances. I wasn’t one of their clients at that time, and I had no

thoughts about becoming one. This was the first time I had ever talked to

ladies who were not my sisters or my mother, because I had never talked

to any of the girls at school. Little by little, I got to know them as ladies.

When they found out I was from San Francisco, they started telling me how

sometimes when they had spare time, they would go to San Francisco to

do weekend shopping for clothes and so on.

I guess it was a couple of months later when I got up the nerve to walk

up there one evening. A colored maid came to the door, and I guess she must

have heard about me from the girls, because she yelled to the madam, “Eddie’s

here!” I almost turned around and ran down the stairs, I was so embarrassed.

The madam said, “Are you here for what I think you’re here for?” I said, “Well,

I’ve never been there before.” And she said, “Well, I think I have just the per-

son to introduce you to the joys of sex.” Of course, I found out later that

there is no such thing as the joys of sex for a prostitute. They want to get the

man to climax as quickly as possible and get him through in the shortest

time possible. Of course, I wasn’t aware of that then. But the first time, this

young lady Marie treated me almost as if we were on a date. She gradually

took me through the steps, and that night was when I lost my virginity.

I think I went back two or three times over a period of a year. And I

always asked for Marie. I was bashful at the time, and I thought that if I

stayed with one lady, it would make it a lot easier for me. The first time she

had her period, and I went up there, the maid told me, “She’s in flower.”

I didn’t know what that meant, and she said, “Well, ladies have these peri-

odically—usually once a month. But the other ladies are available.” And I

said, “No, I’ll just wait.” When I saw Marie the next time, I asked her, “What

was all that about ?” And she explained it all to me. They always treated me

as a plaything in the sense that here was a kid who knew absolutely noth-

ing about sex. In a way, they gave me a sex education. In return, I always

treated them not as prostitutes but ladies I knew. The fact that I could pur-

chase their favor or their time didn’t make them any less ladies. And they

treated me not as a client but as a special person.

As far as I can remember, they were all white ladies. I think the youngest

4 0 · C H A P T E R O N E

one was probably twenty-one or twenty-two, and the oldest, as much as

thirty-three to thirty-five. For the year that I was in Grass Valley, the same

five ladies worked there, so there wasn’t a big turnover. At that time, it was

a dollar and a half, and a man could pick any of the five. With Marie, we

were always cordial to each other. I never asked her why; I mean, I had no

idea how people got into this business. The madam was responsible for the

welfare of the girls, and, as far as I could tell, there was no coercion. To

them, it was just a way of making a living. I had heard stories in China-

town about how slave girls were brought over and forced into prostitution,

but these ladies didn’t appear to be in that situation at all.6

A H O L I D A Y I N V A N C O U V E R

In 1937 my father decided that he was going to send my brother Bill and

me to China for a Chinese education. Of course, we had no say, but I

remember Henry Fung, a close friend of the family, saying, “You guys are

going to have a lot of fun. You’ll get to sit on a water buffalo with a little

flute and just tend the cows.” That was probably what first put the idea of

becoming a cowboy in my mind. We had our ID cards ready, and we were

to ship out from Seattle. That was when Pop decided, “Okay, the whole

family is going up there.” That included my mother, my father, my four

sisters, Bill, and me. Then he decided, “While we’re here and the ship’s not

going to be sailing for a while, why don’t you kids head up to Vancouver

and have a holiday.” He didn’t want to go with us because he wasn’t legal

and he was still leery about being discovered. And Mom didn’t want to go

because she was afraid of getting hassled by the immigration authorities.

So the six of us went to Vancouver by ourselves and spent about four days

there. That was my first encounter with “blue Sundays,” when everything

was closed—all the theaters and all the shops —and we thought that was

strange. Then when we came back to Seattle on the cruise ship, Pop

decided the war situation in China looked too unsettled, and he said, “Nope,

I’m not going to send you boys back.”7

To show you how inexpensive that trip was, when we first got there that

evening on the train, we went to a Chinese restaurant. Pop ordered food

for the eight of us, and the whole meal was ten dollars. And for the first

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 4 1

time in my life, I saw my dad leave a silver dollar for a tip. My dad was

worldly in the sense that even when he went to a coffee shop and had a

twenty-five-cent lunch special, he would leave a tip. He had, in his vest pock-

ets, nickels in a certain pocket, dimes in another, and so on. He told us,

“Always leave a tip. You don’t have to be extravagant, but leave something

appropriate, even if it’s only a nickel.” We were always stringent in our

spending, and we thought this was outright extravagant. But he told us,

“When you’re traveling, your behavior has to be different from what you

do at home.” As a Chinese businessman, he was always careful about pro-

tecting his character—how he was seen and how he behaved towards others.

The Vancouver trip reminded me of the time our family went on a pic-

nic to Fleishacker Zoo. We made up a suit box full of sandwiches, dessert,

fruits, and drinks. There may well have been as many as two of these suit

boxes. The same thing was true when we went on the train to Seattle. We

didn’t eat on the train, except what we brought. I’ll never forget how we

walked from Fleishacker Zoo to the Playland. Give or take, it had to be at

least two miles, and Pop could still outwalk us. He had an artificial limb

and no knee joint, but that never stopped him.

L E A V I N G H O M E

When we got back from Seattle, I told my father that I had had enough of

Grass Valley and that I would prefer to finish high school in San Francisco.

4 2 · C H A P T E R O N E

F I G . 1 0 . Eddie’s certificate of identity — required of all Chinese persons to prove their

right to remain in and return to the United States.

Back then, the high schools in the city were specialized. Commerce High

School was exactly that—people went there to learn business things.

Mission High was like a trade school, Galileo High was general ed, and

Polytechnic High was basically polytechnical. Lowell, of course, was

academic— college prep. I thought I wanted to become a mechanical engi-

neer, without knowing what it was all about. It almost sounds foolish, but

I saw one of these signs they have when they’re putting up a building. The

architect’s name was followed by the mechanical engineer’s name. For some

reason, “Mechanical Engineer” caught my eye. I remember when I got to

our drafting class at Polytechnic High School, Mr. Walker saw that my report

card had been signed by Al as my guardian. He asked me, “How is Mr. Albert

Quong your guardian?” And I said, “Well, he’s my oldest brother, and my

father wasn’t around to sign the report card.” So he said, “Albert Quong is

your brother ? Well then, I will expect you to make drawings as neatly as

he did.” And I thought, “Holy smoke, after twenty some odd years, he rec-

ognizes his name and remembers his work!” That sort of put me on my toes.

I finished my first year of high school, then I was thrown out in my soph-

omore year for being a wise guy. We got two grades in high school— one

for academics and one for deportment. I could always get by with academics,

but I always got low grades in deportment because I would talk back to the

teacher. I didn’t like authority, and I was getting antsy about leaving school.

What happened at Poly was that the teacher in my English class gave me a

failing grade for both. I protested because I didn’t think I deserved the fail-

ing grade for my academic work. But she said, “Because your deportment

was so bad, I’m failing you in both.” When I protested to the principal, he

said, “I have to go along with the teacher.” I was already in the frame of

mind to quit school anyway, so it didn’t matter to me. It just gave me an

excuse to leave school earlier.

I had been making plans to leave home from the time when I was in

Antioch. I found out that when a student turned sixteen, he could no longer

be considered a truant. So I decided that on my sixteenth birthday, I was

going to leave home and go far away so my folks would no longer fuss over

me. By then I was really into horses, and I figured the way to be around

horses was to work on a ranch. I got a map of the United States and told

my brother Bill to blindfold me. I said, “I’ll take any state that is from Mon-

G R O W I N G U P I N C H I N A T O W N · 4 3

tana down to Texas. Somewhere along there, I’ll find a cattle ranch.” It was

like “pin the tail on the donkey”—he spun me around and moved the map

around, and where I pinned the tail turned out to be Midland, Texas. Of

course, I didn’t know that Midland was not a cattle town but an oil town!

I had saved about a hundred dollars, and I figured that would last me at

least two months if I didn’t find a job right away. Then, of course, I had to

have the bus fare. I decided to get a half-fare bus ticket for kids under twelve,

so I got Bill, who was four inches taller than me, to go with me to Trailway

to buy the ticket. He was the only one who knew what I was going to do,

and he was sworn to secrecy.

I took off to the bus station by myself, lugging my belongings in my

father’s carpetbag. I had an alarm clock to make sure that I got up on time

for work, and some toiletries. I even scrounged a bed sheet from home,

just to be sure that I had linen. I had two extra shirts and just the pair of

pants that I had on, because I figured if I were going to work at a ranch, I

would have to buy Levi’s and work clothes like that later. And I brought

along a pair of cowboy boots that I had picked up during my first year at

Poly. That was basically what I had when I left home. It was the beginning

of an adventure. I never had any qualms about being able to make it on

my own, even at that age. If I couldn’t find work on a ranch, I would work

elsewhere doing anything. I wasn’t worried. One thing for sure, I was not

about to go home any day soon.

4 4 · C H A P T E R O N E

T W O · A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S

I’ve always had this romantic notion that as a cowboy all you have to do is ride a

horse and maybe herd a few cows. Then I found out, no, no, you have to do things

like build fences, maintain water tanks and windmills, and at some of the ranches

you might even have to plant a crop or two to feed the horses and hogs. It was noth-

ing but hard work. So, right away, my illusions of the movie cowboy were shattered.

It was up to me to face the reality of the situation and start learning from that point.

L O O K I N G F O R W O R K I N M I D L A N D

W hen I got off the bus in Midland, the first thing I did was to ask

people at the bus depot where I could find a room. At the time,

it never occurred to me that someone might not want to rent a

room to a Chinese person. I didn’t think of myself as a Chinese and I didn’t

project myself as a Chinese. Besides, I was only five feet tall and non-

threatening, so most people took me to be nothing more than a young

adventurer. In fact, many of my Texan friends later told me, “We thought

it was pretty funny. Here was a big city boy coming to Texas wanting to be

a cowboy when most Texans would give their eyeteeth just to get away from

that kind of life.” Anyhow, this person at the depot told me about the Haley

Hotel. He said, “It’s very moderately priced and clean and not far from

downtown.”

4 5

When I got there, I found out that the weekly rate was five dollars, but

that the monthly rate was even cheaper. I told the desk clerk, “I’m not sure

that I’ll need a whole month, so why don’t we start on a weekly basis.” Actu-

ally, the rooming part wasn’t that expensive, and the eating part wasn’t that

expensive either, because I ate very simple meals. I found a small café near

the hotel, since the hotel charged higher prices. Back in those days, most

cafés ran a “blue plate special,” which provided good quality food in ade-

quate amounts. There was one thing that I found strange, though. We had

fish one day, and I asked for a glass of milk, and they said, “No, we can’t

serve you milk when you’re eating fish.” I said, “Why not ?” He said, “It’s

against the law.” I said, “What ?” Apparently, there was some notion that

drinking milk with fish was injurious to your system. I still don’t know the

medical reason behind it, but I found it absolutely strange.1

I soon learned that there were other strange things —like the poll tax.

In San Francisco, where I was from, voting was everyone’s privilege and

right. But in Texas, a person had to pay before he could vote.2 I later found

out that the tax was to keep blacks and Mexicans from voting. It wasn’t

that I agreed with all the things I heard; I just found it enlightening that

customs in various parts of the country could be so different. Then I found

out that the poll tax of $1.50 could be covered by any of the candidates run-

ning for office. During one of the campaigns for senator, I was taken to a

political rally where they served a free barbeque and the politician handed

out dollar bills to prospective voters. Now, a dollar and fifty cents may not

sound like much, but if you were being paid forty dollars a month as a top

hand, that was at least a day’s wages. These were the sorts of things I was

learning that were completely unfamiliar to me. So each day was an adven-

ture in itself because I never knew what I was going to find out, who I was

going to encounter, and how they were going to react to me.

I found out from the people at the Haley Hotel that the Scharbaum Hotel

downtown was where most of the cattlemen stayed when they came into

town. The people who were looking for work usually stayed in that area as

well. So I decided, “Okay, I’ll go down there.” I started asking people, espe-

cially the people who were looking for work, “How do you go about it ?”

They asked me, “Why do you want to know?” I said, “I’m looking for a

job.” And they looked at me—this skinny little runt—and they said, “If we

4 6 · C H A P T E R T W O

hear of anyone who wants someone who’s absolutely green, we’ll let you

know. We’ll even spread the word.” Within a few days, everybody in town

knew about the Chinese kid from California. This was my first taste of

Southern hospitality, which I took to be all part and parcel of the South,

including Texas. I think, on the whole, they were more amused by the idea

that this kid who couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag would want

to work on a ranch, where there was nothing but hard work.

A S H O R T S T O P O V E R I N K E R M I T

After hanging around the Scharbaum Hotel for two weeks, I finally found

a job with W. F. Scarborough. His ranch headquarters was in Kermit—

about eighty miles southwest of Midland. Since I had no experience what-

soever, Tom Lineberry, the ranch foreman who interviewed me, said,

“Would you be willing to accept ten dollars a month with room and board?”

And I said, “Of course. I know I don’t know anything about ranch work,

and the fact that you’re willing to pay me ten dollars is quite generous.” As

I said, a top cowhand at the time was earning forty dollars a month. He

didn’t tell me what I would be doing, but I knew intuitively that as a green-

horn, I was going to have to do any kind of work asked of me.

The stopover in Kermit was no more than a week while I waited to be

transported to the ranch I was going to be working at near Seminole. Dur-

ing that time, I was put to work at whatever odd jobs needed to be done.

Of course, as the low man on the totem pole, I was assigned the unpleas-

ant jobs. I would be shown how to clean the chicken house, and the guy

would leave as quickly as he could. Another job I was given was unloading

gravel off what they called a stake body truck, which was not a pickup but

a truck with a flatbed and holes alongside the bed for side boards. I had

never done any pick-and-shovel work, and I didn’t know the first thing

about it. I was told to work with Frank Lewis, a Negro gentleman who was

one of the ranch hands. So I got a shovel and I was shoveling away as if my

life depended on it, and Frank got up there with a shovel and he said, “Eddie,

take it easy. You’re not going to last if you go at that pace. We got this whole

truck to unload.” So he taught me, in other words, how to pace myself. He

told me, “Relax, a ranch day is a long day. You’re not gong to even last

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 4 7

through this job if you don’t slow down and pace yourself.” Frank was very

friendly, and he was kind enough to take me under his wing and show me

the ropes. In hindsight, I wonder how long I would have lasted if there hadn’t

been people like Frank Lewis around to teach me. This lesson would serve

me well in the prison camps, where the workload was much harsher and

pacing could mean the difference between life and death.

A G R E E N H O R N A T T H E S C A R B O R O U G H R A N C H

There was a total of five ranch hands at the Scarborough ranch—Tom

Lineberry, his brother Robert, two other hired hands, and me—and that

was considered a medium-size ranch. The owners had the main house, and

we had the bunkhouse. Bunkhouses were very simple arrangements —a

wood structure about twenty feet in each direction. That was plenty of room

for a couple of bunk beds and for the guys to play cards if they wanted. We

ate at the main house, and the bunkhouse was merely for sleeping. Of course,

there was an outhouse; most ranches didn’t have septic tanks. Even grow-

ing up in Chinatown, we had flush toilets, so I had to get used to the fact

that conditions in Texas were fairly primitive. But once I got used to the

idea, it was not all that bad.

It was a learning process right from the start. We got up at four in the

morning and did what most would consider a full day’s work before we

even had breakfast. For instance, we would milk all the cows, feed the

chickens, pick up the eggs, feed the horses, and then go have breakfast. So

I learned right off the bat that the livestock was more important than any-

thing else on the ranch because that was what the ranch was for—raising

cattle. Then after breakfast we started the ranch work. This involved keep-

ing the fences mended so the cattle wouldn’t wander all over and repair-

ing the corrals in case any cattle needed to be brought in for “dipping.”

Basically, the cattle were driven through the chute and dipped into a trough

filled with antiseptic fluids in order to get rid of any ticks. Whenever a

fence needed to be built, we didn’t buy the cedar posts; we had to cut them,

trim them, and then dig the holes, put in the fence posts, align them, and

string maybe four strands of barbed wire. Then we might go out to vari-

ous parts of the ranch to check on the water tanks, which were just pack-

4 8 · C H A P T E R T W O

dirt reservoirs to hold extra water, and see if the windmills needed repair-

ing. This was long before the days of irrigation, pumps, and using motors

to draw up the water. In the wintertime, when the tanks would freeze over,

we had to chop holes in the ice so that the cattle could drink. And we had to

make sure that the salt licks were not depleted, because the cows need to

lick salt for their system, just like people need salt in their system. These were

all routine things that needed to be done around the ranch but that were

never in the movies. Even riding a horse—it was not for pleasure, but for

doing a job.

I learned that a cowboy was like a vet. Most cowboys carried a small

supply of medicine with him so that he would not have to go back to the

ranch house, which might be five, ten miles away. If he saw that any of

the cattle needed doctoring, he would just routinely doctor them on the

spot. If it were serious, he would call in a vet. Usually, they were minor

problems, like doctoring a sore. During the season when heifers had their

first calves, they sometimes had trouble with their uterus. If it came out,

you had to put it back in. Here was where I found cowboys could be very

ingenious. When they pushed the uterus back in, they would shove the

big part of a wine bottle in to hold the uterus in position and then tie the

neck of the bottle around the tail to hold the bottle in place until the uterus

got settled again. If a cow needed a vaccination, they would just rope the

cow, push it down to the ground, and vaccinate it. In essence, the cow-

boy was a jack-of-all-trades —he had to be part mechanic, part vet, and

part carpenter.

The spring and fall roundups were the main events at any ranch because

they were raising cattle and calves to sell. The rounding and branding was

to help the rancher keep track of how many calves he had as well as take

care of their health. It basically involved dehorning, vaccination, castrat-

ing if it were a bull calf, and branding. To do all of this, four men formed

a branding crew. First, the calf had to be dragged to the branding area with

a rope. Then one man would force it to the ground and hold its hind legs,

while a second man would use his knee to keep its neck down and hold its

front legs. Once the calf was immobilized, a third man would dehorn and

vaccinate while a fourth man would castrate and brand it. I swear that it

didn’t take more than a minute, because once the calf was dropped, each

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 4 9

person knew exactly what he had to do and he just did it. Then when it

came time to trade off, someone would say, “Let’s trade off,” and every-

one would know who was trading with whom and how to do all the jobs.

This was just to give everyone a little variety and a break in the muscles,

because the smoke was very acrid and the men might be branding for eight,

ten hours.

My first time, they had me flanking and holding the hind legs. I was only

ninety pounds at the most, and the calf was at least 250 pounds, so natu-

rally I had trouble manhandling the calf down. Finally, one of the old-timers

said, “Eddie, you’re not going to last half an hour. Let me show you.” And

he said, “What you have to do is grab him under the front leg and under

the flank.” And the flank was that loose flap of skin from the belly to the

hind leg. As soon as the calf made a little jump, he put his knee under to

help him jump. He then flopped him on the ground and practically knocked

his breath out. And before the calf knew it, someone was dehorning him,

5 0 · C H A P T E R T W O

F I G . 1 1 . Dipping

cattle to get rid

of ticks. Courtesy

Southwest Collec-

tion/Special

Collections Lib-

rary, Texas Tech

University.

someone was vaccinating him, someone was castrating him, and he was

even branded. By the time they shook the rope off his neck, he was run-

ning back to his mama, and the calf was probably screaming at the top of

his lungs, “Look what those men did to me, Mama!” At that point, he was

not even feeling the pain; I mean, the shock hadn’t set in yet. That was when

I realized, “Okay, Ed, you don’t have body mass, you’re not even strong,

so you’re always going to have to find an easier way to do things.” Little

did I know then how useful this lesson would be in prison camp, where

the bulk of our work involved carrying heavy loads.

Because all the ranchers had a limited time frame to complete the

roundup—about thirty days —there was usually a mutual agreement among

them to help each other out. All the small ranchers would get together at

the big ranch and take care of its roundup first. Then all the men from the

big ranch would help all the small ranchers do their work. It was all done

in the spirit of cooperation and friendship. Same thing would happen if

anyone ever got sick and couldn’t put in the crop—people would auto-

matically help plow his fields and seed it. And if he were still sick at har-

vest time, they would not only harvest it, but also take it to the gin and give

him the money as if he had done the job himself. When all the roundup

work was done, the big rancher would throw a barbeque or party. It wasn’t

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 5 1

F I G . 1 2. Branding

cattle. Courtesy

Southwest

Collection/Special

Collections Library,

Texas Tech

University.

payback in the real sense of the word, because you could never pay back

obligation, but it was to acknowledge their friendship. And it was a time

to relax and enjoy each other’s company.

I thought it was a great way to live because, sure, it was hard work, but

the friendship among the ranchers was real. They didn’t keep score, like

“You handled X number of heads of cattle and I’ll help you do X num-

ber.” It didn’t work that way— everyone just helped each other out,

period. It felt so natural and so right that I thought this was the way it should

be. I learned that cowboys had a code of ethics that was so stringent that

most people would probably not be able to live up to it. Their word was

the most important thing in the world, because that impinged on their

honor. If a man gave you his word, there would be no need for a contract.

Unless he dropped dead, the deed would be done. And if you wanted to

be formal about it, you shook hands —that was ironclad. Most people think

of a cowboy as being uncouth, uneducated, and so on, but I found them

to be gentle and courteous, especially when they were around women—

then courtesy was extended tenfold. And when they danced, they were light

on their feet—and I’m talking about some big men. Some of them were

very well educated, both in the scholastic sense and in a self-educated way.

And some had traveled a bit with rodeo shows the equivalent of Buffalo

Bill’s. So a cowboy wasn’t anything like the movie cowboy I had envisioned

him to be.

I got along fine with the other ranch hands. I don’t remember any prob-

lems, other than the fact that they had to teach me everything, like how to

milk a cow. About a week after I started milking the cows, the milk pro-

duction went down, and one of the guys said, “Eddie, that milk cow is hold-

ing back on you. What you have to do is learn how to out-trick her and

take the milk that she’s holding back for her calf.” Of course, the implica-

tion was that I was pretty dumb to be outfoxed by a cow. He showed me

how to strip or squeeze the udders some more until all the milk just flowed

out naturally. In the two years that I worked on the ranches, I never met

anyone with a mean bone in his body.

Although the ranch was owned by Mr. Scarborough, I answered to Tom

Lineberry, the foreman and son-in-law. But one of the things I remember

about Mr. Scarborough—he had a glass eye and false teeth. Being the low

5 2 · C H A P T E R T W O

man, aside from helping Miss Evelyn (Scarborough’s daughter and Tom’s

wife) around the house, I was assigned to bring him a glass of warm milk

before he went to bed at night. The first time I saw his glass eye and false

teeth in the glass tumblers, I didn’t know what to make of them, because

in all my time in Chinatown, I had never heard of false teeth, nor seen a

glass eye. Being out on my own and being exposed to different facets of life

like this, there was something new every day. I never thought about the

hardships; it was just one adventure after another.

After about four months at the Scarborough ranch, Tom said that Miss

Evelyn wanted me to work as a houseboy at her home in Midland. I sus-

pect that Tom realized that he really didn’t have the time to teach me how

to become a good cowhand, since he was often away from the ranch tak-

ing care of the family’s oil leases and other enterprises. Not wanting to hurt

anyone’s feelings by saying that I didn’t want to be a houseboy but a cow-

boy, I decided to look for another job at another ranch. By then, I had

become acquainted with Red, who ran a ranch nearby. He used to come

over to our ranch in the evenings to play penny-ante poker. So the next

time I saw him, I asked, “Red, do you know of anyone around here who

might need someone as inexperienced as me ?” And he said, “Eddie, you

can come work for me.” The understanding was that he would pay me ten

dollars, same as what Tom Lineberry was paying me. Then he said, “What

are you going to tell Tom?” I replied, “Well, I think I’ll go ask him right

now.” So I went up to Tom and I said, “Mr. Lineberry, would it be okay if

I leave here and go work with Red?” I added, “He needs someone to help

him around the ranch.” He knew that Red ran a small spread all by him-

self. “Oh,” he said, “if you can help him, sure, go ahead.” I said, “No prob-

lem with leaving here ?” He said, “No, no, we’ll get along.” So that was how

I moved out to work with Red. His Christian name was Harvey— but it

was at the peril of your life to use that—and his last name was Craddock.

L E A R N I N G T O B E A C O W B O Y A T T H E C R A D D O C K R A N C H

I started learning more with Red because we had a one-to-one tutor-and-

student relationship, and from his perspective, the quicker I learned and

the more I learned, the better I could help him out. Red was about forty

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 5 3

years old, so we’re talking about a twenty-five-year age difference. I real-

ized that it was an education for me to be around older people like Red,

who had lived some of their lives already and knew something of the world.

One evening, he opened his equivalent of a footlocker and I saw his gun

belt and holster, and I said, “Gee, Red, you’ve grown up in a very inter-

esting time. You’ve seen the airplane come in, automobiles, trains, telegraph,

telephones, and all sorts of things.” He looked at me and said, “Eddie, when

you get to be my age, you’re going to look back and say, ‘Poor Red, he hasn’t

seen anything yet.’ ” His father had been a sheriff, and he said back when

he started out as a cowboy, everyone packed a gun. And he said, “It’s not

what you think, Eddie. We don’t shoot each other. It’s for rattlesnakes and

things like that.”

His mother had been a schoolteacher, and I found Red to be well

informed and well educated. He was always correcting my grammar and

spelling. Like many other cowboys, he was well aware of the politics

involved in running a ranch. For instance, the Craddock ranch didn’t have

a road from Seminole, so Red suggested, “Eddie, if you go to school, the

county will have to build a road to the ranch house so that the school bus

can come get you.” I said, “Gee, Red, I left school to come here.” And he

said, “Well, it sure would be nice if you did, because we’ll get a road built

right out to the ranch.” Of course, I didn’t enroll in school, and he didn’t

push me. I just didn’t realize that the county, in order for the school bus

to get to a particular place, would do a thing like that.

Even though the Craddock ranch was a lot smaller than the Scarbor-

ough ranch, the basic work was the same. Red just had fewer heads of cat-

tle to run and a smaller spread to run it on. I was absolutely flabbergasted

when he talked in term of sections. I was so used to thinking in terms of

acres that when I first heard the term, I didn’t know what it meant. So Red

explained to me, “A section is one square mile—640 acres. We don’t think

in terms of acres out here, Eddie, because an acre won’t even support a

cow.” And he said, “We think in terms of a section, which will support maybe

ten, fifteen cows.” That means you need sixty-four acres for one cow, and

sixty-four acres is a lot of land! It never occurred to me until we started

riding around the ranch that it was mostly sand hills. There was basically

sage and a brush called “shinnery,” and lots of mesquite. It was practically

5 4 · C H A P T E R T W O

all weeds out there, and that was what we used for firewood. As Red said,

“West Texas is fairly dry country, and grass is very scarce—that’s why we

need so much land to raise cattle.” Again I had to expand my field of vision,

because I had grown up in Chinatown, where buildings were stacked next

to each other and we had ten people living in two rooms. San Francisco is

roughly seven by seven miles and approximately forty-nine sections —that’s

not even a good-size horse pasture as far as Texans are concerned! I had to

think entirely on a different scale. Red got a big kick out of it because he

had worked in the rodeo and been to California. “I know how you people

think,” he said. “You think in terms of acres.”

One of the first things Red taught me was to be observant around the

ranch. For instance, he could tell from a long distance whether something

was a cow or a horse. I used to be puzzled by this. He said, “Eddie, think

about it. A cow is more rectangular and a horse is more an elongated, oblong

thing.” Then he said, “It’s basically the difference between how a cow and

horse gets up.” And I said, “There’s a difference ?” He said, “Yeah, these are

the things you have to observe.” I got lost easily out in the open range, and

Red used to like playing a trick on me. We would get about four or five

miles away from the ranch house, and he would say, “Okay, which way do

you get home, Eddie ?” I would look around and say, “I don’t know, Red.”

He’d say, “Well, you haven’t been observing where you’ve been going and

what direction you’ve been going.” I said, “Gee, you must have a compass

in your head.” He said, “No, no, I don’t. What you have to do is observe

everything going on around you at all times.” So he said, “Since you have

such a poor sense of direction, if I’m not with you, here’s what you do if

you get lost. Drop the reins so the horse knows that he’s not being con-

trolled. Let him loose—he knows where home is.” It was simple, common

sense things like this that I learned all through the time that I was with Red.

I’m sure that there were people who probably thought I was dumb as a fence

post, and I was —there was no question about it. But they took it all in good

humor.

One time I was digging a water tank with a Fresno (a big horse-drawn

shovel) and I practically fell in. We had a team of two mules hooked up to

the Fresno, and we were scooping dirt out of the ground to make a water

tank. Well, when the Fresno gets full, you’re supposed to lift the handle—

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 5 5

what they call the Johnson bar—and the natural forward movement on

the lift will help tip the load over. I was working the team when Red said,

“Let go of the Johnson bar.” I didn’t know what the Johnson bar was, so

when the lift of the Fresno hit a rock, it just tipped over. I went right with

the handle, head over heels, on top of the mules. The mules got scared and

started jumping around, and Red was on the side laughing his guts out. He

said, “Why didn’t you let go of the Johnson bar ?” And I said, “I don’t know

what the Johnson bar is!” And he said, “You’re hanging on to it.” It was

one of those situations where you do these stupid things and you get away

with it, because you’re young and you’re green. As he said, “A lot of things

we do is common sense, Eddie. You just have to start using it.” He never

got mad at me—this green kid who probably didn’t even know how to get

out of the rain if he didn’t tell me. No, he was very good-natured, and will-

ing to teach me as long as I was willing to learn.

I helped Red build a three-room cabin from scratch. We each had our

own bedroom, and there was a kitchen and an outhouse. Red told me that

as the junior member of the firm, I would be responsible for the cooking. I

said, “I don’t know how to cook.” And he said, “I’ll show you.” It was fairly

simple— basically meat, beans, and biscuits. We would butcher a steer in

5 6 · C H A P T E R T W O

F I G . 1 3 . A ranch near Lubbock in West Texas. Courtesy Southwest Collection/Special

Collections Library, Texas Tech University.

the fall and have four hundred pounds of meat to eat for the whole winter.

Red’s mother sent him things like Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Jour-

nal, and True Stories, and that was our reading material. Since I didn’t know

much about cooking American food, the recipes in Good Housekeeping were

a great help, except that some of the dishes were not exactly what you would

call ranch fare. But I managed to try a pineapple upside-down cake, and

since we had lots of eggs, milk, and cream, I even tried making custards.

One day, we went to town to do some shopping. Red left a grocery list

with the clerk and he said, “We’ll be by later to pick these up.” I stayed behind

and I said to the clerk, “Ten-pound sack of flour, and I’ll pay for it now.”

He said, “Is this part of the ranch supplies? It’s all taken care of.” I said,

“No, this is my ten-pound sack of flour.” So he told me what it cost, and

I paid him. Red found out when we were unloading and storing the sup-

plies. He said, “Where did this extra ten pounds of flour come from?” I

said, “I bought it.” He said, “Why ?” I said, “Well, I goofed up some recipes

and I wasted some flour. I figure if I goofed up, I should replace it.” Red

looked at me and he said, “Eddie, don’t ever tell an owner that. If I had to

pay for everything that I goofed up, I’d be in the poorhouse!” He said, “That’s

part of the learning experience; you don’t pay for it. It’s allowed that you

screw up once in a while.” And he said, “Don’t do that again, Eddie.” And

I said, “No, that’s the way I am.” Even though I was only sixteen years old

at the time, I just knew from my upbringing that I should always pay for

my mistakes.

We also raised hogs at the Craddock ranch. Perry (Red’s brother) had

traded a one-eyed horse for thirty hogs, so we built an enclosure for them.

We made a wet mixture of corn to feed the hogs because we didn’t have

any slop to speak of. A ready supply of meat was always kept down at the

well house by the windmill, which served as a cooler. We had to do our

own slaughtering, so Red said, “Okay, you’ve been a meat cutter, Eddie.

You can do the butchering.” I said, “Red, I’m a meat cutter—I’ve never

done any butchering.” “Well,” he said, “I’ll show you how to do one hog,

and then you can do the other two.” It wasn’t difficult, except that hogs

give almost a human squeal; they almost know what’s going to happen. First,

we cut the throat and bled him. Then, to remove the hair, we dipped the

hog in a fifty-gallon drum of hot water. Then we cleaned the insides. Red

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 5 7

told me about keeping the head for headcheese— basically making a jelly

out of the meat from the hog’s head. When I started cutting the hindquar-

ters for the hams, Red said, “Save us a mess of spare ribs, and we’ll have

some barbequed spare ribs.” I had the knife right at the bone and I was just

about to start cutting when he said, “Eddie, what are you doing?” I said,

“You said you wanted some spare ribs.” He said, “Yes, I want spare ribs,

but I don’t want it that spare.” He moved the knife up about an inch, so

that there was more meat on the spare ribs. And he said, “That’s what we

call spare ribs.” We saved some of the fat to render the lard, and the rest

of the fat and meat we ground up to make sausage. Then I asked, “How

are we going to keep the sausage ?” Red said, “I’ll show you.” He used a

hand grinder to grind the sausage, then seasoned it and put it in these muslin

socks that his mother had made. I said, “They’re going to spoil, Red.” He

said, “No, they won’t.” After we had rendered out the lard and put it into

a container, Red showed me how to put the sausage socks in the fat so that

it was preserved in lard. As I said, everything I encountered was a learning

process.

Red also had to show me how to cure the ham. At that time, the most

famous brand for curing was Morton’s. All we had to do was mix up the

formula and soak the ham in it. Then, after a curing period, we hung it up

to dry and then pack it with salt—that was how we preserved it. At that

time, no one ever worried about things like salt intake. We had lots of cream,

lard, butter, and all those things that are considered “no-no’s” now. One

of the favorite things we used to do was to mix some molasses with butter

and spread it over hot biscuits —it was delicious! I never craved Chinese

food, even though ranch food was meat and pinto beans and we had very

little vegetables unless it came out of a can. To me, having a steak all to

myself was a luxury. And no one ever told me how much I could have—

we cooked and ate until we were satisfied.

Aside from curing ham, we also cured bacon. Then, during the roundup,

there was always that special feature—Rocky Mountain oysters. As the calves

were castrated, they would throw these testicles into a pan, and those were

your fresh mountain oysters. They would coat them with flour before throw-

ing them into the frying pan. I was a little squeamish about trying it in the

beginning, but then I remember the time when Mom cooked a special lunch

5 8 · C H A P T E R T W O

for Pop because he was going away on a trip, and it was fried oysters. I had

helped my mother wash them and drain them and pat them dry. I thought

they were kind of slimy, so when lunch was served, Pop noticed I wasn’t

reaching for the oysters. He said, “Why don’t you try an oyster, Ed?” I said,

“I don’t think so. They don’t look very appetizing.” He said, “If you try

one, I’ll take you with me to Santa Barbara.” So I took an oyster and I swal-

lowed it almost without tasting it. All of a sudden, I realized, “Gee, this is

pretty tasty !” From then on, I decided not to prejudge anything because I

learned to love oysters. So although I was a little apprehensive at first about

the Rocky Mountain oysters, I decided to give it a try. As soon as I took

the first bite, I knew why they called them Rocky Mountain oysters. Aside

from the shape, the texture was pretty much the same, and they were also

quite tasty.

Out on the ranch we were basically cut off from the outside world.

There was no electricity, no phone, no radio or newspaper. Our closest

neighbor was twenty miles away. In retrospect, it was almost as if I were

preparing to become a POW. I never thought of it as an inconvenience,

because once we got our work done, had our supper, and it got dark, it

was time to go to bed. The isolation didn’t bother me a bit. Having grown

up in Chinatown, I was used to living under very crowded conditions.

So even though we had a small cabin that we had to share, it was a lux-

ury for me just to have my own bedroom. On the contrary, I rather enjoyed

the isolation.

Occasionally, I got mail from home. In the first letter I got from Jess,

she told me, “In a way, Pop is proud of you because you showed so much

gumption; and in another way, he’s disappointed because you’re not get-

ting your education. But he knows where you are.” Jess indicated that my

parents would appreciate hearing from me and that Pop wasn’t mad

enough to cut me off. In fact, when I turned seventeen, Pop sent me a birth-

day check for twenty dollars, so I took that as a sign that he had forgiven

me. I would send postal cards home almost regularly—at least three times

a month— because they cost only a penny. I distinctly remember one post-

card I sent to Jess. I wrote, “It snows in Texas!” That was the whole mes-

sage in big print. Red, of course, was the one who took care of the mail. He

said, “Eddie, what did you think happens in winter time here ?” I said, “I

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 5 9

don’t know, Red, I always thought Texas was hot.” He said, “Yeah, it is hot,

but not in the wintertime.” Jess would write me with news from home—

about Bill graduating from high school, passing his Subject A for entrance

to UC Berkeley, and so on. In that way, I wasn’t totally cut off.

One time Jess sent me a red sports shirt. When I opened the package,

Red said, “What in the world are you going to do with that, Eddie ?” We

wore Levi’s and blue work shirts —that was our standard uniform for work.

And he said, “You’re never going to be able to wear that in Texas.” People

had never seen a sports shirt without shirttails. I don’t think I ever wore

that shirt. Imagine my having the nerve to tell Jess not to send me any more!

I just told her that I was adequately supplied with work clothes and I didn’t

really need any more sent from home. At that time, Levi’s were a dollar a

pair and work shirts were fifty-five cents. I had four shirts and four pairs

of pants that I kept washing and rotating. My first cowboy hat cost eight-

een dollars —that was two months’ pay. The salesman had tried to steer

me toward the cheaper straw hats, but I decided, “No, I have wanted to be

a cowboy all this time; I’ll buy a real Stetson.”

The first time I encountered any racial discrimination was when we went

to Lubbock with a load of cattle to sell. When we got into town, Red told

me he had to run down to the stockyards to attend to the cattle and make

arrangements for the sale. He parked me at the hotel, and he said, “I’m going

to give you five dollars, and you don’t even have to spend it down at the

hotel café, because you can sign a check for that.” Then he asked me, “Okay,

what are you going to do while I’m down at the stockyards?” I said, “First

thing I’m going to do, Red, I’m going to take a hot water bath.” We didn’t

have bathtubs or showers at the ranch. Then I said, “I’m going to see a movie

even before I get a haircut.” I had not had a haircut in six months, so it was

fairly long. He said, “Okay, I’ll meet you back here in the lobby at five o’clock

so that we can go have supper.”

The theater was about three blocks away from the hotel. At one o’clock

in the afternoon. I walked up to the box office, I put down some money,

and I said, “I would like to buy a ticket.” The girl at the booth looked at

me and she said, “Can’t sell you a ticket.” I said, “I’ll take standing room—

I haven’t seen a movie in months.” She said, “No, that’s not the reason.

6 0 · C H A P T E R T W O

I can’t sell a ticket to a Mexican.” I said, “I’m not Mexican.” And she said,

“Well, I can’t sell a ticket to an Indian either.” I said, “I’m not an Indian.”

She looked at me and she said, “What are you ?” I said, “I’m Chinese.” At

that point, she pressed the button for the manager. The manager came out,

looked at her, looked at me, and said, “What’s the problem?” The atten-

dant said, “This man wants to buy a ticket.” “Well, sell him a ticket.” “But,”

she said, “he’s Chinese.” And the manager said, “Yeah, I can see that.” This

poor lady had never been confronted with a situation where she meets a

Chinese person who wants to buy a ticket. But the manager apparently knew

a Chinese face when he saw one. That was the closest encounter with racial

discrimination I ever had, but in a way it was so humorous, I didn’t even

think of it in those terms. Most times, as the lone Chinese, I was consid-

ered more of a novelty than a threat.

After I had been at the Craddock ranch for four months, Red’s brother

decided that the ranch was not a paying proposition, and he sold off the

land and the livestock. I was lucky to find a job working for Fred Mitchell.

He was out servicing the septic tank at a neighbor’s and said that he needed

some help. I told him I didn’t know anything about dairy work, but he said,

“Nothing to it—all you have to do is milk the cows.” As it turned out, I

had to milk thirty cows twice a day, and fortunately he did the other half.

Besides milking the cows, we raised feed for them. It was interesting work,

but I didn’t want to do it for life. So I was glad when Red found a job with

the Jowell’s up in Quay, near Tucumcari in New Mexico, and sent me a let-

ter, saying, “Eddie, if you want to come up here to work, they will hire you.”

He told me to meet him at the Elkhorn Hotel in Clovis at a certain time.

He said, “We’re coming for supplies, and we’ll pick you up.” And that was

how I got to work at the Jowell ranch.

R A I S I N G H O R S E S A T T H E J O W E L L R A N C H

The Jowell ranch raised horses as well as cattle. They were raising half mus-

tang and half thoroughbred, and they were raising horses primarily for the

U.S. Army—their biggest customer. So it was different in the sense that it

was not just a cattle ranch—it was a horse-and-cattle ranch. The Quay area

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 6 1

was what we called high mountain mesa country. It had enough altitude

that we had nice, clear mountain air, but it wasn’t high enough that we

would get snowed under. It was just a very pretty place to be after West

Texas. For example, there was a place at the back end of the ranch called

the Saddleback, where the cattle loved to go. It was fairly forested so that

it was nice and cool, and there was a lot of nice feed. During roundup time,

we knew that there was where we would find most of the cattle. It was about

four miles from the main ranch house and a nice easy ride, loping the horses

part of the way.

By now, I had some knowledge of ranch life, so that I was of more use

to the owner, but I was still considered a beginning cowhand. The Jowells

paid me twenty dollars a month. Basic work at a ranch tended to be the

same no matter where you went. It was mainly animal husbandry, main-

taining all the equipment, and in some cases you might cut hay and stack

it up in the barn for winter feed. The main difference at the Jowell ranch

was that I had to learn a lot more about horses. Of course, Red knew a lot

about horses already. When we showed the horses for sale to the army

6 2 · C H A P T E R T W O

F I G . 1 4 . The movie theater on Broadway Street in Lubbock, where Eddie had trouble

purchasing an admission ticket. Courtesy Southwest Collection/Special Collections

Library, Texas Tech University.

people, Red would braid the horse’s tail so that just the meaty part of the

rear end would show. He would also be the one to ride the horses because

he was a good horseman and knew how to show them at their best. He

weighed easily two hundred pounds and was about six feet tall, but he was

of solid build. When he rode on a horse, it was like one unit—you couldn’t

separate the rider from the horse. The army people wanted to look at the

gait and how the horse moved, so you needed a good rider to show the

horse off.

Myrl, the son who was running the ranch while his father, Spencer Jow-

ell, lived in Midland, was an avid polo player. They even had a small prac-

tice field for hitting the balls with the mallets. Being left-handed, I was

never allowed on the polo ponies because they were trained for right-

handed hitters, even though the hitter could swing the mallet from both

sides of the pony—what they called a backswing, like in tennis. For the same

reason, I never got to do much roping, because, as Red told me, “Most horses

are trained for right-handed riders, and if we train you with a horse for

left-hand roping, that horse will be no good for anyone else except a left-

handed rider.” So it was just common sense. Being left-handed wasn’t a

big handicap because I was never going to train on polo ponies, and I was

probably not going to do much roping of cattle either. But I had to learn

how to trim the horse’s hooves, brush their coats, clean the stalls, and do

whatever else was required in taking care of horses versus cows.

When I got to Quay, Red decided, “Eddie, it’s time you had a horse of

your own.” And he introduced me to Abe, a nice little unbroken dun. I

said, “Red, I’ve never broken a horse.” “That’s alright,” he said. “Abe has

never been broken either, so you guys can start even.” In the beginning I

had this notion that all you had to do was put the saddle on the horse, get

on him, and then let him buck until he got tired. But I found out that Red

didn’t break a horse that way. He said, “I want you to start going up to the

corral where he is and let him get used to you. If he wants to smell you, let

him smell you. If you extend your hand and he’s willing to nuzzle it, just

leave it there. You guys have to get acquainted.” So little by little, we got

acquainted, and after Abe was willing to let me approach him, I would slowly

get him to let me put a blanket on his back, then a halter over his head, and

finally the saddle and me in it. Breaking Abe in took all of four months. As

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 6 3

Red said, “You don’t want to be in a hurry to break a horse. You want to

train the horse, but you don’t want to break his spirit.” I thought it was a

great learning process, and it did away with all those foolish notions I had

about breaking in a horse. I used to also have this notion from watching

cowboy movies that you ran the horse flat out. Well, the first thing I learned

on the ranch is that you shouldn’t run a horse flat out unless you absolutely

have to. That’s because you’re on a horse all day, so he’s not going to last

two hours if you run him to death. In essence, I learned that ranching and

cowboy movies had basically nothing in common.

We did a lot of animal husbandry work at the Jowell ranch. I remem-

ber one time we were taking care of this horse’s right hind horseshoe, and

Red was tending the forge. I was holding up the horse’s foot so that the

hoof was exposed for Red to clean and trim. He was ready to size the horse-

shoe, and the horse was leaning on me. Here I was, one hundred pounds

if that, and I said, “Red, he’s leaning on me.” “Well,” he said, “push him

back. He’s just lazy and wants to rest, so just push back at him.” So I used

my butt and pushed him back. Sure enough, the horse took some of the

weight off of me. It was little things like this that helped me learn about

horses. Of course, Red had been around horses all his life. It was as if the

horses knew that he was boss and that they would not be able to get away

with anything, so they didn’t even try.

I learned another valuable lesson when I was riding Peanuts one day.

He was a bay horse, a pretty tall horse, about fifteen hands. (A hand is four

inches, so he was sixty inches from the ground to the wither, or where the

neck begins.) We were working some cattle, and the basic rule is that you

always keep the horse’s head toward the cattle, so that the horse can see

what’s going on. Like a damn fool, I pointed Peanuts’s head in the wrong

direction. He knew better, so instead of turning the way I wanted him to,

he went the way he was supposed to go. The horse was going one way and

I was going the other way. That was the first and only time I ever fell off a

horse. Red was laughing so hard, he could barely say, “Eddie, the horse

knows better than you do.” I said, “Okay, I’ll learn from him then.” I wasn’t

hurt, but I was sure embarrassed when I realized what had happened. So

Red said, “That’s probably as good a lesson as you’re ever going to have,

Eddie.”

6 4 · C H A P T E R T W O

The ranch in Quay was a government stud station for people who

couldn’t afford to have their mares bred to a good bloodline. I remember

there was a young stud about three years old, and he had never been bred

to a mare. One day, Myrl invited all the neighbors to a show. He had a grand-

stand in the corral area for showing off horses, and this would be the first

time that this horse was going to be used as a stud. First this brooding mare

was brought in, and she was of course in heat. Then this young stud was

brought in, and the lead was taken off so all he had on was the halter. I

guess in a way it was comical, because you have to understand that ranch

people take sex—animal or otherwise—as natural. So here this brooding

mare meets up with a virgin stud, and she’s looking back and saying, “What

are you waiting for ?” And the stud is not quite sure what he’s supposed to

do. He finally follows his instincts and climbs up on the mare from behind.

Meanwhile, this mare is almost bored. The stud finally gets up there and

he basically fumbles around until he finds the right place for his penis. He

does his work and when he has serviced the mare, he literally falls back-

wards, and all four legs go up in the air, and he is kind of struggling. Every-

one was laughing and having the greatest time. I think most of them knew

what was going to happen because they had probably seen this before, but

that was my first time. I will never forget that brooding mare’s look. She

just kept looking back, “What are you doing back there ? What’s taking so

long?” So for me, everything was a new adventure.

Unlike the other ranches I had worked at, the Jowell ranch had elec-

tricity because they had hooked up a wind generator to storage batteries.

The electric lights were used sparingly. They also had a refrigerator—a

kerosene Servel-type. Another thing that they had was a hot water heater.

Every Saturday night was reserved for Red and me to take our showers.

And I didn’t have to cook—Mrs. Jowell did all the cooking, and we took

our meals at the main house. There was something else that was different

at the Jowell ranch—we had two extra men living in the bunkhouse. The

government had started a new project of contouring the land so that it would

slow down the run-off water, and in some areas the rancher would build

a small tank to store the water for use in the drier seasons. While the team

was staking and marking the land for contouring, they lived in the

bunkhouse and paid Mrs. Jowell a dollar a day for their meals. These two

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 6 5

men had worked at the Boulder Dam, so in the evening, they would tell

Red and me stories about how massive the project was. They were telling

us about wiremen—these guys who went up and down the face of the dam,

wiring the reinforcement bars together before the concrete was poured in.

They were saying that wiremen made ten dollars a day, and I was think-

ing, “Holy smoke, that would be great,” without realizing then that con-

struction companies did not hire Chinese. But they also told us that it was

very dangerous work because men had been killed falling off the project.

They talked about how they had to divert the water even before they could

begin the foundation work and how cement was poured literally day and

night. It was hard for me to envision that large of a project because I had

never seen anything like that before. When I saw Boulder Dam in 1951, I

finally understood what they were talking about.

I found it fascinating because they were talking about the different phases

of the construction and the many skilled craftsmen who were needed to com-

plete such a massive project. Here again I was being exposed to people

who had been around. It made me realize how big the world was, how lit-

tle I had seen, and how many more things there were for me to experience.

At that time, I knew nothing about heavy construction work or even how

to run a tractor. When the two men were out working and we happened

to be in the same area, we would watch the engineers lay out how they

wanted the land contoured. This guy with the grader literally shaped the

land exactly the way the engineer had surveyed and laid it out. To me, it

was just fascinating that there were so many kinds of jobs, not that I nec-

essarily had to learn and do every job in the world, but on the other hand,

it was just interesting to see and hear of the many things that were being

done.

I could see six months into the Jowell ranch that I was learning as much

about ranching as I was going to, except that I could always get more expe-

rience. In other words, things were getting to be routine. So when these

two army majors came to buy horses in early 1940, and they started talk-

ing about the good life in the army, I perked up. What I didn’t realize was

that they were talking about army life from the point of view of officers.

They said that all they did was play polo. Of course, after I got into the army,

I realized officers and enlisted men were two entirely different classes of

6 6 · C H A P T E R T W O

people. But at the time, not knowing anything about the military, it

sounded like maybe here was the next adventure. They asked if I wanted

to be a houseboy, and I said, “No, I don’t think so.” Then I thought, “Holy

smoke, here’s another place where I can be around horses —I can join the

cavalry !” I decided to give it a try, not knowing that I had to sign up for a

three-year hitch, or whether I would even be accepted into the military.

A C H I N E S E C O W B O Y I N T E X A S · 6 7

T H R E E · A G O O D S O L D I E R

The U.S. Army provided me with all the basics —food, shelter, clothing, and money

on top of that. All they asked in return was that I be a good soldier. I never thought

of it in terms of what we were training for. To me, it was just another adventure.

J O I N I N G T H E N A T I O N A L G U A R D

T he next time I was in Lubbock, I went up to the army recruiting sta-

tion and asked them if I could join the cavalry. The recruiting ser-

geant said, “No, you have to take the physical and IQ tests first.” It

turned out that I was underweight, and the sergeant said, “If you’re really

serious about trying to get into the army, eat as many bananas as you can

in the morning. You’ll be the first person I will weigh. If you’re even half

a pound off, I can fudge that, but I can’t fudge a whole pound.” After I

passed all the required tests, he said, “Now we need your parents’ permis-

sion.” Back in those days, the required age was twenty-one, and I was only

seventeen. I had given my mother as a reference, so he sent a telegram to

her. A couple of days later, he called me and he said, “I’ve got your mother’s

reply and she absolutely does not want her son to be in the army.” When I

found out I couldn’t be a soldier, naturally, I was determined more than

ever to be one. The sergeant, seeing how disappointed I looked, said, “I’ll

tell you what—there’s a National Guard armory in town, and they’ll take

6 8

anyone who can walk in there, regardless of age. By November you’ll be in

the army because the National Guard will be federalized.”

I almost never forgave my mother that I didn’t have a serial number start-

ing with the number six, because that was regular army. Back then, we were

called “Boy Scouts”—that’s how the army looked upon the National

Guard. In case of an emergency, they would call the National Guard, then

the active reserves, then the inactive reserves. In fact, it was Lieutenant

Ilo B. Hard, who was the sergeant, that signed me up. He always felt guilty

about that when we were in prison camp, so he would always look after

me. Yet he shouldn’t have felt guilty, because I was willing, able, and ready

to sign up—it didn’t matter who the recruiting sergeant was.

I signed up in May, but I didn’t move to Lubbock until June. I went back

to the ranch to make sure it was okay for me to leave. I remember Red say-

ing, “I think you’re making a big mistake, but since you’ve already signed

up, it’s too late.” He could see the war was coming, but he also knew that

I was ready to move on to something else. We shook hands and I thanked

him for everything he had done for me. I regret that I never stayed in touch

with Red, because what he taught me held me in good stead. Later, when

I got hooked up with the Jacksboro boys in my unit, I got along with them

fine because I knew exactly where they were coming from—they were just

younger versions of Red.

While I was waiting for the National Guard to be mobilized, I thought

I had better find something to do, because it was just not in my nature to

sit idle. So one day when I was having lunch at the Silver Grill Café, I told

Tom Ng that I had joined the National Guard and that we weren’t going

to be mobilized until November. Tom was the only Chinese in Lubbock,

and his restaurant was downtown. I said, “I know you already have a dish-

washer, but is there any other job I can do around here ?” He said he hap-

pened to need another cook. I warned him that I was going to be gone for

two weeks of maneuvers in August, because I didn’t want to leave him in

a lurch. But he said, “Don’t worry about that; we can always manage.” That

was how I got started learning how to be a short-order cook.

The restaurant was open twenty-four hours a day. It closed only one

day a year—the Fourth of July. My hours were from 6 pm to 6 am. By

6 pm, the other cook had gotten everything ready for the daily bill of

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 6 9

fare—usually three different choices of entrées, plus vegetables, soup,

salad, and dessert. All I had to do was put it together for the waitress to

serve. Of course, during supper some guy may decide that he didn’t want

the bill of fare. If he wanted to order a steak, I had to be ready for that. I

had to also take care of the breakfast trade. A person could ask for any-

thing from dry cereal, which the waitress handled, to oatmeal, pancakes,

ham and eggs, and so on. I was paid ten dollars a week—that was pretty

good, considering that I had been making twenty dollars a month at the

ranch and restaurant work was a lot easier. Again, I was learning some-

thing new, so I found the work interesting.

During the afternoon hours when I had some free time, I would go to

the library to read the newspaper or check out books. You might say that

I was catching up on almost two years of being out of touch with the world.

Or I would go down to the National Guard armory to read the manuals

and try to learn as much as I could about artillery. As a rule, the National

Guard was very relaxed. For instance, the monthly meetings were manda-

tory and you were paid a dollar if you attended. But if you didn’t attend,

you were not considered AWOL or penalized. I found out later that where

you joined up determined what you would be doing in the army. It just so

happened that the National Guard in Lubbock was a firing battery, so we

were basically an artillery unit assigned to provide protection for the

infantry. Most of the sergeants at Lubbock had gone to college at Texas

Tech, so they were a fairly well-educated bunch.

We were drilled on the French 75–millimeter cannon at the weekly meet-

ings. There were six people in the gun crew. Two men sat near the gun,

behind the shield. The number one position was the easiest job because all

you had to do was operate the elevation of the gun and fire when ordered.

My crew chief, Sergeant John Lee, who thought I wasn’t robust enough for

anything else, figured I should be able to handle that. Number two, who

was on my left, operated the traverse. The other four men were responsi-

ble for swinging the gun around from the back, cutting the fuse and hand-

ing the shell to the loader, placing the shell in the canon, and bringing up

fresh ammunition. A sergeant and a corporal were also on hand to super-

vise the crew. We each learned whatever job we were assigned to do, and

also how to take the cannon apart and clean it. Everyone had a function,

7 0 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

and we learned to work together as a support unit for the infantry. For exam-

ple, once we knew where the infantry was and where the enemy was, it was

up to us to set up our guns in a strategic position a couple of miles behind

the infantry to give them fire support and yet not put ourselves under

counter-battery fire from the enemy.

There were three firing batteries, one service battery, and one head-

quarters battery in a battalion; two battalions made up a regiment; and

the regiment was part of a division. Lubbock was C Battery in the 1st Bat-

talion of the 131st Field Artillery Regiment and part of the 36th Division,

which was an all-Texas National Guard unit. We’re talking about 20,000

men from one state, whereas the National Guard in California was prob-

ably made up of men from two or more states. In August we went to

Louisiana for two weeks of maneuvers in order to learn how to work with

other units, how to operate as a battalion, as a regiment, a division, and

so on. It was the only time that we ever had any intensive training in the

National Guard. Whatever we had learned in the weekly training sessions

was put to good use during those two weeks in the field. And that was when

Sergeant John Lee finally decided that this little runt can handle any job

that he is assigned to do.

John’s daughter lived in San Francisco, so after the war, whenever he

came from Texas to visit her, we would get together. That was when he told

me, “Eddie, when you signed up and Lieutenant Kirshner told me that he

had found a replacement for me, he said, ‘I’ve got just the man for you,

John.’ ” But evidently, after I reported to John, he went right up to Lieu-

tenant Kirshner and said, “Lieutenant Kirshner, what am I going to do with

that little runt?” He said, “Put him to work.” John said, “He’s so small, what

can he do? Can’t you give me another man?” And Lieutenant Kirshner told

John, “Sergeant, you’ve been wanting a replacement for years. Now that

you’ve got one, you want to turn him down. Give him a job and see if he

can do it.” So that was when John decided, “Okay, I’ll give him the easy

job of number one on the gun crew.”

When we got to Louisiana, our bivouac area was laid out. It was

marked where we were to drop a tent package—the poles and whatever

else was necessary to erect a tent. We’re talking about a five-man pyramid

tent that weighed at least 100 pounds. It took two men to carry the tent

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 7 1

to each site. So Steve “Brody” Miller and I were teamed off as this pair.

Brody was six feet two and I was five feet three. We got our first load and,

of course, we were a mismatch. After we dropped the tent package off and

we were going back to the truck to pick up another load, Brody said, “Eddie,

tell you what—why don’t I just pick up the package and you just follow

me. It’s kind of difficult for the two of us to handle it, and it’s probably

just as difficult if you tried to carry it alone.” So he got to the back of the

truck and he told the loader, “Put one right there,” and he pointed to his

shoulder. He got his tent and he started moving off. I came up right behind

him, pointed to my shoulder, and told the loader, “Put one right there!”

John Lee said when he saw me staggering with that tent package right

behind Brody, he said, “From now on, I’m not going to give that kid any

more slack. I’m just going to put him to work.” As I’ve learned from work-

ing on the ranch, I never let my size stand in the way of my doing a job.

That’s not to say that I can handle anything, but anything within reason,

I’ll find a way to do it.

I caught a dose of poison oak almost immediately, because where we

were bivouacked, there was poison oak all over. I could see it as I was get-

ting ready to get off the truck. The top sergeant, Glenn Jones, came by, and

I said, “Sergeant Jones, I can’t get down there.” He said, “Why not ? Just

jump down.” I said, “That’s poison oak. I’ll catch it for sure.” “Oh,” he said,

“that won’t hurt you.” He grabbed a handful and he ate it. “See Eddie, it

can’t hurt you. Come on down.” Glenn had worked his way through col-

lege being a bouncer in a Texas honky-tonk (nightclub), so he was rough

and tough. Three days later, I was in the field hospital in hot, humid weather,

sweating away, itching away. After we got back to Lubbock, I told Glenn,

“Now will you believe me ?” He said, “I’ve never seen anyone so sensitive!”

Of course, in Louisiana we were also introduced to chiggers —a little mite.

It drinks your blood and turns into a little red dot. What you have to do is

take a safety pin, heat up the tip, and touch their rear end, because they

bore in headfirst. The rationale is if you had a red-hot poker stuck up your

butt, you would probably back up too! Then there were yellow jackets, water

moccasins, and mosquitoes. Those two weeks were hell, even though most

of the time I was in the hospital.

7 2 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

M Y F A T H E R ’ S F U N E R A L

My father died in September. I got a telegram at the Silver Grill because I

had kept the family informed whenever I made any moves. Once the fam-

ily notified me, I started looking for a way to get home. A friend of mine,

whose father ran a stockyard in Lubbock, had a load of cattle going to the

San Francisco Bay Area. He said, “We already have a handler. But you can

ride in the caboose.” So immediately, that solved my transportation prob-

lem. I told Tom that I would have to quit the Silver Grill because I wasn’t

sure what was going to happen afterwards.

I remember that the funeral was very old-fashioned and quite a depar-

ture from Pop’s progressive ways, because we had a Chinese procession

with official mourners. There was a Chinese marching band with the horns

that play that strange wailing sound, and each family member was dressed

in a white hemp cloak and a white pointed cap. We were each escorted,

and my escort was my oldest sister Mary’s husband, Tye. He had to lend

me a suit jacket because all I had were ranch clothes. We marched along

Stockton Street to the Chinese United Methodist Church at the corner of

Washington and Stockton. Then we went upstairs to the second floor of

the church, which was full with people— both relatives and business

acquaintances of my father’s —and Reverend T. T. Taam gave a long eulogy

in English and Chinese about what an outstanding citizen my father had

been, always trying to help other people. I thought it was quite a conglom-

eration of customs, because there was also the blanket ceremony, in which

the children of the deceased lay blankets made of cotton cloth over their

parent’s body to provide warmth and comfort in the next life. As the first

natural-born son, I covered my father with the first blanket. I didn’t real-

ize it then, but I took precedence over my older adopted brothers and

sisters. In other words, I was now the head of the family. From there, we

went to the Chinese cemetery for the internment, followed by a funeral meal

at the Universal Café in Chinatown. My mother told us afterwards that

instead of wearing the mourning armbands for three years, we would do it

for one year, and that would be adequate. She said, “We’re living in a mod-

ern time, and one year is sufficient to show that we are in mourning.”

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 7 3

I was not emotionally distraught. I wasn’t even overly sad that Pop was

gone, because from what I heard, he had postoperative complications.

According to my sister Jess, he had fourteen inches of his colon removed,

so I suspect that it was probably cancer. After his recovery, Pop was on a

scouting trip to look for new business opportunities, and he choked on a

grain of rice, because he was in such a hurry to eat his lunch and catch his

train. And, in the choking, the stitches broke loose and he bled internally

before they could get him to a hospital to repair the injury. So in a way,

Pop lived his life the way he wanted, because once he made up his mind

to do something, he was always in a hurry to get it done. After the funeral,

my mom suggested I go help out at the meat market in Lodi until the

National Guard got mobilized. I didn’t even know my father had a meat

market there, but I figured it was going to be for a short time only, so I

said, “Sure.”

B A S I C T R A I N I N G A T C A M P B O W I E

Two months later, we were mobilized and made officially part of the U.S.

Army. We spent the first two months training at the Lubbock fairgrounds,

because they hadn’t yet finished building Camp Bowie, which was to be

the headquarters for the 36th Division. Basic training was for twenty-two

weeks, eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week. There were three things

we learned to do—firearms, group work, and maneuvers. Brody, when he

made sergeant, decided to prove to the other sergeants that you don’t need

big men to fire a BAR—a Browning Automatic Rifle that weighed twenty-

two pounds and fired a clip of twenty rounds. So he picked four of the small-

est men in the battery, including me, and he said, “I’m going to make you

into a BAR team.” From practicing at the NRA range in Grass Valley, I was

a pretty good shot with the rifle, but I had never trained with an automatic

weapon. The maximum range for the BAR was 300 yards (about three foot-

ball fields), and there were no scopes on the rifle. We had to learn how to

estimate the wind direction, its effect on our firing, and so on. We all had

to qualify on the rifle.

The army used slings on their rifles, and Brody told us that the secret to

firing a weapon was to get used to tightening the slings on our rifles so that

7 4 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

· 7 5

F I G . 1 5 . Eddie

holding a Browning

Automatic Rifle and

a pipe in his mouth

at Camp Bowie, 1941.

F I G . 1 6 . Eddie with

his buddies John

Connelly (left) and

Joe Foster (right) at

Camp Bowie, 1941.

it literally became a part of us. When we thought it was so tight that we

couldn’t get into it, he would tighten it another notch. We were so solidly

tied in with the weapon that when it fired, we could feel the jolt of the recoil

but still maintain control of the weapon. During rainy weather, we did what

was called “dry shooting,” or sighting a target in close quarters. The target

could be as small as a half-inch ping-pong-paddle shape. The first time we

went out in the field with a twenty-round clip, we didn’t know how to con-

trol the rate of fire, and before we knew it, the twenty rounds were gone.

Once we got the hang of how to control the pressure on the trigger, we

were able to direct the fire and square ourselves just as we would with a

single-shot weapon. Firing any weapon is a matter of practice, lots of prac-

tice. I loved the smell of cordite (gunpowder) and the fact that I could han-

dle a weapon like the automatic BAR. I never thought of it as representing

power and destruction. To me, it was just pride of marksmanship.

After twenty-two weeks of training, the final graduation exercise was

to march twenty-eight miles with a full field pack, which weighed seventy-

eight pounds, while carrying a rifle, which in my case meant another

twenty-two pounds. In the army we were trained to march at a certain

pace—thirty-inch steps and 115 paces a minute—and we were expected to

maintain this pace through sand, mud, rock, uphill, downhill, and so forth.

We were also trained to swing our arms no more than six inches to the

front and three inches to the back. Everything we did in the army was to

some uniform code. When we got to the end of the march, we were sup-

posed to set up camp and get into a position to fight. Even though we

were in good shape, it taxed our stamina. But it was satisfying to know

that we could do it. Even the officers were with us all the way. Maybe their

packs were not as heavy, but they marched twenty-eight miles just like the

rest of us.

Once we got through basic training, we operated like any army unit, with

regular hours and weekends off, providing we passed Saturday-morning

inspection. Most of the guys who had cars would drive home for the week-

end. But since I didn’t have anyplace to go, I just stayed in camp, and if

someone had guard duty or KP (Kitchen Police) and wanted to get off, they

would ask me if I could take their duty. You might say I was an easy touch.

But what the hell, if the guy was close enough that he could go home, I

7 6 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

thought that he should take the opportunity. Most of them would at least

give me a couple of dollars for helping them out.

I never failed footlocker inspection, so some of the guys started asking

me, “Will you do my footlocker for Saturday inspection? I’ll give you two

bits.” I said, “I can’t guarantee that it will pass inspection, but I’ll tell you

what—if you pass inspection, I’ll take the two bits; if you don’t, I won’t

take the two bits.” It got to the point where I could do about ten lockers at

a time because it was basically a formula, and for some reason, I had the

knack for doing it just the way the army wanted it. The guys were also will-

ing to pay me to sew on their stripes when they got promoted. The stan-

dard charge was fifteen cents per chevron. When I got my PFC (Private

First Class) stripes, someone noticed that I was sewing on my chevrons with

a fair amount of ease and the word got around. Henry Drake, who was

from Lubbock and in the service battery, was the first to approach me when

he made sergeant. He said, “Eddie, will you change all the stripes on my

uniform?” We’re talking about four khaki shirts, two wool shirts, a blouse,

and an overcoat—that made sixteen chevrons times fifteen cents equals two

dollars and forty cents. There was nothing to sewing on stripes — every-

thing I had learned from my mom as a kid came into play.

What I liked about being in the army was the strong sense of cama-

raderie—we learned to work together as a team. The gun crews would have

fun competing to see who could set up the fastest and who could fire the

most accurate fire. We had time enough where some of the corporals and

the sergeants would teach us how to box and fence. Although I never made

any close friends, and we weren’t at the point like the Three Musketeers’

“One for all and all for one” kind of thing, the atmosphere was always there.

You knew that you were not alone, that someone would help you if you

needed help. It was just a nice feeling being a regular G. I. Joe and part of

the group. I know that’s a contradiction right there: I was a loner, and yet

I felt comfortable being part of the group. If there was anything that I could

do for one of the guys, even if he couldn’t pay me, I would go ahead and

do it.

I was known as a “chowhound”—I ate a lot more than the average guy,

despite my small physique. Willie Hoover, a born storyteller who later

became a top salesman for Levi Strauss after the war, used to tell a yarn

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 7 7

about how he thought Eddie was too shy to get in the chow line. He was

serving breakfast one morning— bacon, hotcakes, and eggs, and any

amount that you wanted. He kept saying, “Come on, Eddie, come get your

breakfast.” But I waited until everyone was through. Then I went up and

asked Willie for a dozen strips of bacon, half a dozen eggs, and half a dozen

hotcakes. That’s when Willie said, “Now I understand why he was waiting

at the end of the line!” That was just a normal ranch-hand breakfast for

me. Red and I used to have four sausage patties about half an inch thick,

at least three eggs, coffee and cream, and biscuits. And if we weren’t in a

big hurry, we would make pancakes as well.

“Cotton” James was always trying to make a fast buck on bets. He walked

up to me one evening and said, “Eddie, I’ve made a bet with a guy that you

can eat a box of Milky Ways.” We’re talking about twenty-four bars. He

said, “I bet five bucks —you’ve got to do it!” Well, I managed to down the

whole box, but I’m telling you, from that time on, I could never look at a

Milky Way. I just had that reputation—here was this little runt, where does

he put it ? It got to the point where I told the guys, “Will you stop making

bets, or at least make them smaller bets?”

I don’t remember any problems getting along with the guys or any

instances of racial discrimination while I was in the army. That was prob-

ably because I was so small that I posed no physical threat in any way, form,

or fashion; and I was not the sort of person who would go out of his way

to make trouble. Even before the prison-camp days, I think the guys in my

unit were already friendly to me. The camp days just reinforced it. The only

time I remember ever having trouble with anyone was with Ray— one of

the Gregg boys. It was after I had decided to transfer from C Battery to F

Battery. F Battery people were mainly from Jacksboro, which used to be

the starting point for the cattle drives, and it’s still a fairly clannish com-

munity to this day. But they accepted me in a very short time, except for

one of the Gregg twins. I was shocked when I learned that they were illit-

erate. Even people in Jacksboro didn’t think much of the family, so, my

being Chinese, he probably figured here was someone he could pick on. It

was the usual thing, calling me “Ching Chong Chinaman.” I just ignored

him. I knew he was trying to get me into a fight, but I decided, “No, we’re

not going there.” After the war, Ray committed suicide by swallowing lye.

7 8 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

The next time I saw his brother Robert, he said to me, “My brother told

me he was sorry he gave you such a hard time. He just never had a chance

to tell you himself.”

After basic training was over, I started calling my mom once a month

on payday from Brownwood. I had written ahead with a postcard saying

that I would call eight o’clock their time, which would be ten o’clock in

Texas. That way, I could just call station to station, which was the lowest

rate. I had three minutes, which was usually quite adequate for what I

wanted to do— say hello to Mom and see how she was doing. After that,

I would talk to Jess most of the time. She was always concerned about how

I was getting along. I told her that I was having a ball and that the fellows

were all easy to get along with. She always asked me, “Do you need any-

thing? Do you want us to send you anything?” I said, “No, no, the army

takes good care of me. You don’t need to send me any food, clothing, or

anything—it’s all taken care of.” That was the gist of our conversation.

With my limited Chinese, half a minute, even fifteen seconds, was enough

for Mom. After a while, I started noticing that people would gather

around the lobby just to hear this kid speak Chinese, even if it was only

for fifteen seconds.

While I was in town, I would drop by the USO (United Service Orga-

nizations) to do some reading. I didn’t play pool, and I wasn’t interested

in dancing. Sometimes I would go to the movies. The town had a choice

of at least four theaters, and most theaters at that time charged a service-

man no more than twenty-five cents. I remember I saw Gone With the Wind

there. When I got the news that my sister Mary had had her second baby,

I looked around for a baby shop. I bought the baby a gift, and the lady

wrapped it up for mailing. As I was coming out of the store, someone from

the outfit saw me and said, “Eddie, we didn’t even know you were going

around with girls, much less having a baby!” I said, “I’m not, it’s for my new

nephew.” He said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s a likely story.” My nephew Michael

told me years later that he kept that thing until it was nothing but bare

threads. It was a complete baby suit with socks and all.

Fortunately, the guys never caught me at the brothel in Brownwood,

which I frequented a few times. Apparently, when Camp Bowie was first

established, the general in charge of the division got together with the town’s

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 7 9

people and suggested that the army be allowed to set up one or two houses

of prostitution. He told the town elders that there was going to be a bunch

of young men in town, and they had a choice of either exposing their daugh-

ters to the advances of soldiers or they could give them a natural outlet. So

after some hemming and hawing, the city fathers decided it was better to

have facilities available for the soldiers. We all knew exactly where they were,

and our battery medic gave us instructions as to what precautions to take

before, after, and so on. At that time, a visit to the brothel cost about a buck

and a half. That was still quite a bit of money, considering that we were

only making thirty dollars a month. We were basically paying a day and a

half of wages for no more than ten minutes of pleasure. It was one of those

situations where you go for a specific purpose and you’re done. Of course,

payday was when they were the busiest.

For me, the biggest benefit of the army was the fact that I was paid. The

minimal was twenty-one dollars for the “yard bird”—that’s the lowest rank

in the army. But most people were drawing thirty dollars a month. Back in

those days, that was pretty good money. When I got my first stripe, I was up

to thirty-six dollars. Of course, I had to pay six dollars and fifty cents for my

insurance policy, so that left me with twenty-nine dollars and fifty cents. I

decided to send twenty-five dollars to my mother. I said to Jessie, “Tell Mom

this is not family money, and that she should spend it on herself.” When I

got home after the war, I found out that Mom had bought war bonds with

the money instead of using it on herself. She knew I would survive, because

it was in her name and mine. In a way, it made me sad, because she had never

had money of her own, and she wouldn’t even spend it on herself when I

gave it to her.

O R D E R A N D D I S C I P L I N E I N T H E A R M Y

One day I saw in the newspaper that the Air Corps was having trouble

finding belly gunners because they couldn’t find people small enough to

fit comfortably in the belly gun on the underside of the plane. So I decided

I would write a letter to the commanding general of Kelly Air Force Base.

I told him that I was five feet three, that I was trained as a BAR man, and

that I would like to volunteer to become a machine gunner. I figured, “The

8 0 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

Air Force needs belly gunners, so why not just write the commanding gen-

eral ?” And I didn’t think any more about it.

About six weeks later, I was told by Sergeant John Lee to report to First

Sergeant Glenn Jones. He said, “You’re in trouble, big trouble.” When I

got to the office tent, Sergeant Jones said, “Captain Wright wants to see

you.” So I knocked on the door. Captain Wright said, “Come in.” Sergeant

Jones said, “PFC Fung reporting as ordered.” I was standing at attention

when Captain Wright pulled out the letter that I had written to the com-

manding general, and he said, “Fung, did you write this letter ?” I looked

at it and said, “Yes, sir, I did.” And he said, “We had the course in military

courtesy, right ? You know what the chain of command is, right ?” “Well,”

I said, “I didn’t think that this had to go through the chain of command

because they’re short of belly gunners, and I thought that if I volunteered,

they would take me up on it.” He said, “Fung, if you want to volunteer,

you tell your sergeant, the sergeant tells the top sergeant, the top sergeant

tells the executive officer, the executive officer tells me, I pass it on up to

our battalion, the battalion sends it up to the division, the division sends

it to the Department of the Army, the army will forward it to the Air Corps,

and so on.” He said emphatically, “You do not write directly to the com-

manding general !” I didn’t get punished, but he said, “From now on,

remember the chain of command.”

There was only one other grim experience that I can recall from my Camp

Bowie days. Like everyone else in the division, I had to put in two days of

guard duty at the stockade, which was in a separate area from the barracks.

The guys in the stockade were not convicted of anything serious, proba-

bly AWOL, being drunk, or something of that nature. Yet they were being

treated as if they were career criminals. The first thing the sergeant told us

when we reported for duty was that if any prisoner escaped under our watch,

we would do his time. I noticed immediately that prisoners never went any-

where or did anything leisurely. They always double-timed, whether it was

going upstairs, going downstairs, going to the mess hall, or coming back

from the mess hall. Even in the mess hall, they were only allowed so many

minutes to gulp down their food. They didn’t get to sit around and relax

over a second cup of coffee. As far as I could tell, they were basically treated

like subhumans. That experience was an eye-opener for me, because I was

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 8 1

still used to the National Guard attitude, what they called the “brother-in-

law” treatment. Those two days of stockade duty was to teach us an object

lesson—if this is what you get for minor infractions, you don’t ever want

to incur any major infractions.

Aside from discipline, the army also trained us to be orderly and well-

mannered soldiers. For instance, we were taught dining-room etiquette.

Back in those days, each battery had a mess hall. There were ten tables, ten

people to a table, so it accommodated one hundred men. Each day an officer

would come and have meals with us, to be sure that the food was prepared

properly, that the officers were not getting better food than the men, and

so on. At each table there would be a noncom.1 When it was time for lunch,

we would march in and stand by our assigned tables. We didn’t sit down

until the officer who was checking the mess hall that day sat down. And

once we sat down, we didn’t automatically start reaching and grabbing for

food. We were taught to say, “Please pass the pot roast,” and the pot roast

would be handed to you. You would take a slice or two slices and then set

it down. If someone else wanted the pot roast, you would pick it up and

hand it down the table. One thing for sure, we never left anything on our

plates. We were taught, “You only take the food you want; you only take

the amount of food you want.” Meanwhile, the corporal was watching to

make sure that we were behaving like civilized people and that we were using

the silverware properly. Not that we were slobs in the first place, but they

wanted to make sure!

Everyone in the battery pulled duty as mess stewards. We were all trained

to clean the pots and pans until they were absolutely spotless. The garbage

cans were scrubbed with soap and water until you could literally eat out of

them. As punishment, we were assigned to scrub the latrine with a tooth-

brush, and we would have to go through every crevice, every nut and bolt,

until everything was shiny. That’s the reason I’ve always said in a joking

way that husbands should all go through basic training, because the army

trains you to do housework thoroughly. I used to drive Lois crazy when

we first got married. I would roll up my socks and underwear and arrange

them in little rows so that they would line up as if I were getting ready for

Saturday morning inspection. She said, “Ed, you don’t have to do that.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s real neat.” And she said, “Yes, but you don’t have to do

8 2 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

that anymore. You can just lay them in the drawer.” I’ve been out of the

army for fifty-seven years, and to this day, when I step off the sidewalk to

cross the street, I still step off on my left foot—that’s how solidly the train-

ing is grounded into you.

G O I N G O V E R S E A S

The big Louisiana maneuvers occurred in August of 1941. That was when

we had the “blue” and “red” armies fight it out in a mock battle. There were

umpires on each side, and they scored you on how accurate you were and

how many units you knocked out. We, of course, did not use real ammu-

nition. For instance, when the planes came over and dropped bombs, they

would drop five-pound sacks of flour, and the flour would mark where the

bomb hit. We didn’t always have enough tanks, so we would just use a truck

with a “Tank” sign on it. Instead of mortars, we would use stovepipes. It

was very make-believe, but the umpires were there to evaluate our perfor-

mance, and their word was law. According to Gavan Daws’s book Prison-

ers of the Japanese, one of the reasons the 2nd Battalion was picked over

the 1st Battalion to go overseas to the Philippines was because F Battery

had performed superbly during the ’41 maneuvers.

I didn’t have to go overseas with the 2nd Battalion because my battery—

C Battery—was in the 1st Battalion. But when I found out Brody was going

to be transferred to F Battery in the 2nd Battalion, I decided to go with him

because I thought he was a good sergeant and I could learn from him.2 At

that point, going overseas was not such a good idea, because we were the

first large group to go over as reinforcements for the Philippines. But after

the war, we found out that out of 105 people from C Battery, only five sur-

vived the ETO (European Theater of Operations). Then it became a pretty

good move. I could have been one of the five survivors, but the chances

are slim. You make decisions at a point in time when there’s never sufficient

data. You make a decision because it has to be made. I was just lucky.

At first we didn’t know where we were going. We were just told to pack

up and stencil everything with the code word “PLUM.” This was in Nov-

ember of 1941. All we knew was that there was a war going on in Europe and

that the U.S. would eventually be involved. There was also some guessing

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 8 3

that we might be going to Fort Sill for advanced artillery training. But when

we didn’t head east or north, but west, some guys figured that “PLUM”

meant the Philippines: “P” was for the Philippines, “LU” for Luzon, and

“M” for Manila. I found out later that when code names are assigned, they

are basically pulled out of the hat and have no meaning—it’s just a code

word. We really didn’t know where we were going, only that from Camp

Bowie we were heading west on a troop train.

The train didn’t make any stops, except to service the locomotives or

add on locomotives. I got off the train to stretch my legs every chance I

had. When we made a stop in Flagstaff, I found out from the conductor

that the train would be passing through Bakersfield on its way to San Fran-

cisco, so I called my sister Jess and I told her that the train would be com-

ing through Bakersfield in a day or so. When the train pulled in, she had

this suit box filled with cookies she had baked for me. She knew I was going

to share, and some of the guys never forgot that. Benjamin “B. D.” Fill-

more, a graduate from Texas A & M who became an agrobiologist after the

8 4 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

F I G . 1 7 . The Jacksboro boys setting up camp at the Louisiana maneuvers, August 1941.

Courtesy Luther Prunty.

war, asked me, “How did your sister know you were coming?” I said, “I

called her.” And B. D. said, “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to let

anyone know about the troop’s movements?” I said that I never gave it any

thought. We just stopped for fifteen minutes or so. I told her, “I don’t know

where we’re going or when we’re leaving, but at the next stop I’ll probably

get a chance to see Mom before I leave.”

We got to San Francisco about three days before Thanksgiving and imme-

diately took the shuttle ferry at the foot of Van Ness Avenue to Angel Island.

Once we got to Fort McDowell on the island, we knew that was going to

be our point of embarkation. We stayed there for about four or five days

while we waited for our USAT (U.S. Army Transport) and for our med-

ical records to be updated. I remember B. D. walked up to the top of the

hill, and right away he found out it was called Mount Livermore. He knew

that across the bay was Tiburon, and here I was, a San Franciscan—I knew

where Mill Valley was, but I didn’t know anything about Tiburon. B. D. is

one of these guys who just knows a lot of things or he finds out. When we

were going through the San Joaquin Valley, he would say, “There’s a cot-

ton field.” And when we passed through vineyards, and no one had ever

seen a vineyard before, B. D. would say, “Those are grapes.” That was when

I started getting an inkling about people like B. D., who not only know how

to work with their hands but also how to use their brains.

We were free to wander around the island, and one of the guys told

me there was an immigration barracks on the north side of the island. But

at the time I didn’t know anything about Chinese American history and

how the Chinese had been detained there for long periods of time because

of the Chinese Exclusion Act.3 I just knew that Ah So had come through

there because Al bribed the guard so that he could peek into the women’s

quarters to see his bride. That’s all I knew. I remember walking by the immi-

gration barracks one evening. It was all shut down and fenced in, and I

just didn’t have much curiosity at the time to try and get in. Years later, I

learned that there were Chinese poems left on the barrack walls by the

immigrants.

To me, the most impressive thing about Fort McDowell was the mess

hall. I think it could seat two thousand people at a time. I remember the

pork chops were about an inch thick and they were roasted in an oven—

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 8 5

not fried. The dining room had several stations with big steam kettles in

which the food was kept hot, and the mess stewards would serve it to us

at the different tables. For Thanksgiving dinner, it was turkey with all the

trimmings, and we had ham as well. After dinner, as we walked out of the

mess hall, we were each handed a package of candy, fresh fruit, and a cigar.

I’ll never forget that, because it was the first time I had ever had a cigar.

One thing for sure—when you’re at a duty station, the army always feeds

you well.

Everyone was allowed one day off the island as long as you weren’t on

KP. I was given a pass on the second day, and that’s when I went home to

see my mother. She asked if I would be home for Thanksgiving. I said, “I’m

not sure how long we’ll be in town.” She said, “It’ll be nice if you could

have Thanksgiving dinner with us.” She also reminded me about my twenty-

first birthday. She said that it was important for me to mark that day no

matter where I was. When I was leaving, I remember that, aside from ask-

ing me to look up my brother Pee Wee in Hawaii, she said, “Take care of

yourself.” That was the last time I would see her, because she died while I

was overseas. In retrospect, I wished I had gone home for Thanksgiving

dinner. There I was, right across the bay, with a shuttle boat that ran on a

regular basis. I could have even gotten off the island without a pass —there

were ways of doing it. But remembering what had happened the last time

I tried to bypass the chain of command, I decided, “No, I’m going to be a

good soldier and stay put.”

I heard some of the officers went to the Tonga Room at the Fairmont,

and they came back and told us about the rain that poured on the stage.

And here I was, a native San Franciscan, and I didn’t know anything about

the Fairmont Hotel. There were guys who went to the Lion’s Den, a China-

town nightclub, and I didn’t even know about places like that. Then the

fellows who were coming back from overseas on the west end of the island

told us that if we were headed for the Philippines, we were in for a treat.

And they warned us about transvestites. We thought they had to be jok-

ing, but we later found out in Singapore that some of the most beautiful

women who came out nightly to parade were men. I realized that even

though I was born and raised in San Francisco, there was a lot that I didn’t

know about my city.

8 6 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

We boarded the USAT Republic at Pier 7 on the day after Thanksgiving,

and I’ll never forget this: The Red Cross had provided each of us with a

cup of coffee while we were waiting in the assembly area, and when our

group was called to board, everyone set their cup down by their right foot

and marched off. As you looked back, all you could see was a formation of

white coffee cups. You could see the army training right there.

C R O S S I N G T H E P A C I F I C

Most of us were seasick the first few days at sea. Our living quarters got so

slick with vomit that we couldn’t walk on the floors. We were told to try

and eat some crackers or bread in order not to have the “dry heaves”—

that’s when you have nothing in your stomach but you’re still trying to throw

up. I was assigned machine gun duty on the topside eight hours a day, and

I found out that if I stayed above deck, I felt better. Basically, they were

teaching us how to train the naval guns on a target while the ship was mov-

ing. But because we weren’t at war yet, the machine guns were not loaded.

We were supposed to be on the lookout for aircraft or any other kind of

enemy movements. I just sat there wondering why we were manning an

empty gun and what we were looking for, because we didn’t see anything—

not even birds. But at least it got me topside. Before we got to Honolulu,

I had gotten my sea legs.

We arrived in Honolulu on the last day of November and shipped out

on December 1. We were only there for one day. We docked at the Aloha

Tower, just like the cruise ships, and were allowed to take turns going into

town for four or five hours at a stretch. The only thing I wanted to do

was go to the Seamans Union hall and find out if Pee Wee was in town.

That was when I found out the security was fairly tight, because I got no

information whatsoever, even though I knew the name of the ship he was

on. But that was basically all I did. Then a day out of Honolulu, we picked

up the USS Pensacola, and a convoy of about eight ships, carrying a total

of 8,000 men, formed up. That was when we were informed that we were

heading for the Philippines. We weren’t told why, but the officers figured

that we were going to be reinforcements for the Philippines.

We were moving in a southerly direction towards the Johnson Islands,

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 8 7

away from the Japanese mandate islands, where the convoy might be

detected. As we neared the Phoenix Islands, we heard over the P.A. sys-

tem that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. It didn’t make any impression

on me at the time, because I didn’t realize what that really meant. All I

knew was that everyone was excited because of the fact that we had been

attacked, and the general impression was, “Okay, so we’re at war, but we

can beat the hell out of them in a relatively short time.” I remember think-

ing that there was Frank Fujita in E Battery, who was half-Japanese but

looked completely Japanese, and me in F Battery. So here we were, one

Chinese American and one Japanese American, and the thought crossed

my mind, should the Japanese capture the battalion, what would they do

to us? Then the news came that Cavite Naval Yard had been bombed out,

so there was no point in the convoy going to the Philippines, because we

would not be able to unload. General MacArthur had even blown up some

of the ammunition so that the Japanese would not get it. We were told

to go on to Fiji. We made a brief stop in Suva for supplies, and that was

when we heard they had decided to divert the whole convoy to Brisbane,

Australia.

I remember I was loaded down with my gear and I almost fell off the

gangway when we arrived in Brisbane. I think it was Lieutenant Hard who

pulled me back so that I got off the ship safely. We stored our footlockers

in a warehouse and marched out to the area where we were going to be

bivouacked—the Ascot Race Track. Since we arrived on the 22nd of Decem-

ber, people were inviting us to their homes for Christmas. They didn’t know

us from Adam, but because we were American troops, they thought that

it would be the hospitable thing to do. There were some Chinese families

that invited me to their homes, but not having many social graces at that

time, I declined. The first time I encountered two Chinese kids speaking

English with a British accent as I was wandering around downtown, I almost

did a double take. The other memorable things I did while in Brisbane were

to buy a Dunhill pipe and to get my fill of milk shakes at the “milk bars.”

We stayed in Brisbane until December 28. Then the 2nd Battalion, along

with fifty pilots and the 26th Artillery Brigade, were put on the Bloemfontein,

a Dutch passenger-freighter chartered by the U.S. Navy, and sent to Java

to help the Dutch defend the island. We all wondered why we had been

8 8 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

picked to go to Java, especially since we were an artillery unit going in alone

without any infantry to support. Lieutenant Hard later explained to me

that it was like baseball—we were being sacrificed at bat so that the Allies

would have a little more time to prepare for war. I never did care for base-

ball, and that just made me dislike it more.

T H E B A T T L E F O R J A V A

After traveling northward by way of the Great Barrier Reef, we made our

way to Darwin as part of the USS Houston convoy. From Darwin we headed

north toward the Flores Sea around Timor Island and landed safely in

Surabaya on January 10. From there we took a train inland to Malang, a

mountain resort in East Java, and moved into Camp Singosari, next to an

airfield. Colonel Eubanks and the 19th Bombardment Group had been

forced out of the Philippines by the Japanese invasion and were in need of

help, so we did what we could to help them out: gas up the airplanes, take

care of the armament, and load .50–caliber belts and bombs. At the same

time, we began preparing for the inevitable Japanese attack. The gun crews

were very ingenious. They dug a circular pit with a small cone in the cen-

ter where the gun carriage could sit, and they dug the pit deep enough so

that they would have a steep firing angle to shoot at the aircrafts. Machine

guns were also mounted in sandbag emplacements around the airfield.

The first bombing raid occurred on the morning of February 3. A for-

mation of Japanese planes bombed the Singosari airfield, followed by Zeroes

that came in low to strafe the area. I remember I was near the guardhouse,

and there was a concrete culvert that ran by the side of the road. The first

thing I did was to duck into the culvert. And I’ll never forget this —Felepe

Rios, a pure-blooded Indian from Mexico, was standing up there shoot-

ing with this bolt-action Springfield, one shot at a time, and he said, “Eddie,

you’ve got the BAR. Get up here and help me!” I don’t know if you have

ever heard the term “buck fever,” but any hunter knows that the first time

anyone sees a buck come snorting at you, you freeze. That’s what is called

“buck fever,” and that’s what I had that first time. I don’t think I was even

scared—I just froze until Felepe yelled at me. Then I suddenly realized that

I had a job to do, so I started using my weapon, but I stayed in the culvert.

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 8 9

It was only afterwards that I realized that any bullets fired from the plane

would have gone down there like a bowling alley. But at the time, I thought

the culvert was the safest place. Although no Americans were killed in the

attack, four B-17s and two trucks were destroyed on the ground, and you

could see bomb craters all over the camp.

On the second raid, February 9, instead of making the airfield the pri-

mary target, they bombed around the camp, because that was where they

thought our anti-aircraft guns were. I was out in the cornfield adjacent to

the airfield. I had picked a spot that was not yet covered, and I had cleared

it with Brody about my mounting a .50–caliber machine gun on the back

of a jeep. Most of the other machine gunners had dug a hole and driven

the jeep into it so that they were partly hidden, but I decided in the cornfield

I was already fairly hidden. So I parked the jeep near an abandoned Dutch

house that Brody and I had moved into. When the bombing started, I ducked

into the foxhole. You could feel the bombs — boom, boom, boom. And as

each bomb fell, the concussion felt closer. Brody saw me and said, “What

are you doing?” I said, “They’re bombing us.” And he said, “Eddie, I don’t

know how long this war is going to last, but I’ve trained you to be a machine

gunner and a BAR man. You have a job to do, and you can’t do it down

there in the foxhole.” So he coaxed me out like a little puppy. And he said,

“Look, Eddie, don’t worry about getting killed or even getting hurt. You

can’t do your job if you’re thinking about that. Maybe you’ll get hurt, and

maybe you won’t. The important thing is that you’ve got to do your job.”

So I decided, “Okay, the next time they come at us, I’m just going to stand

up there and try to hit back.”

I was waiting at the gun, and when this Zero started to straighten and

run toward me, that was when I started shooting. I thought like a damn

fool that I could swing the gun around fast enough that I could get him

when he was climbing out the other way. But it doesn’t work that way—

you’re lucky if you can get one shot at him, because he’s diving down at

you at 180 miles an hour. I don’t think I ever shot any of them down, but

I shot nose-to-nose whenever I had the chance. Now, Willie Hoover would

say anyone in his right mind would duck if he saw someone shooting at

him. But I’m a machine gunner—I’m supposed to shoot back. After the

bombers flew away, I noticed there were big pieces of shrapnel all over the

9 0 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

place. Like a damn fool, I touched a piece, and it was red hot. Then I real-

ized how dangerous shrapnel is because of the jagged edges. I thought, “Holy

smoke, that thing could cut your head right off !”

After the first two raids, it seemed like they came at closer intervals. There

were at least three more raids in the next ten days before we were ordered

to leave Singosari to go defend the west end of the island. Now, Willie

Hoover was exaggerating when he said there wasn’t any corn left in the field

by the time I finished my job.4 It was usually a combination raid— bomb-

ing and strafing. If the escorting Zeroes don’t see any threat to the bombers,

they will take their time to strafe while the bombers are dropping the bombs.

Like Brody said, when soldiers are trained to do something, they just do it.

With news that the Japanese invasion was eminent, Colonel Eubanks

received orders from Washington to begin evacuating personnel and

equipment and fly out to Australia. He offered to forgo the equipment and

fly all the troops out, but Colonel Tharp turned it down because our orders

were to stay and defend Java under the command of the Dutch army. Sure

enough, on March 1, seven Japanese divisions invaded both sides of the

island. We were instructed to go to the west end of the island and provide

support for the Australian troops there. The three cities we were told to

defend were Batavia (now Jakarta), Bandung, and Surabaya. At all costs we

were to stop the Japanese advance at Buitenzorg and hold them at the

Leuwiliang River, because once they crossed that river, they would have a

clear shot at Batavia, the capital of the East Indies.

I was the machine gunner assigned to protect Lieutenant Stensland, the

forward observer for the artillery. It was his job to scout the enemy’s posi-

tion and telephone the information back to our guns. Well, he was so close

to the enemy that we were being mortared. I kept trying to tell “the Bear”—

that’s the nickname we gave him because he was built like one—to move

back. He said, “Not yet, not yet! Let me get some more fire in.” Our guns

were hitting targets on the west side of the river, and the Japanese were

replying with mortars and infantry guns. Then we fired back in the direc-

tion that we thought the mortars were coming from. We never made inti-

mate contact with the Japanese—it was just firing contact. Pretty soon, he

said, “Okay, we got to move back,” because the Japanese were coming across

the Leuwiliang River.

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 9 1

It was the largest amphibious operation at this point of the war, and the

Allied forces on the island were no match. After two days of fighting the

Japanese, we began retreating east towards Bandung. That was when we

found out that they had landed forces in the middle of the island as well.

We were told to move into the mountain country south of Bandung. It was

monsoon season and there was heavy rain. I remember we hid in the rub-

ber plantation whenever the Japanese bombed us. Then on March 8, we

received news that the Dutch had capitulated, and all troops were ordered

to surrender. Judging further resistance useless, the British, Australian, and

American forces joined in the formal surrender at Bandung on March 12.

We, of course, were disappointed and would rather have fought to the bit-

ter end. But I can understand the attitude of the Dutch: “Let’s not destroy

any more than we have to, because after the war, we’re going to get it back

anyway.” So that was why Bandung was declared an open city, meaning

that the Japanese were not to bomb it. What they didn’t know was that FDR

had no intention of letting the colonies fall back into the same hands. I

remember the general feeling was that we had gotten the short end of the

stick. Even though we didn’t have anything to do with the decision to sur-

render, we still had this feeling that we hadn’t done a good enough job.

And that hurt as much as anything else.

Practically speaking, the Allies could not have won this battle or held on

to the island. The advantage and disadvantage of an island is that you can

only run so far before you have to start swimming. We were all put under

Dutch command, and that was one of the reasons why we had so much

trouble, because communication was lousy and we had never worked

together before. Once we found out about the Battle of the Java Sea, when

just about the entire Asiatic fleet was damaged or sunk, we knew that we

no longer had sea control. Then, of course, we had never had air control

to begin with. On top of that, we were running short on equipment and

grossly outnumbered. So we knew there was nothing to stop the Japanese

unless they decided to bypass Java, which was unlikely, because their plan

had always been to take Malaya down to Java and wage a separate cam-

paign in the Philippines.

Again, I was lucky. Out of a battalion of 500– odd people, we lost only

four men during the eight days of fighting. That’s not bad, especially when

9 2 · C H A P T E R T H R E E

compared to the casualties of the USS Houston. The ship had been informed

by the Dutch that the Sunda Strait was clear and that they could make a

run for it. Instead, they met up with the Japanese invasion fleet and got

trapped. They lost two-thirds of their complement—643 out of 1,011 men

died trying to get through the Sunda Strait. So we realized that the navy

didn’t always have it so good. Because of my Chinese background, I was

anticipating the worst because I had heard about the Rape of Nanking and

all the atrocities that the Japanese had committed in China.5 I knew what

the Japanese were capable of, and that was what bothered me the most. But

all I could do was wait and see.

A G O O D S O L D I E R · 9 3

9 4

U.S.S.R

MONGOLIA

CHINA

BURMA

THAILAND

FRENCH INDO- CHINA

PHILIPPINES

KOREA

Tokyo.

Sea of

Japan

.. Hiroshima Nagasaki

Iwo JimaOkinawa

FormosaHong Kong

.

.Shanghai. Nanking

Guangdong Prov.

Saipan Tinian Guam

East China Sea

.Manila Corregidor

Mindanao. Sandakan

South China Sea

NEW GUINEA

AUSTRALIA

. Darwin

Borneo Celebes

Flores Sea

Indian Ocean

.Rangoon . .

. Saigon

Bangkok.

MALAYA

.Singapore Changi

.. .Batavia Bandung

Malang

. Surabaya

Dutch East Indies

Sunda Strait

Sumatra

INDIA

Timor

Equator

1000 miles

1000 kilometers

MANCHURIA

Java

Bangkok.Burma- Siam

Railroad

Thanbyuzayat

.

. Moulmein.. Rangoon

Ban Pong

9 5

JAPAN

Aleut ian Is

land s

Midway Is.

HAWAII Honolulu

Pearl Harbor

Wake Is.

Marshall Islands

Gilbert Islands

Saipan Tinian Guam

Caroline Islands

.Brisbane

Soloman Islands

Guadalcanal

Phoenix Islands

Johnston Atoll

Pacific Ocean

from San

Francisco

Fiji Islands.

Suva

G reatB

arrier Reef

EDDIE’S ROUTE IN THE PACIFIC WAR

Equator

F O U R · A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E

Becoming a POW survivor is a learning process. When you’re taken, you don’t

know anything about the enemy; you don’t know what they are going to do; and

what you anticipate may never happen or it may be worse than you could ever

imagine. The thing is —there’s no way of knowing until you’re confronted with it.

When things got bad, we used to say to one another, “God, it can’t get any worse

than this,” but then it did. So we got to the point where we said, “Okay, there are

no more surprises. It can only get worse.” That was when we learned to take it one

day at a time.

G A R O E T R A C E T R A C K

A fter the surrender we had orders from the Japanese to move to the

Garoet Race Track, an area near Bandung, and we set up a bivouac

there. For about three weeks we didn’t see a single Japanese. It was

almost like being in fantasyland—we had capitulated to an enemy, but we

had yet to see them. Some prisoners, wanting to escape, went to Tjilatjap

on the southern side of the island, hoping to find a native sailing vessel.

There they saw the Langley, an old aircraft carrier coming in with some

cargo, sunk by the Japanese within sight of land. Even if they could get out

to sea, they would have been detected by the Japanese Air Force. We had

no air superiority; we had no sea superiority. The closest place to run to

was Australia—that’s at least 1,200 miles of open sea!

9 6

While we waited for further orders from the Japanese, Sergeant Baker

told us that we were running low on supplies. He said, “If you should run

across any food, we can sure use it.” So I decided to go into town and get

in touch with some of the Chinese merchants. Even though my Chinese

was pretty bad, I made them understand that we were interested in buy-

ing any canned goods they wanted to sell. A few merchants got together,

filled up a cart, and came out to the racetrack. Baker bought everything

they had. I went back the following night because someone wanted to know

if they had any phonograph records for the record player we had. The clos-

est thing I could think of calling it was cheong dip. But they didn’t know

what I was talking about, and I didn’t see anything resembling one. While

I was there, they offered me tea and cookies, and one of them said, “You

don’t want to be taken by the Japanese. Why don’t you let us hide you ?

Surely one more Chinese in the community wouldn’t be noticed.” I

decided after thinking it over that it wasn’t such a good idea because my

Chinese wasn’t that good, and I didn’t speak Dutch or Malayan. I knew

instinctively that if push came to shove, these people would probably give

me up in order to protect their own family. I certainly would not want to

put any family in jeopardy. And if I were going to be in jeopardy, I might

as well stay with my own group—people I could trust and relate to.

I’ll never forget this incident that happened in Garoet because it actu-

ally came in handy later on. This old lady, who was in her sixties and no

more than four feet six and eighty pounds, had two heavy baskets on a

“yo-ho” pole1 with things that she wanted to sell. Brody was the first to

ask if he could try carrying the load on the “yo-ho” pole. She finally under-

stood what Brody wanted and told him to go ahead. So Brody put the pole

on his shoulder and he tried picking up the load. At first, he couldn’t find

the center point, so the baskets would tip either at the front or back. Finally,

he found the right point and he tried picking up the two baskets. He looked

at us and he said, “You will not believe how heavy these two baskets are!”

So, just to satisfy his own curiosity, he laid the pole down, squatted down,

put his hands around one of the baskets, and tried to lift it. He could, but

with difficulty. Then we all played around trying to lift the load with the

“yo-ho” pole. Meanwhile, this old lady was standing by the side watching

us. When we were all through trying, she picked up the pole, put it on her

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 9 7

shoulders, shrugged a little just to get comfortable, picked up the load, and

went down the road giggling to herself all the way until we couldn’t hear

her anymore.

T A N J O N G P R I O K

About three weeks later, the Japanese ordered us to move our camp to Tan-

jong Priok on the outskirts of Batavia. When we got there, we thought it

was pretty primitive. We were housed in open huts, at least 100 people to

a hut, so it was very crowded. The entire camp must have had at least a

couple of thousand prisoners —British, Dutch, and American. And there

were Gurkhas from Nepal, because I remember how gutsy they were. They

did not request, they demanded wheat flour from the Japanese to make cha-

pati because they would not eat rice. They told the Japanese, “You’ve got

to give us wheat to make chapati.” And I thought to myself, “Holy smoke!

Everyone else is afraid to speak up at all, and here these guys, because of

their religious background, are demanding what they feel is right and due

them.” And they got it! Also at that camp was a fellow from India who

claimed that he spoke twenty-six languages fluently. Anyone who spoke

any language at all would try him out, and no one could stump him. To

me, that was incredible! It was just an eye-opener, meeting people from all

walks of life and all nationalities, including Welsh, Scots, New Zealanders,

and South Africans.

Some of the guys at that point still had this mentality: “If it isn’t steak

and potatoes, it’s not a meal.” Or they would refuse to eat the rice because

rice was associated with coolies. Of course, the British, who were doing the

cooking, didn’t know how to cook it right. They used fifty-gallon drums,

so the rice would be burnt on the bottom, pretty well done in the middle,

and completely undone on top. Our basic meal was watery rice with very

little meat and mostly vegetables. Others refused to eat what was given out

because they still had money to buy canned food. But since I had been raised

on a lean diet of rice and vegetables, I didn’t have any problems with it.

Even so, I decided that I was going to scrounge everything that was possi-

ble, whenever possible. When they gave out some cheese that was not com-

pletely cured, the guys were going to throw it away. That was when I said,

9 8 · C H A P T E R F O U R

“If you’re going to throw it away, you throw it here.” I put it on my mos-

quito netting and just hung it up to dry. Even at that point, I realized that

food was going to be the most important thing in my life.

We were put to work on the docks, unloading supplies onto trucks or

loading loot bound for Japan. We started out with oil drums. They had to

be around sixty gallons or so, much larger than our usual forty-five gallon

drums. It was hard work and dangerous, because if the drums got away

from you, they could roll over your toes or crush fingers and whatnot. We

also unloaded things like 100–kilo bags of sugar and rice. We didn’t real-

ize that in the tropics, everything was either bagged in 50 or 100 kilos. When

the Japanese said, “One man, one,” it just blew our minds. It took four men

to put it up on someone’s back, but one man was supposed to carry it. Even

my big Texan friends, who were used to hard work, were absolutely

shocked by the idea of carrying 220 pounds on their backs. But from past

experience working on the ranch, I knew that if I just put my mind to it,

any job could be done.

When I got my first bag, I literally had to manhandle it up to the ware-

house and stack it. Then on the way back, I noticed the Javanese stevedores

were not much bigger than me. I thought, “If they can do it, there must be

a way I can do it too.” So I watched them until I figured it out. On my next

load, I tried it, and it worked. I came back and told the fellows what the

trick was. They said, “Eddie, it can’t be that simple.” I said, “I think it is.”

But they weren’t willing to try it. Then on my second, third, and fourth

load, I began to refine it. Here’s the trick: Remember that incident in Garoet

with the old lady and the “yo-ho” pole ? Well, she didn’t really walk with

that load; she shuffled. You see, the “yo-ho” pole is tapered from the cen-

ter to the end very much like a bow, so there’s springiness to it. If there

were 100 pounds in each of the two baskets, when you get the load com-

pletely on your shoulder, you would be carrying 200 pounds, but you’re

not, because as soon as you pick it up, it starts to oscillate. The trick is when

the oscillation is upward, you step forward; when it’s down, you’re already

set in your step. That’s why you see this little shuffle—it’s in rhythm with

the oscillation—you’re basically changing dead weight to live weight. Now,

with a 100–kilo bag on your back, what you do is slightly hunch over and

find a rhythm to move forward so that it no longer just bears down directly

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 9 9

on you. You have to keep moving ahead of the direct load, otherwise the

bag will drive you into the ground. I’ll never forget at one Lost Battalion

reunion, my wife Lois was talking to Captain Wright, who had been our

battery commander, and he said, “Mrs. Fung, the first time I ever saw Eddie

carrying a sack of rice, it reminded me of a little brown rat with a big load

on his back.”

Difficult as the work was, we really didn’t have much choice but to do

it. The first time Lieutenant Ilo Hard went out with the work detail and

found out that we were to load and unload Japanese ships, he got up on

his hind legs and said, “It’s against the Geneva Conventions to do military

work.” Of course, that didn’t matter, because the Japanese government

never ratified the Geneva Conventions. The Japanese major, who happened

to speak English, told Ilo, “My orders are to load and unload these ships.

You’re the only help I have. If you won’t work, then you’re of no use to

us.” He had two machine guns set up, and he said, “I’ll give you five min-

utes to decide.” Ilo decided that it was better to go ahead and do the work

than to take the chance of killing off a work detail of 100 men, because it

was definitely a threat.

When I was with a large group of people, I didn’t stand out as a Chi-

nese. It was only when I went out with the small working parties that a Japa-

nese guard might notice all of a sudden, “My god, there’s a Chinese!” There

were three ways that the Japanese dealt with me on these work details. One

way, they would treat me like any ordinary American soldier. The other

way would be mild curiosity—“What are you ?” The third way was the one

that I came to fear the most—the guy would come up to me and beat the

hell out of me. The first time that happened, I was just doing my job when

all of a sudden I felt a fist bash into my head. After it was over, I found out

from his friend that they had both been in China and apparently he didn’t

like the Chinese. This other guy wasn’t affected the same way, so I never

knew how a Japanese was going to react to me. But there was no way to

hide myself, so I just tried to stay away from them and to be as inconspic-

uous as possible. My worst fears —that I would be tortured and killed

because I was Chinese—were unfounded. I realized later that as much as

the Japanese hated the Chinese, they hated the white man even more for

having colonized and taken over parts of Asia. So, out of revenge and to

1 0 0 · C H A P T E R F O U R

prove their superiority, they took great pleasure in tormenting and bring-

ing their white captives to their knees.

B I C Y C L E C A M P

In May we moved from Tanjong Priok to Bicycle Camp in the center of

Batavia. We had to walk quite a distance with all our gear. It was hot, and

my main concern was, “Boy, stay on your feet!” As we trudged along, people

started throwing things away to lighten their load, and I would pick them

up— shirts, shoes, and things like that. That was the first time I used the

technique of psyching myself to keep going. In the beginning, when I started

tiring, I would say, “Just another 100 yards before you think about throw-

ing something away.” Then as I reached 100 yards, I would psyche myself

for another 100 yards. And when 100 yards seemed too great a distance,

then I would say 50 yards. I did that for several cycles. Then when that got

pretty tiring, I would cut it down to 10 yards. I just kept doing this to pump

myself up. Finally, I saw the gates to the camp and I knew we had arrived.

Compared to Tanjong Priok, Bicycle Camp was a Hilton. It had once

been a Dutch military compound for the 10th Battalion, a bicycle unit, so

the POWs nicknamed it Bicycle Camp. According to Van Waterford’s book

Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, we received better treatment at

this camp because the Japanese wanted to fatten us up before sending us

to Japan or Burma to do slave labor. There were over 2,000 British, Dutch,

Australian, and American prisoners, and we were kept in segregated quar-

ters, four men to a cubicle. A barbed wire fence enclosed the camp, and

there were guards on duty at the guardhouse at all times. So right off the

bat we realized that this was going to be somewhat of a formal camp. We

had to check in and check out, and all prisoners, regardless of rank, had to

salute the guards with a bow whenever we passed the guardhouse.

The most significant event at Bicycle Camp occurred on the Fourth of

July, when all the prisoners were forced to sign the oath of allegiance to

the Imperial Japanese Army. A couple of weeks before, they had rounded

up all the Australian and American officers, interrogated them, and told

them that they were going to have to sign the oath. Brigadier Blackburn,

the Australian senior officer in charge, said, “There’s no way we’re going

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 0 1

to sign an oath of allegiance to the enemy.” After about two weeks of this,

the Japanese said, “Either you sign or we start shooting one officer a day.”

Well, when you think about it, if Blackburn had decided to call their bluff,

and the Japanese shot one officer, there would be no turning back on either

side. So Blackburn decided to save face. He told the Japanese, “Okay, the

enlisted men will sign first. After they sign, then the officers will sign.” The

word was that he would take full responsibility if there were any reper-

cussions after the war. So our official date of becoming a part of the Impe-

rial Japanese Army was July 4, 1942.

The oath basically said that we had enlisted in their army and that we

would obey their rules and promise not to escape. Of course, as Texans, if

we say we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it. So whatever we

had been coerced to sign, like it or not, our word had been put down. When

people asked us later what that meant, we would jokingly say, “Well, when

the Japanese were winning, we went to their side. When they were losing,

we came back. We’re not crazy—we know which side to be on.” Now,

whether we would have fought on the Japanese side if they had put guns

in our hands cannot be answered easily. Let me give you an example: I have

at home what I call a getaway bag. It has can rations for about a week, water,

batteries, and a transistor radio. After a good shake one time, my wife said,

“Ed, you’ll share that getaway bag with me, won’t you ?” I looked at her

and I said, “Lois, the stock answer is, ‘Yes, I will share it with you.’ But I’ll

tell you right now, the truth of the matter is, I don’t know what I would

do. If I were confronted with a situation where we could live together for

one week or I could live on the same rations and stretch it to a month, if

that’s my choice, I can only tell you at the time when I have to make it.”

Bicycle Camp was where we first came into contact with the USS Hous-

ton survivors. The way we marched in with our barrack bags and in uni-

form, they thought we were going to liberate them! They were housed in

barracks across from us, and one of the guys went visiting and found out

these guys were almost bare-assed naked. When they had been forced to

jump off the sinking ship, they had had on only skivvies (T-shirts), under-

wear, and a lot of them didn’t even have that. Most of us still had a full

barracks bag of clothes and shoes, so without anyone telling us what to do,

we went over there, found guys our size, and just gave them whatever they

1 0 2 · C H A P T E R F O U R

needed. We got down to one suit of khakis, two extra pairs of underwear,

and two pairs of socks to keep for ourselves. Sam McMaster, who was an

old China sailor, and two of the Chinese stewards were about my size, so

I just left stuff for them in their cubicle. That was the way it was right from

the beginning—no officers were involved; no one had to say a word.

Bicycle Camp was also where I got slapped for the first time. There were

five Chinese stewards from the Houston—all Northerners who spoke Man-

darin, whereas I spoke Cantonese—and I was visiting them one day when

a Japanese guard came by. We all stood up and bowed. All of a sudden this

guard started working me over something terrible. I couldn’t understand

a word he was saying and I couldn’t understand why he was slapping me

around. After he got through, he gave me a contemptuous look and walked

away. I was crying; I was mad; and I felt humiliated as hell. Finally, Marco

Su, one of the Chinese stewards, told me, “He was trying to be friendly,

and he was speaking to you in Mandarin. The more he tried to talk to you,

the more you just stood there not saying a word. He thought that you were

trying to snub him. So he just got mad and started beating on you, and the

more he beat you, the madder he got.”

The bruises didn’t hurt as much as the feeling of humiliation. To show

you how bad I felt, I didn’t even draw my food that evening. When Cor-

poral Jack Cellum brought it back to me, I said, “I don’t want it, Jack, I’m

not up to it.” I couldn’t reconcile how I was going to handle this —you slap

a child, but you don’t slap a grown man. Back in the old days, a man might

slap you with a glove and you would know that means you’re going to have

a duel. Or sure, go ahead and punch a guy if you want, but slap a guy? That’s

not a manly thing to do. That just never made sense to us until we realized

that was exactly what they did to each other— corporal punishment was a

way of life in the Japanese army.

I should have learned my lesson, but I didn’t, because soon after, I got

into a fight with one of the guards over a cigarette lighter. I had bought it

at the Camp Bowie post exchange and it had the 131st Field Artillery insignia

on the side. I think it cost me a buck and a quarter. It was the last of my

money and I decided I was going to have something to show for that month’s

paycheck. Other than that, I had no other sentimental value attached to it.

Well, I was lighting my pipe and putting the lighter away when one of the

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 0 3

guards walked by and saw me with it. He wanted to see it, so I showed it to

him. The typical scenario is: If a Japanese liked something, he would point

to his nose and say, “You presento me.” I shook my head and said, “No.”

He almost yelled, “You presento to me!” I said, “No!” The madder he got,

the more stubborn I got. I held out my hand for the lighter and he kept say-

ing, “Presento!” I kept saying, “No!” So, finally, he slapped it in my hand

and punched me down. He was not trying to kill me; he was just mad. But

by that time, I had the lighter clenched in my fist. And I figured, “If you’re

going to get this, I’m going to be dead and you’re going to have to pry open

my fingers.” The irony of it all was that I got through the camps with the

lighter only to have it stolen from me on the plane coming home. I almost

laughed when I discovered it was gone, because I had fought with my life to

keep it. But by that time, we had been liberated and it didn’t matter any more.

The food at Bicycle Camp was good because the Chinese mess stew-

ards were doing the cooking. For instance, instead of having plain rice,

we might have fried rice. And they always tried to make things like stew

look and taste more palatable. The portions were adequate, and we were

still able to purchase food at the canteen— canned goods, eggs, fruit, and

so on. Everyone who went out on work parties was given money by the

officers to buy food for the camp. The food was put in a storeroom, sup-

posedly to be shared with everyone, but we never got any of it. There were

stories about where the money came from. Supposedly, Lieutenant Stens-

land was on a mission with a quarter of a million dollars from General

MacArthur to buy food and charter some vessels for the Philippines. When

that became impossible, he decided to attach himself to our unit and turn

the money over to a senior officer. There was a special officers’ mess and,

of course, we knew what they were eating because the Chinese stewards

were the cooks. So there was resentment that the officers had money and

with the money they were buying extra foodstuff for themselves. Rank has

its privileges, but we never agreed with that. We thought that we were sup-

posed to be in this together. As much as possible, we helped each other

out in the group, and, despite the resentment, when the officers got into

trouble, we helped them out too. But we never got over the fact that they

felt they were different and entitled.

We were assigned to go out on work parties. It was hard work, but the

1 0 4 · C H A P T E R F O U R

hours were reasonable. For instance, we might be put to work mixing cement

or building a project by hand. For most of us, just being outside the camp

and having the opportunity to scrounge were incentives enough. The guards

weren’t too strict about our scrounging as long as we weren’t too flagrant.

That was when I started developing almost a radar about whether I could

get away with more or less that day. Most of the Australians wore the bush

hats, and they would stuff things under their hats. Then, of course, when

we stole things like copper wire, we would wind it around our bodies. It

was always food that I was after. There was a term called “crotching”—that

was the favorite place to hide things — so you couldn’t steal a lot at any one

time. If you were really brave, you would bring in two cans on your per-

son. Captain Cates, who was a high school chemistry teacher, said to us

one day, “While you guys are out on work details, if you come across any

acetic acid, try to get me a small bottle.” So we asked him, “Is it danger-

ous?” He said, “Oh, no. You can make vinegar out of it—two percent solu-

tion of acetic acid is vinegar.” I remember thinking, “That’s like magic!”

Once in a while we would get specific requests like that, but usually we just

scrounged whatever wasn’t nailed down.

There were three or four of us who stood out as being natural scroungers.

We got together one day and asked ourselves, “What is it in our background

that makes us that way?” We never came up with a satisfactory answer. Take,

for instance, “Pack Rat” McCone—that was his nickname, so you can imag-

ine the stuff that he would pick up—he was the son of a senator in Mon-

tana. One time he brought in two or three Number Ten cans of fruit and

vegetables. And we all asked, “How did you do that, Pack Rat ?” To show

you how ingenious Pack Rat was: When we got to Changi, where the British

had been for decades but still there were no running showers, within the

first day Pack Rat had rigged up a hand pump, showerhead, and electric

lights. We asked him where he had gotten the stuff. And he said, “Oh, I got

it from here somewhere.” He was absolutely the best scrounger of the Amer-

ican group. There was universal admiration for Pack Rat because he did it

not to benefit himself but everyone else.

Another interesting guy I got to know at Bicycle Camp was John Wise-

cup, a big marine corporal. He was quite an artist. He used to draw cartoons

depicting life in Bicycle Camp, and I’ll never forget his signature. He would

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 0 5

draw a cup like a wine glass and he would put “Wise” inside it—Wisecup.

He was known for his caricatures of army and navy officers. Colonel Searle,

who was a senior officer with the army, came all the way over to the navy

barracks to see Wisecup one day. People were saying, “Wisecup, you’re in

big trouble, the colonel’s looking for you.” Colonel Searle went right up to

him and said, “I want to congratulate you on catching my likeness, and may

I keep the original?” Wisecup was one of these characters you never forgot.

There were all kinds of activities going on in camp when we weren’t out

working. Guys were making models of aircrafts and warships like the Hous-

ton. Preston “P. E.” Stone, a truck driver, made a Model A engine with four

cylinders, and it actually worked in the sense that you could move the parts

around. Jack Kenner, who owned the only portable radio in the American

group, was a little more ambitious: He made a Ford V-8 engine. I had a

small hand telescope, which I somehow thought would come in handy when

I got into the army, and B. D. Fillmore used the lenses to make a micro-

scope. The Australians were very adept at using plastic glass to make things,

like watch crystals, and they would hammer out aluminum into all kinds

of artistic motifs. Others made jewelry, woven belts, woodcuts, and ash-

trays. I made a cribbage board, and I learned to play chess and bridge by

watching others play.

The Australians would compete with the Americans to see who could

put on the best camp show. That was when we realized what talents we had

among us: comedians, singers, musicians, actors, impersonators, and so on.

I’ll never forget the show that Tom “Tex” McFarland, a marine who later

became a water commissioner in Texas, put on. This navy lieutenant by the

name of Hamlin recited all of “Dangerous Dan McGrew” from memory.

He must have been up there on stage for at least half an hour reciting it—

I thought that was pretty amazing ! But the highlight of the show was a neon

sign that the stage people had rigged up: “When in a fog, light up your wog.”

To appreciate this, you have to understand that the only tobacco available

in the camp was this crude native weed we called “wog,” a word used for

anything that was native. It may sound like a small thing, but it didn’t take

much for us to get enjoyment out of it. In fact, one of the worst punish-

ments inflicted on us was when the Japanese camp commandant got upset

over some trivial matter and forbade any more camp shows.

1 0 6 · C H A P T E R F O U R

Then, in early October, word came down that we were going to leave

Bicycle Camp and go to Changi on the island of Singapore. Although we

didn’t know it then, the Japanese had decided that we were going to be used

as labor to help build the Burma-Siam railroad. We were told that we could

bring anything we wanted. “You’re going to a great area,” the Japanese said.

Some of us were still optimistic enough to believe that, so we didn’t think

anything about it. We obediently marched down to the docks and got on

the ship, King Kong Maru.

H E L L S H I P S

Have you ever heard the term “hellship?”2 I swear, the Japanese can squeeze

more men into a confined space than anyone in the world. In our case, 191

of us were squeezed into a ship’s hold that measured no more than thirty

by thirty feet. We could see right away that we were not going to be able to

all sit down at the same time. One of the first things we did was to pile our

gear around the edges of the hold, so that we would have as much room

as possible. The second thing we did was to set aside an area for the people

who were sick. The third thing was to designate a latrine area for those who

couldn’t make it up to the latrine. Then people decided among themselves

who was going to sit down, who was going to lie down, and so on. Then

we just took turns.

The Japanese rice they fed us was meager and water was scarce. Fortu-

nately, when we found out that we were going to be on a ship for three

days, the camp gave each of us three days of rations and we filled up our

canteens. I found out that there were usually steam lines on the ship that

leaked water, and what I could do was to hold my canteen under the drip

to get more water if I needed it. So I did my reconnaissance work as soon

as we got on board the ship. As I was looking around for steam pipes, I

spotted a pile of Bermuda onions in the passageway, so I took several. At

that point, food wasn’t the foremost thing since we had rations with us.

On the other hand, onions were fresh vegetables, and these were the sweet

variety. I remember eating them like apples, even though I wouldn’t think

of doing that now. But the worst was yet to come.

After a brief stay in Changi, we were put on another ship—the

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 0 7

Mayebassi—and I will never forget this. We were in the hold of that ship for

three whole days without moving. I don’t remember how hot the temper-

atures got, but the humidity had to be 200 percent! We were below the water-

line, toward the stern end of the ship, and there was no wind chute to bring

in any ventilation. The hold had hauled horses previously, because there was

horse manure all over. The load before that had to be rice, because there

was fermented rice below the horse manure. There we were— damn near

200 of us — stuffed in that hold. The feeling of claustrophobia and heat was

intense. We were sweating until we were dry and dehydrated. Water was in

short supply, and I broke out in a heat rash. I swore to God if I ever got out

of there, I would never complain about heat again! Of course, it was all due

to bureaucratic thinking. They thought that they would be underway any-

time, so why unload and reload? What the hell, we’re only prisoners!

Once we got underway and we could feel some air, it was a blessing. We

1 0 8 · C H A P T E R F O U R

F I G . 1 8 . A N D 1 9 .

Front and back of

the only postcard

Eddie was able to

send home from

Changi in 1942.

Prisoners were

allowed to write no

more than twenty-

five words.

didn’t care where we were going as long as we were moving. The rest of

the trip was rather uneventful, except that more people came down with

dysentery. The latrine was about three decks up, so they couldn’t make it

up there in the first place, and if they did, they would have had to stand in

line to use the outdoor facilities that had been rigged up for us. It was basi-

cally a “three holer” plank hung over the side of the ship. The hold was

filthy beyond description. Lucky for me, I was constipated the whole time

and never had to use the latrine.

M O U L M E I N P R I S O N

When we got to Rangoon, they trans-shipped us on a barge to get to Moul-

mein. At that point I got scared, because I had heard stories about how the

Japanese had tied a bunch of Chinese together with barbed wire, transported

them out to sea on barges, and just literally dumped them overboard. I was

thinking to myself, “My god, they’re putting us on barges! What’s going to

happen next ?” As it turned out, nothing happened. Rather, it was the most

pleasant part of the trip, because we were on an open barge that had gravel

on top of it, and we were allowed to lie on top of the gravel. It was fairly

clean and dry, and the Japanese gave us little packets of sweet cookies and

hard candy. We thought that was pretty darn good, almost like having a

picnic. I couldn’t help but think of Kipling’s poem “Road to Mandalay”:

“By the Moulmein pagoda, looking eastward to the sea.”

When we arrived at Moulmein prison—a real “gaol,” as the Brits called

it—they put us in a large cell. We could hear prisoners being worked over—

they were screaming day and night— but we weren’t subjected to any tor-

ture. We later found out we were in the leper ward. Being that Chinese and

leprosy have never been on good terms, for the next ten years I sweated it

out because Lois told me the incubation period was that long. The way we

found out was through a sailor by the name of Donald Brain. I was amazed

when I found out that he could speak Farsi, Burmese, and all kinds of lan-

guages. I said, “Donald, where did you learn to speak Burmese ?” He said,

“Well, before I went into the navy, my family were oil-field workers, and

they worked all over Saudi Arabia and the Orient. And everywhere we went,

I would pick up some street language.” Donald also found out about the

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 0 9

railroad from the native inmates, because the Japanese were starting to

round up men to help build it. That was the first time we heard there was

going to be a railroad.

From Moulmein, we marched down to the railroad station to take the

train to Thanbyuzayat, and there I encountered an experience of human-

ity that I’ll never forget. The Japanese had occupied Burma. They were the

victors, and, as far as anyone could see, they were going to take it all. But

here, many Burmese and a few white nuns from a convent close by were

lined up along our route, and they were tossing us cigarettes, bananas, candy,

and all sorts of things. The Japanese were shooing them away, but they kept

throwing it at us. I’ve never seen grown men break down and cry, but I

saw it then. Up to that time, no native had ever displayed any sign of what

the Japanese would consider disloyalty. They weren’t being defiant; they

were just trying to show us that they felt sorry for us. By the time we got

down to the train station, all of us had something that they had given us.

Even I, who rarely cry, was moved to tears.

T H A N B Y U Z A Y A T

Thanbyuzayat was a pretty big camp—about 6,000 people at the time. We

were there for no more than four or five days of indoctrination. Upon

arrival, we were herded into an open field and lined up in front of a raised

wooden platform. From there Colonel Nagatomo gave his welcoming

speech about what we were going to be doing under the supervision of the

Japanese. He said that as prisoners we would basically have to work for our

keep; that we weren’t allowed to loaf; and that the railroad was an impor-

tant project that we were privileged to be involved in. He spoke through

an interpreter, although we heard rumors that he could speak English. I

remember him saying, “Be cheerful in your work,” and “Work is good for

you,” and that sort of thing. At the time, it didn’t seem that comical, nor

cynical. We thought, “Okay, he’s just giving us his sales pitch.”

The speech was fairly long—about half an hour—and it was the first

time we had officially heard about the railroad. We had no idea that it would

stretch 262 miles through the tropical jungles and that we would be

required to complete it in twelve months’ time, although the Japanese engi-

1 1 0 · C H A P T E R F O U R

neers had originally said that even a single line of track would take two to

five years to build. Nothing was said by the Japanese about how critical it

was to have this rail link between Rangoon and Bangkok in order to get

equipment and supplies to the Burma front. As it stood, supply ships from

Singapore had to sail some 1,300 miles through the Malacca straits and north

across the Indian Ocean to Rangoon— exposed the entire distance to Allied

submarines and bombers. The railroad was thus crucial to their taking India

next and ultimately winning the war. I later learned that a total of 61,000

Allied prisoners and 250,000 civilians, including Malaysians, Indians,

Thais, and Burmese, were used to build the railroad, which was completed

in a record sixteen months at the cost of 12,500 POW and 70,000 Asian

lives.

The next morning when we got up, before dawn, we heard what sounded

like chanting. So, out of curiosity, we went towards the sound and, from

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 1 1

F I G . 2 0 . A Japanese guard at the entrance of Thanbyuzayat camp, 1943. Courtesy

Australian War Memorial, 045258.

a distance, we could see four Japanese soldiers holding a telephone post

above their heads, and they were double-timing and running around in a

circle. When I found out that this was punishment for coming back drunk

and a little late, I thought, “Holy smoke, if this is punishment for just being

drunk, what do they do when you do something really bad?” Of course, by

this time, we were beginning to see how the Japanese treated their own

troops and why they behaved the way they did towards us. You don’t sym-

pathize with it; you don’t empathize with it; you just come to a gradual

understanding that’s the way they are.

W O R K I N G O N T H E R A I L R O A D

Between 10,000 to 11,000 prisoners worked on the Burma side of the rail-

road, as compared to 50,000 on the Thailand side. The Japanese organized

the work force on both sides into sections. The Burmese side was divided

into two sections, and prisoner groups No. 3 and No. 5 were allocated to

them and put under the supervision of the 5th Railway Regiment of the

Japanese Imperial Army. Four other groups of prisoners were assigned to

the Thailand side under the 9th Railway Regiment. We were known as the

Fitzsimmons group (under Captain Fitzsimmons) and made a part of group

No. 3. Because there were only 191 of us, they decided the best way to use us

was as a mobile force or advance party to help set up facilities for the groups

that would follow us. Most of the time, they combined us with the Aus-

tralians as part of the Black Force, which was a good thing, because Aus-

tralians and Texans got along famously.3 We were lucky that we had the

easier stretch of the road at the north end, because work at the south end

was horrible. Then again, we were lucky because when the other Ameri-

can group, consisting of 478 men under Colonel Tharp, came up after us

and joined group No. 5 on the Burma side, they were bombed and sus-

tained casualties. They also came up during the tail end of the rainy sea-

son when working conditions got worse. The unluckiest group was the

thirteen American POWs who were assigned to work at Hellfire Pass on

the Thailand side, cutting a passageway through a granite hillside as high

as eighty feet in one section.

As a mobile force, we worked out of many camps, which were named

1 1 2 · C H A P T E R F O U R

1 1 3

THAILAND

BURMA

Gulf of

Thailand

Andaman Sea

T H

A IL

A N

DB U

R M

A

Bangkok

Moulmein

Thanbyuzayat

Three Pagodas Pass

. . Nakom Pahon

...... 8K

18K 26K 30K 35K

40K 50K.55K 75K 80K 85K95K

100K 105K

Changaraya Songkurai Nieke Konkoita

Krian Krai Takanun

Kinsayok

Hintok Hellfire Pass Malayan Hamlet

Kanyu Tampie

Bridge over the River Kwai

Nam Tok Wampo

Chungkai

Tamarkan Kanburi

Tamuan Taru

Bampong Nong Pladuk

Nakom Nayok

Ye

Tavoy

Phet Buri

Tonchan

. .

. .................. ...... .

BURMA - SIAM RAILROAD

Thanbyuzayat to Bampong

100 miles

100 kilometers

N

K w

ai N oi

R iver River

Mae Klong

according to their distance by kilometers from Thanbyuzayat, such as 25

Kilo, 40 Kilo, and so on. During the fifteen months we were working on

the railroad, I remember at least six major moves: 40, 25, 30, 45, 85, and 105

Kilo camps. The reason we started out at 40 Kilo was because some track

had already been laid as far as 25 Kilo. We were to clear the ground from

40 Kilo going backwards toward Thanbyuzayat as well as forward toward

45 Kilo. This Japanese idea of “hopscotching” was not a bad idea. It’s quite

simple: If you set up camp at 55 Kilo, you could work backwards for 10 kilo-

meters to 45 Kilo, or you could work forward 10 kilometers to 65 Kilo. Then

once everything is done at 65, you could jump to 80, set up camp there,

and work back to 65. That way, you only have to “commute” a certain dis-

tance to work. Of course, there were other groups working behind us, and

groups did not all move at the same time; all of the moves and jumps had

to be coordinated by the Japanese. Each time we moved camp, everything

went with us —the sick, the kitchen gear, the whole works. We marched to

the next camp and, hopefully, the supply trains would catch up with us.

As soon as we got to 40 Kilo, we had to set up camp. The natives who

were doing the right-of-way work had preceded us, but their camps were

usually slapdash and disorganized. We would line up the bamboo huts with

intervals in between. There was an aisleway down the middle of the hut,

and wide platforms made of bamboo slats on each side for sleeping. Each

hut was roughly 50 feet wide and 150 feet long, and each person was allot-

ted one yard width of space. The roof was made of atap (palm leaves) and

the sides were open-ended, which meant there was little protection from

the wind and rains. To make more space, we would sometimes build bunk

beds.

Basic sanitation, no matter how crummy, was important to us. When

we set up a camp, we would designate an area for the kitchen, an area for

the hospital, an area for the latrine, and so on. We took care of the simple

things that would contribute to our hygiene. This was something that the

natives just didn’t do, so in that regard, the Allied troops were more organ-

ized, disciplined, and clean. Usually, the Japanese railroad people would

tell the camp commander almost as soon as we arrived, “We want X num-

ber of people for work tomorrow morning.” If he said 300, that would mean

700 people in a camp of 1,000 would stay behind and help organize the

1 1 4 · C H A P T E R F O U R

camp while the other guys were away at work. Every day they would do

more, until the camp was really set up. As we moved up and down the rail-

road, if the camp had been organized by one of the Allied groups, even if

the natives had moved in, the basic structure would be there and all we

would have to do was clean up and repair.

As it turned out, we only stayed at 40 Kilo for a matter of two or three

weeks, because the well that we dug ran dry. Because we didn’t have an

adequate water supply, we had to back off to 25 Kilo. That was the only

time we made a backward move. But we did go out on some cut-and-fill

work parties, so we got a general idea of what the work was going to be

like. The right-of-way had been cleared by the natives, so what we had to

do was start building the railroad track, keeping it as level as possible, because

rail engines can only run up a certain grade. Putting it in simple terms, if

you had a hill and a valley and a hill, and the railroad runs across the mid-

dle, you would have to cut off the top of the two hills and fill it into the

valley. The Japanese engineers decided our allotment. They didn’t care

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 1 5

F I G . 2 1 . The interior of a typical atap-roofed hut at a POW camp, 1943. Courtesy

Australian War Memorial, 157878.

whether it was mud, dirt, sand, or rock. They would measure out X num-

ber of meters —how wide and how deep—and we had to finish that work

allotment before we could quit for the day.

The first time we went out on a cut-and-fill job, the Japanese engineer

had laid out the work so that we were kind of working on top of each other.

He probably thought that would make it easier for the guards to keep an

eye on us. So Lieutenant Stensland, who had been a civil engineer in peace-

time, tried to get across to the engineer that he could see by the pegs and

the flags where the railroad was to go. He tried to convince the Japanese

engineer that if he laid this work allotment in a long stretch, we wouldn’t

be working on top of each other, but he wasn’t getting through to him.

Finally, I walked up to them and I wrote the Chinese word tung, meaning

“the same.” What the Bear was trying to show him was: Whether you dug

a trench that was one foot deep and one foot wide by three feet long or a

trench that was three feet deep by one foot square, it’s the same amount of

dirt. So the Japanese engineer went, “Oh! Wakaru, wakaru—I understand.”

Then all of a sudden he looked at me and said, “You Chinese ?” I said, “Yes,

American.” I wrote down fu mo for “father and mother” to tell him they

were Chinese, and then I wrote down that I was born in Mei Gwok, mean-

ing America. Then he said, “Okay, okay.” I didn’t realize then that I should

not get involved as a “go-between,” because, aside from possibly displeas-

ing one side or the other, I was calling attention to myself. But the Bear

was a good officer—he was the only officer who went out to work with us

and who stuck up for us —and I wanted to help him out.

So, after a while, whenever we went out to work in the morning, the

Japanese engineer would say good morning to the Bear—“Ohayo.” Then

he would point more or less in the direction that he wanted us to work. He

would tell the Bear, “Seventy-five meters,” and he would say how many

men. If he said 100, that would mean each man had to dig and carry .75

cubic meters of dirt to the places that required the fill. He would let the

Bear lay out the work, because they could see that we were trying to be

efficient. For instance, if we had a stretch of hill to cut down and the dirt

had to be hand-carried away, we would start working in levels —a top, mid-

dle, and lower level—and it would be stair-stepped. Naturally, you shovel

dirt downhill—that’s common sense—whereas if the Japanese had their

1 1 6 · C H A P T E R F O U R

way, they would have you dig a hole first. Our way was to dig the hole from

the top, undercut the ledges, and then use crowbars to dig behind and bring

five or six cubic meters down at one time, instead of literally digging it out

one shovelful at a time. The first time we did that, the Japanese engineer

literally clapped. That was the only time we ever got any praise from the

Japanese. So any time the Americans were out there working, we had very

little trouble with the Japanese engineers.

At the beginning, it was relatively easy work, because it was soft dirt

and dry; the rainy season had not started yet. So for the first few days, we

would get out there at four or five o’clock in the morning and be through

by noon. We would be marching home and passing the Aussies, and we

would joke with them, “You guys need any help?” They would tell us,

“Yanks, you’re crazy ! They’re going to move it up!” Sure enough, they

kicked the load up to 1.2 meters, which was almost a 50 percent increase.

We were still doing it with ease. But the Australians kept telling us, “Take

all day to do it. Don’t do it in the shortest time possible, because they’ll

just keep adding it on.” But being naturally competitive, we wanted to be

the first one off the job, and at this stage, we were still in top shape, and

the picks, spades, and chunkels (native hoes) were still pretty good. But in

carrying away the dirt, we suddenly came face-to-face with the primi-

tiveness of the equipment we had to work with. Everyone was naturally

looking for wheelbarrows, but all we had was a big rice sack with two

poles —like a stretcher with one person at each end. It was just something

we had to learn to work with.

Once the right-of-way was ready, we learned to lay down the cross ties

and rails on each side. Then we started drilling holes for the spikes. Next,

we pounded in the spikes. Then the Japanese engineer had to measure the

track to make sure the alignment and spacing were correct. Then we would

make little rocks from big ones for ballast—that was what held the cross

ties in place. The Japanese never got used to the way we worked. The first

time we had to unload a bunch of rails that were about thirty feet long and

seventy pounds to a foot, they were screaming at us to hurry. The engi-

neers would not bother to learn English, because once they got the work

laid out, they were gone. It was the Korean guards who made sure we didn’t

loaf on the job.

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 1 7

Cut-and-fill work was pretty routine and there wasn’t much ingenuity

involved. But when we started building bridges —that was when we mar-

veled at the ingenuity of the Japanese engineers. First, we had to cut down

the trees to make the piles, which were usually thirty-five or forty feet long.

The Japanese engineers would sharpen one end of the pile and nail in a

steel strap so that it would not split when we began the pile driving. Next,

we had to build a temporary scaffold with timber to hold a row of five piles

upright. Instead of wires, the Japanese used what were called “dogs” (a

wrought-iron piece of rod) to tie the scaffold together. Then we drove the

five piles supported by the scaffold into the ground about a foot and a half

deep in order to lock them into position. Once we had the first row of piles

loosely in place, we would build the next temporary scaffold and lock in

another row of piles, then tie it to the first row and continue until we were

all the way across to the other end of the bridge.

Now we were ready for the pile driving. On the top of each pile, we would

drill a hole. Into that hole went a metal lead pole about twenty-five feet

long and an inch in diameter, upon which the rammer, weighing some 1,000

pounds, could be hoisted. We then attached what we called “spider ropes”

to the weight, basically to pulleys so that a bunch of guys at the end of the

ropes could raise the weight and drop it. Someone would start chanting

“Ichi, ni, no, san, yo.” When we got to “yo,” the guys would let the ropes

go, and the weight would drop. Inch by inch, we drove that piling in, until

the Japanese engineer decided it wasn’t going to go another eighth of an

inch. On a good day, we might drive three sets of piles, and usually each

set was five across and about five feet apart. So if the bridge were sixty feet

long, we would need twelve sets of piles. After we drove all the piles in, we

would dismantle the scaffolding and start putting in the cross braces and

the final bridge. That involved trimming the top of the piles, putting planks

across the top to make the roadbed, and laying down the cross ties and rails.

It was hard work, but, on the other hand, it was more interesting than just

digging and carrying dirt away.4

One of the toughest jobs we had to do was clearing a bamboo grove

that was in the path of the right-of-way. You have no idea how bamboo

can interlace underneath the ground and how much digging it takes to

get to the root system, cut it loose, and then manhandle the whole thing

1 1 8 · C H A P T E R F O U R

1 1 9

F I G . 2 2 . POWs laying track on the Burma-Siam railway, 1943. Courtesy Australian

War Memorial, P00406.034.

F I G . 2 3 . An example of bridge building at Tamarkan, Thailand, 1943. Courtesy

Australian War Memorial, 118879.

over the side. Elephants were put to work, trying to break up the root sys-

tem, and they couldn’t do it. We had seen elephants do heavy work, like

rolling logs, lifting them, and so on. We had seen them obey orders no

matter who gave them, but apparently the Japanese thought they could

drive them to greater effort, and they didn’t respond to that well. The ele-

phants got so mad that they went on a rampage. That was scary, because

we could hear them making that eerie trumpet sound. Then we could hear

them charging through the brush, but the bamboo thickets were so heavy

that we couldn’t tell from which direction the animals were coming. That

was when we came up with this old bit, “One hundred men equals one

elephant,” because it took that many of us to loosen up and roll the root

system aside. Then we still had to fill the hole back in. It was like digging

a grave, except this one had to be at least fifty feet long, twenty-five feet

wide, and six feet deep. If we were lucky, we could probably clear a medium-

size bamboo grove in a day or two. Over the course of the whole time that

we were on the railroad, we must have cleared out as many as eight groves.

But it was the big ones that we remembered, because it took so much time

and so many men to do the job.

The Aussies were right—when the Japanese saw that we were doing the

job with ease, that was when they decided we could handle more. As the

workload increased, we got weaker and weaker. Overall, I don’t think our

workday was ever shorter than twelve hours. We got up at four in the morn-

ing because the Japanese army worked on Tokyo time, and we never got

home much earlier than four or five in the afternoon. We worked ten days,

then got one day off. We were paid ten cents a day, including the day off.

So, even though you didn’t work, you would still get some money. And we

got one holiday on the emperor’s birthday—April 29. No matter how rushed

the work was on the railroad, we always got that day off. Noncoms were

paid fifteen cents, and officers were paid according to rank in Japanese

equivalents. But a strange thing happened on the way to the bank, and each

officer only got twenty dollars. The Japanese explained to them that they

were being charged room and board and that money was being set aside

for them in Japanese banks so that the officers would have money to restart

their lives after the war. This was particularly funny, considering that we

were all being paid in occupational money, which would become worth-

1 2 0 · C H A P T E R F O U R

less after the war. The first time we were paid, Colonel Black set the exam-

ple of putting aside ten dollars for the Red Cross fund to buy food and

supplies for the sick. The other officers decided, “Okay, that sounds like a

good idea,” and followed suit. So, you can see, we were always looking out

for the sick.

O U R M E A G E R R A T I O N S

Our basic ration was 500 grams or about one pound of rice per working-

man per day, but only those working were issued rations. So if the Japa-

nese engineers asked for only 300 men in a camp of 1,000 men, we would

immediately be on one-third rations. Everyone shared; it was a perfect

socialist state. Even half a pound of raw rice would be pretty filling if we

had that all the way through, because later, as we moved up the railroad to

105 Kilo, more of the men got weak and sick, and we were lucky if we could

send out 20 percent of the men as a workforce. That meant we were at one-

fifth rations — barely a bowlful of rice per man when cooked. So you can

see why our diet, which was meager to begin with, became worse as time

went on.

Aside from rice, we got vegetables —usually winter melon, pumpkin,

and yam. Sometimes we would get things like eggplants, cucumbers,

onions, jicama, and mung beans, and everything would go into the stew

pot. Every once in a while there would be some meat. The Japanese would

slaughter an ox and take the lion’s share, and we would add what they gave

us to the stew pot. The cook would cut up the meat in small bits and it was

“catch as catch can” whether you got a piece of meat or not. But at least

the stew would have a stock flavor and a little protein. Or, if we were near

a river, we might get fish. One of the big hauls that the guys got one time

was a python. It had just swallowed some small animal and was feeling very

lethargic. So one of the guys shot it with the guard’s rifle (since the guard

kept missing it), and we put the snake in the stew pot.

For breakfast, all we got was jook (rice gruel), and, if we were lucky, a

little ginger and sugar added to it. At midday, the rice and stew would be

brought out to us by two men who were considered “light sick.” These same

two men would also be what we called “tea tenders.” They would keep a

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 2 1

pot of water boiling, and even though we didn’t have any tea to put in, we

still called them “tea centers.” There was no scheduled tea break, but if any-

one needed a drink of water, he could go ahead as long as he didn’t linger.

We would say to ourselves, “I’m going to have a cup of tea.” Psychologi-

cally, you can fool yourself into almost anything ! I remember there was

an Englishman who had a teabag that he used over and over again. There

couldn’t have been any flavor left, but he kept dipping that thing in hot

water. As far as he was concerned, he was having tea.

Our main meal was in the evening whenever we got back from work.

In the beginning, we had people arguing and fighting about the unequal

portions until we found someone who could be the official food dispenser.

That person turned out to be Preston “P. E.” Stone. He just had a knack

for dishing out the rations evenly and stirring the pot so that no one got

more solids than another person. If there were any leftovers, we would uti-

lize the British system called leggi, a Malayan term for “seconds.” We were

each given a number, and if P. E. Stone thought that he might have enough

for six leggis, then number one through six would line up for seconds. If it

turned out there was only enough for five, then we all knew that the next

leggi number would start with six, and so on. In other words, everyone knew

that eventually, unless he died, he would have a chance at seconds. Of course,

we could supplement the poor diet by buying food at the canteen set up

by the Japanese at most of the camps. They sold things like toothpaste,

tobacco, tomatoes, sugar, and salt. An egg cost fifty cents —that was five

days of wages. So if you were smart, you would not spend your money at

the canteen, but wait for an opportunity to trade with the natives and get

a better bargain.

When we were first issued woks by the Japanese, the cooks didn’t even

know what they were, but they soon learned how to use them. One of the

problems our cook, Vince Carey, an Australian, always had with them was

cleaning the wok afterwards. I was there one day and he was cursing up a

storm as he soaked and scraped the wok. Well, in the summertime when

my father used to take me to the potato farm in Stockton, I remembered

how they cooked the rice in the wok. So I said to Vince, “Here’s the way

you cook rice.” The first thing I had to do was to show him how to wash

the rice until it was pretty clean, because although the rice was not bad, it

1 2 2 · C H A P T E R F O U R

was still pretty dirty. It took a while to convince him that washing the rice

did not wash away all the vitamins, and that it would make the rice more

palatable. Next, I had to show him how to determine the right amount of

water to add to the washed rice—the water should come up to the first

knuckle of the middle finger touching the rice. “Now,” I said, “it’s going

to vary because each crop of rice is different. You’re going to have to play

around with it. But this is the general rule of thumb.” The wok had a wooden

cover, so I had him scrounge up some clean cloths to make a cloth rope to

put around the cover so that the steam didn’t all escape.

I told Vince, “Look, you don’t have to cook the whole ration of rice.

Let’s cook a quarter ration—just something so that you can see what needs

to be done.” So he said, “Let’s try about a third ration.” Well, I had learned

at the ranch helping the cooks how much wood to stack to burn down to

the coals. So we built up the fire, using bamboo, of course—a quick fire.

When it got to steaming, I said, “Whatever you do, do not lift the lid to

look at it.” Then the fire burned down and I told him not to disturb it—

“Just leave the coals alone.” After the steaming had almost stopped, I said,

“Now you can spread your coals around so that the heat gets to as much

of the wok as possible.” When the rice was done, I said, “Okay, take the

big wooden paddle and scoop the rice out.” And he said, “What do I do

with the crud at the bottom?” I said, “Leave the cover off. Now watch what

happens.” After the crust started to break away from the side of the wok,

I just lifted out the whole thing. I said, “That’s how you cook rice.” He said,

“But what should we do with the crust ?” I said, “That’s a treat. When we

were kids, my mom would fold in a little piece of ham or just shake a lit-

tle salt on it—that’s all that’s needed.” And I said, “Just give it to the hos-

pital. It’s tough on the gums, tough on the teeth, tough on the digestion,

but it’s a treat.” Vince later taught the other Australians how to cook rice

properly in a wok. Like him, they too thought it was magic.

It began to dawn on me that all these little things that I had learned

through the years could be put to good use in the jungles. For example,

when we got our first cow from the Japanese, Ray King was butchering it

and throwing out all the entrails, liver, kidneys, and lungs. So I said, “Ray,

are you going to throw those out?” He said, “Yeah, there’s no use for them.”

I said, “Okay, may I have them?” So I took the liver and the kidneys and I

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 2 3

told Ray— except that it wasn’t the right time yet because we weren’t hun-

gry enough—I said, “You know that you can clean out the tripe and the intes-

tines? It’s a lot of work, but they’re eatable. Even when you slaughter the

cow, if you drain the blood, that’s got nutrients.” He said, “What do you do

with the blood?” I said, “You can make blood pudding by steaming it. It

tastes like hell, but it’s got nutritional value.” Well, after that, they started

at least saving the liver and the kidneys and so on. I said, “If nothing else,

give it to the hospital.” Eventually we got to the point where if we got any-

thing like a cow again, the kitchen staff would go to the extent of taking the

guts, the tripe, and everything down to the stream and washing the intes-

tines inside out, and they would throw everything except the skin into the

stew. They learned to utilize every bit of food that the Japanese gave us.

When I think back to my childhood, it was almost as if I had been prepar-

ing all my life to be a prisoner of the Japanese because the rice diet was

compatible to me, and I was familiar with most of the foods we were given

to eat, like dung gwa (winter melon) and faan goot ( jicama). One time I

came back with a mess kit full of fu gwa (bitter melon) cooked with chicken

livers. I had been working at the Japanese headquarters and one of the cooks

had given some to me. When I got back and opened it up, Paul Leather-

wood, one of the Jacksboro boys, said, “What is that, Ed?” I said, “It’s bit-

ter melon—a unique Chinese vegetable.” So I gave him half a slice to try,

and I said, “If you spit this out, it’s okay, but I’ll warn you right now, it’s

bitter.” So he tasted it and said, “Oh, god!” He spat it out and he said, “You’re

right. It’s bitter. How can you eat that stuff ?” I said, “It’s a delicacy and an

acquired taste.” And he said, “You can have it, Eddie!” Another time, when

we were near a river, the guys were horrified when I cooked up a batch of

snails and ate them. To sum it up, Leonard Drake, who bunked near me,

once said to me, “Eddie, you mean to tell me that you had to eat all this

stuff at home ?” I said, “Yup.” And he said, “I don’t know how you did it.”

I jokingly said, “Well, why do you think I left home, Leonard?”

C O N D I T I O N S I N T H E J U N G L E

When we first became prisoners, I had the basics —a mess kit, a canteen,

a blanket, and a mosquito net. Clotheswise, I had two suits of suntans (khaki

1 2 4 · C H A P T E R F O U R

shirt and pants), four sets of underwear, some socks, two pairs of shoes,

and a raincoat. Some I gave away to the Houston survivors. Within a few

months, the rest of the clothes were all gone, because the humidity and

mildew in the tropics just chewed up the threads that held the clothes and

shoes together. So, early on in the game, we realized that we weren’t going

to be able to keep our clothes in repair. Gradually, we all adopted what we

called the “G-string” as the uniform of the day. We got the idea of making

the G-strings from the Japanese. Their military underwear was a very sim-

ple piece of apparel. It was about ten inches wide and thirty-odd inches

long, and on one end it had a string that was to go around the waist. You

put the flap behind you, you draw it up and tuck it under the string, you

let it hang over, and that’s what we called a G-string. We had two issues of

it that I can remember. The last one was really sexy—it was black. Anyway,

we saw how simple it was because there was no upkeep; there were no seams

to fall apart. We could use it as a sweat cloth, and it was easy to wash. I

think it was the Brimhall boys from Jacksboro who made the first G-strings,

and we thought it was funny as hell. Then people started making their own.

From the legs of a pair of pants, you could easily make two G-strings. We

couldn’t do anything about the shoes, and the Japanese didn’t issue us any,

so we were going around barefooted early on.

With the kind of work we were doing and without proper tools, pro-

tective clothing, and shoes, it was inevitable that work casualties would hap-

pen. We were always on the lookout for scorpions, tarantulas, and snakes.

The biggest danger on the bridges was falling off the scaffolding or having

the ropes break and the logs fall on top of you. Then, when we were break-

ing up rocks to make ballast, our eyes and legs would be exposed to flying

chips. But that was the work environment, and we just had to get used to

it. I got my first ulcer when I slipped and fell in the rainy weather and got

scratched by a bamboo stake. I didn’t think anything of it, but when I got

back to camp, someone said, “You better have that thing looked at, Eddie.”

I said, “It’s only a scratch.” He said, “You still better go up and see the doc.”

And Doctor Hekking told me at the time, “Eddie, you’ve got to be very

careful. These things can turn into tropical ulcers.”

What he was talking about were germs getting into the open wound and

infection setting in. This particular bacteria was like a spirochete—it dug

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 2 5

inward. In severe cases, it would eat completely around the shinbone of

the leg. In the average cases, a good-sized ulcer would be about two to four

inches long and about an inch to two wide on the leg area. Wounds of this

size would still have a chance of healing. Guys would try putting their legs

in the water, hoping that the fish would nibble away the dead flesh. Some

guys were desperate enough to plant maggots in the wound, because mag-

gots were known to eat only dead flesh. The trick there is to be sure you

pull out the same number of maggots that you put in. We found out that

the most effective way was for the doctor to scrape away the rotted flesh

with a sharpened spoon, although that hurt like hell. Then it was a matter

of keeping the wound clean long enough so that it didn’t become re-infected.

Putting sulfanilamide or iodoform on it would have helped, except that

the Japanese didn’t provide us with any medicine. When even scraping was

not going to help, the doctors would amputate. They got very good at it,

considering that there was no anesthesia nor surgical tools. They would

use a meat saw from the kitchen, and the amazing thing was, there was never

a shortage of blood donors, despite everyone’s poor state of health. Dr.

Hekking never believed in cutting unless it was absolutely the last resort. I

was lucky the first time. Apparently, my immune system was still working,

so the ulcer healed without any infection setting in.

We were lucky to get Doctor Henri Hekking as our camp doctor, because

he helped keep our losses down. Our group lost only 13 out of 191 people in

the year and a half that we were in the jungles. The other American group

of 478 people lost 120. In fact, our group had the lowest death rate among

all sixty-odd railroad camps. Doctor Hekking was born and raised in Java,

and he went to medical school in the Netherlands. But as far as the British

were concerned, he was not a qualified medical officer. So here he was at

Thanbyuzayat—just surplus. Captain Fitzsimmons was going back and forth

to base camp almost every month to get the pay for our group, and he found

out there were surplus doctors there. Fitzsimmons contributed his wrist-

watch, and Lieutenant Lattimore, a pocket watch, and they used the watches

as a bribe to the Japanese to get Doctor Hekking. He turned out to be a god-

send because he already knew quite a bit about how to survive in the trop-

ics. His grandmother had taught him about herbs, and he had learned tropical

medicine while stationed for five years in the Celebes, an island northeast

1 2 6 · C H A P T E R F O U R

of Java. He told us right from the start, “Once we use up everything in our

medical bags, the Japanese will not give us anything more, so I will try to

help you heal yourselves. I’ll tell you what kind of medicinal and eatable

plants to look for in the jungle; I’ll tell you how not to get into trouble; and

I’ll tell you how to keep your wounds from being re-infected.”

We always thought Doctor Hekking was magic. At 25 Kilo, when we were

still able to buy eggs at the canteen, he told us, “Now, when you boil your

egg or when you fry your egg, will you bring me the shell ?” No one could

figure out what the hell he wanted with the shells. And he said, “Please wash

the outside of the egg before you break it or soft boil it.” So we did as we

were told, and everyone took their shells to Doctor Hekking. We asked him,

“What are you going to do with that, Doc?” He said, “I’ll show you.” He

got out a frying pan and he crushed the eggshells. He toasted it until he

could grind it into a powder. Then he said, “That’s calcium.” And he said,

“At this stage, you’re really not experiencing hunger yet, but you must learn

to eat everything that is eatable. Don’t throw anything away.” Doc wasn’t

just a medical doctor; he was a witch doctor. He knew how to psyche you

out. For example, he would say to you, “Here’s the magic potion that will

get you well. You’re absolutely going to get well, because I reserved this just

for you.” And what he would do is basically give you a shot of saline, but

you’re going to believe it’s a magic potion. He was just one of these guys

who could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. He didn’t lie to us. What he did

was to get us in a very receptive mood to heal ourselves. What’s that joke—

nature heals and the physician collects the fee ? So the doc knew, given

enough time, we were going to make it if he could just keep us alive long

enough. After the war, we used to kid him about being a witch doctor, and

he would say, “Yeah, but I kept you alive.”

J A P A N E S E B R U T A L I T Y , K O R E A N S A D I S M

To simplify assembly and for security reasons, the Japanese organized us

into what they called kumi—groupings of 100 men. Since we had less than

200 men, they threw in some Australians to make up the difference, and

automatically we began nicknaming them “Tex.” We were warned that if

anyone should escape, ten men from his kumi would die. At first, we

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 2 7

thought, “Well, if that’s going to happen, let’s try to escape with the entire

kumi.” But the Japanese had an answer to that—kumis on each side of that

kumi would be killed. In other words, it didn’t matter whether one escaped

or ten escaped, somebody was going to pay the price.

Even knowing this, the officers would teach us the rudiments of how to

survive outside the camp should we be able to escape. We were given les-

sons in star reading—how to find directions at night—and what to take in

our escape kits: a compass, a pocketknife, a map, food, etc. There were never

any formal escape committees like in Germany, where the British were nuts

about formality. That was fine and dandy if you were operating under the

Geneva Conventions, but the Japanese didn’t play by those rules. The first

time anyone tried to escape was a group of three Australians. The leader

of the group had worked in Burma and he spoke Burmese. Even knowing

the country, they were captured within fifteen miles, because the natives

were not willing to help them. Actually, within the first five miles one of

the guys fell ill—he had appendicitis. So they left him behind by common

consent. The other two got another ten miles before they were captured.

They were all brought back, and this was when we started shaking our heads

and wondering if we would ever figure out the Japanese: The guy with the

appendicitis was taken care of medically—his appendix was taken out. They

waited until he had recovered, then they blindfolded them, tied them to

1 2 8 · C H A P T E R F O U R

F I G . 2 4 . Dr. Henri Hekking. Courtesy

Lost Battalion Room, Decatur, Texas.

stakes, and shot them in a public execution. It was supposed to be an object

lesson: Anyone who tries to escape will wind up like this. You have to hand

it to the Aussies because they yelled out to their Brigadier before they were

shot, “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. We gave it a try.”

Further proof that the kumi system worked: One time I was mistaken

for a native, and they refused to let me back into camp after work. At the

time I didn’t know what was going on, because I kept trying to stay with

my group, but this Korean guard kept cutting me out as if he was cutting

out a horse or a cow. So I decided, “Okay, whatever your problem is, I’ll

just have to go along with it.” Finally, when we got to the guardhouse and

they took a count, they found out they were missing one man. That’s when

it finally dawned on this Korean guard, “My god, this guy actually belongs

here!”

We got slapped and knocked around on a routine basis, sometimes for

no reason at all. It might have been because the Japanese had gotten some

bad news about how the war was going; or it might have been because the

Korean guards had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that day. Regard-

less of the reason, they would usually take it out on us. When it was done

by a Japanese soldier to humiliate us, I didn’t hate him for it because I figured

he was just doing his job. But the Korean guards, instead of just slapping

us, would try to hit us with a closed fist or a rifle butt, and they would do

it with such pleasure—that was the reason I could never forgive them. I

know it was because they had been colonized by the Japanese and not

allowed to keep their Korean names or even speak Korean. And they were

the lowest men in the Japanese military hierarchy; they weren’t even

allowed the privilege of being fighting men. So they took it out on anyone

who was beneath them, namely us. Even though I understood all of this, I

still could not help but feel intense hatred for the Korean guards and their

sadistic actions.

I had relatively few acts of corporal punishment visited upon me, prob-

ably because I was an ordinary ant worker who always managed to remain

inconspicuous. But for no reason at all, one day coming back from work,

this Korean guard took offense with me. He took a roundhouse swing and

hit me right in my left ear. It was so unexpected that I didn’t slide with the

punch and as a result, I took a direct hit and lost partial hearing in that ear.

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 2 9

To this day, I don’t know what caused him to hit me that way. I didn’t have

any illegal goods on me; I hadn’t given him a hard look. I just couldn’t figure

out why he singled me out. Another time, one of the Korean guards grabbed

my favorite pipe and started chewing on it. I kept trying to get it back from

him, and “Slug” Wright,5 who had been beaten up pretty badly by them

before, yelled at me, “Eddie, don’t fight him!” I decided, “No, that’s my

pipe.” After a while, I finally got it back and he quit tousling me. I didn’t

put that pipe into my mouth again until I had the bit replaced after the

war. To me, it was never clean enough.

We gave all the Korean guards nicknames. When we were liberated, we

were asked which Korean guards gave us the most trouble, and we could

only identify them by their nicknames. Somehow, the war tribunal was able

to figure out their real names and some of them were punished for their war

crimes. “The Undertaker” got his name because he had the gaunt look of a

mortician. The other implication, of course, was that he put a lot of people

under, or, shall we say, he made them candidates for the undertaker. He was

a very vicious person and he was at least six feet tall. Most of the short Korean

guards would have to find higher ground to stand on so that they could hit

a taller prisoner more easily. If necessary, they would make the prisoner stand

in a hole. A gentler name was “Hollywood,” because this Korean guard

thought he was the debonair type. He was always asking people if they were

from Hollywood. Of course, if you wanted to get on the good side of him,

you would say, “Oh, yeah! I lived right near there.” Then you could start

making up stories and carry on a conversation with him for an hour or two

to avoid working. Unfortunately, when you’re not working, someone else

has to do your work. On the other hand, the guard is being distracted, so

he’s not going to be hitting anyone. So we didn’t really mind.

Most of the other names would either be comical or descriptive—like

“Liver Lips”—that’s almost self-explanatory. Another was called “B. B.,”

and the initials stood for “Boy Bastard.” His friend was called “B. B. C.,”

which stood for “Boy Bastard’s Cobber”—the Australian term for a mate

or buddy. One day he heard that, and he said, “What does that mean?” And

we said, “Oh, it means British Broadcasting Company—a very famous radio

station in England.” There was “Donald Duck,” because of the way he

walked, but he was a vicious son of a gun. Then there was “Christian

1 3 0 · C H A P T E R F O U R

George,” who never hit anyone. He was never cut out to be a soldier any-

where, anytime. He spoke some English because he had been to mission-

ary school. One of the most comical things that ever happened to him was

during Japanese guard inspection. His rifle was dirty by military standards

and he was told by the sergeant to clean his rifle. So he took the rifle down

to the creek where there was running water, got some soap and a brush,

and cleaned his rifle. Then he put it back together and took it to the ser-

geant for inspection. The sergeant just went completely gaga, and that

evening George was seen standing in our chow line with his mess kit.

Another time George caught one of the prisoners trading with a native,

and he was trying to tell him “dame dame,” which meant “bad” in Japa-

nese. He didn’t want to hit the prisoner, he didn’t want to hit the trader,

so he ended up hitting the oxen that was pulling the cart. It was a form of

comic relief and something that we would talk about for months when-

ever we got into a down situation. Anyone who has ever been in military

service knows someone like that—he’s got two left feet and he can never

march in formation. They are called “sad sacks.” We never expected to run

across one in the jungles. It was a good happenstance, because running across

one decent person was almost enough to make up for 100 bad ones.

There was a distinction between just the everyday slap or fist thrown at

you and real punishment for some infraction or another. I fortunately was

never caught and punished for anything, but I saw and heard plenty. Take

the case of this Dutchman. I can’t even remember what he did wrong, but

he had to kneel on a piece of bamboo for two and a half hours with a small

bamboo rod about an inch and a half in diameter behind his knees. What

this did was to dislocate the knees. When he was finally released by the guard,

they had to carry him in that position to the medical hut. It took Dr. Hekking

at least three days to get him straightened out. As soon as he felt the blood

circulating, he started screaming. That triggered my memory of stories about

Chinese women who had bound feet, and how they must have suffered when

they tried to unbind their feet so that they would be natural again. Fortu-

nately, the knees weren’t completely separated, and the Dutchman even-

tually recovered.

A common form of punishment was being made to stand in front of

the guardhouse holding up a “fishplate” (a thirty-pound piece of metal used

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 3 1

to connect two rails) for hours. Well, Corporal Jack Cellum got caught doing

something, and he had to hold it out in front of him for twenty-four hours.

Every time his arms dropped, there was someone there to bash him with

a bamboo rod, which only made it worse. There was this other big guy by

the name of Herman Scroggins. He had done something to displease one

of the guards, and he had to hold the fishplate above his head— straight

up—for twenty-four hours. I don’t know how he did it, but he was one

tough fellow. He was determined not to give the Japanese the satisfaction

of humiliating him and breaking his spirit. It was not just a matter of phys-

ical strength but intestinal fortitude and controlled defiance.

One of the worst cases of punishment involved an interpreter who was

literally put into a cesspool until he drowned because they were not happy

with the way he had interpreted. We’re talking about a latrine full of human

waste. They didn’t have to push him down. They just waited until he was

so tired his legs would no longer hold him up. The camp commander tried

to reason with the Japanese commander, hoping that they would lift him

out after a few hours. But apparently that was never their intention. They

had planned to kill him right from the start. You might think, “Gee, there

were enough of you guys to revolt.” We always knew that we could over-

power the Japanese and Korean guards, but then what? We couldn’t go any-

where, and they would just send in more Japanese guards to punish us and

really make an impression. No, the best thing we could do was hope that

the guy was strong enough to get through his punishment.

However, there was one prank we played on the Japanese that we almost

got away with at 70 Kilo. The Japanese were making a propaganda movie

and they wanted to show us marching out of camp. They had filmed the

canteen to show what nice things were available to the prisoners, and they

even issued us clothing to make sure we looked presentable. We were to

march by the camera and sing at the top of our voices the song, “Bless Them

All.” It went like this: “Bless them all, bless them all, the long and the short

and the tall. There will be no promotions this side of the ocean, bless them

all.” Except that instead of “Bless them all,” we sang “Fuck them all.” After

the Japanese developed the film, someone caught that, and they came back

and made us do it all over again. But the Japanese director made sure we

didn’t do any more singing.

1 3 2 · C H A P T E R F O U R

S C R O U N G I N G

While in the jungles, I continued developing my skills as a scrounger even

though I knew what the consequences would be if I were ever caught. For-

tunately, that never happened. You see, to be a good thief, you have to use

good judgment. If the opportunity is ripe, you take it, but you don’t want

to do it too often because you can stretch your luck. You have to work on

instinct almost. The other thing is, you can steal, but what are you going

to do with it ? You can’t eat it all, you’re not always able to give it away, and

you can’t keep it, because the Japanese conducted snap searches. So you

steal when you have the need and the opportunity and you find ways to

get rid of the evidence. The first time I stole, I happened to be with John

Owens —this big guy who weighed 225 pounds. We saw this basket of cig-

arettes. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and without saying anything,

we each took a handle. We were at a railway station area, and there was no

one around, but we decided to play it safe. We pushed it under one of the

buildings so that if they found it missing, they might think someone mis-

placed it or maybe the natives did it. The next day we went back and it was

still there, so we took it back to camp. We knew we couldn’t keep it, so

everyone had a great day of smoking. John and I didn’t even know each

other, and neither of us smoked cigarettes, but we both had the same thought

at the same time.

Most of the time, I scrounged for food, and my best source was the Japa-

nese kitchen. Slug Wright, who was working there, warned me, “Watch out,

Eddie, they mined the kitchen because they’ve been losing too much

stuff.” I decided, “No, it doesn’t matter, because they have to have a safe

way in and out. All I have to figure out is where they walk.” Then I decided,

“No, there’s an easier way.” So what I did was, at nighttime—what we called

“moonlight reconnaissance”—I untied enough of the vines that held the

bamboo walls together so that I could remove part of the wall and sneak

in. One of the things I saw was this 100–pound sack of sugar. The trick

about scrounging is that you have to get in and get out quickly—you don’t

fool around. So I dragged the 100 pounds out and put the wall back together

again. The first thing I thought of was Dr. Hekking and the sick people in

the hospital—what a treat this would be for them. So I divided it between

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 3 3

Dr. Hekking and the kitchen. That way, at least everyone would get a taste

of it. It wasn’t always about food. Once when Paul Leatherwood was laid

up and he couldn’t go to work, he told me he knew how to barber. “But,”

he said, “I don’t have any tools. I don’t even have any scissors.” It took me

about a week before I located what he needed at Japanese headquarters.

This enabled him to earn extra money cutting hair at ten cents per head.

I remember my closest call was the time I tried to steal a bucket of lard.

The Japanese kitchen had slaughtered a hog and rendered out a bucket of

lard. It hadn’t cooled down enough to be hard yet, and I could smell the

rendering. I waited until about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, when I knew

that most people would be asleep. I went into the Japanese kitchen and I

was just about to pick up the bucket handle when a Japanese guard walked

through the kitchen on his way to the latrine. Before he got to the latrine,

he saw me, and he started talking to me. And with both of his hands, he

was touching me all over. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but

he was speaking in a soft, soothing tone, so I knew he wasn’t angry. The

only thing I could think of was that he was making advances at me. If I

nodded or shook my head at the wrong time, it could be disastrous, so I

decided to just freeze and not do anything. Then, after about ten minutes

of this, the urgency of his trip to the latrine took over. As soon as he went

for the latrine, I took off with the bucket. The following morning, I noticed

that the grease had shrunk down to about three-quarters, and I thought,

“Holy smoke, maybe someone had scrounged from me!” Then I realized

that the oil had shrunk in volume because it had cooled down. That gave

me the idea of heating the bucket back up so that the volume would increase

and I would have more to sell. Even charging a dollar per cupful, I had no

trouble finding customers, because lard is basically a source of protein. If

nothing else, people could use it to make fried rice or they could mix the

rice with the grease to make it a little more palatable. I got rid of at least

90 percent of it. Then I took the rest over to the hospital and gave it to Dr.

Hekking.

The other way I could get rid of stolen goods and at the same time get

things that the camp needed was by trading with the natives. Donald Brain

took me out on my first trading trip. Since he knew Burmese, he did all the

talking. When he wasn’t around, I would trade on my own. I learned that

1 3 4 · C H A P T E R F O U R

if two people want to communicate, they can always find a way. The trader

knows you have something to trade and they know you basically want goods

or money. They either show you the amount of money or show you the

goods. You shake your head or nod your head—it’s that simple. Since they

were being paid in occupational money, which wasn’t of much value to

them, they wanted to convert the money into anything of material value—

like clothes, wristwatches, or cameras. I think some of the guys even had

guns and hand grenades to sell them, and they usually had shag tobacco

and shindegar (dark sugar) to sell us.

O U R D A Y S O F F

On our one day off, we would just lounge around, relax, and catch up on

sleep. Or we would clean up the area and take care of personal things —

like washing our clothes and repairing things. As much as possible, we tried

to keep our living quarters swept up and orderly. The only filthy area was

the latrine. We had to walk through (without exaggeration) an inch-thick

pile of maggots because there was nothing other than ashes from the kitchen

to sprinkle on top of the human waste. The flies were always breeding, and

after a while, when we had no more footwear, we just had to walk bare-

footed over the pile of maggots. Of course, during the rainy season it got

worse. But we always kept our living area fairly clean. The same was true

about our personal hygiene. The Australians and the Americans, no mat-

ter how bad the conditions were, would always try to find some stream or

puddle of water to wash out the dirt before we got back to camp. But the

British soldiers did not always go to the same extent and they developed

all kinds of lice. The first time I saw lice crawling all over their torsos, it lit-

erally turned my stomach. It was just plain common sense to keep your-

self clean if at all possible because you’re in filth all day. But they didn’t

seem to care, and we couldn’t understand that. The Dutch were very

hygienic and they were clean in all respects —the body and their living quar-

ters. They had the lowest death rate of all because they were used to the

tropics and they basically took good care of themselves. They also knew

how to get away with the least amount of work, whereas we Americans took

pride in finishing any workload assigned to us.

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 3 5

I took advantage of the day off to keep my mosquito net in good repair—

that’s probably why I didn’t catch malaria as early as the other guys —and

to make pots and pans from discarded steel drums. I was not a tinsmith,

but I had learned the fundamentals in junior high school and I used to watch

these guys in the hardware store next to my father’s shop make atomizers

out of tin. Unfortunately, working with steel drums was a lot more difficult,

especially without tools, but I managed to cut out the shape I wanted with

a chisel and a hammer that I had scrounged from the Japanese. Buckets

were more difficult to make than frying pans because of the oblong piece

of material that I had to cut and fold into a cylinder. No matter how good

I made the bucket, it was bound to leak. So what I did was to scrounge some

rice from the kitchen, put it in the bucket with a little water, let the rice get

really soft, and then hope that the rice would fill any leaks. The frying pans

were easier to make—all I had to do was cut out a big circle with a handle

on it and then shape the sides of the pan. I gave the pots and pans to any-

one who needed a container to boil water or a frying pan to make things

like fried rice. Each time we moved from camp to camp, I would swear to

myself, “I’m not going to carry chunks of iron, hammers, and chisels around

anymore.” But then I would decide that as long as I could make it to the

next camp, I would keep making them. It gave me something to do, and I

knew that whoever needed a bucket would appreciate it.

On one of our rest days at 25 Kilo, Colonel Black got permission to set

up what was called Melbourne Cup Day—the Australian version of our

Kentucky Derby. We planned for several weeks to make it a festive occa-

sion. We had guys dressed up like ladies at the races, and someone even

set up a pari-mutuel type of machine. For the race, we had little wooden

horses —a piece of log with four legs sticking down—and the rider would

straddle it and race around the track. We had bookmakers to set up the

odds, and even the Japanese sergeants and Korean guards enjoyed the show.

In the three-and-a-half years, that Melbourne Cup Day was something that

would live on in our memories. An Australian by the name of Robert Far-

rands won the “tin cup” for first prize, and he was on a ship to Japan when

the ship was sunk. Would you believe, when he was rescued by a U.S. sub-

marine, he was holding on to that cup? He was determined to bring it home

with him.

1 3 6 · C H A P T E R F O U R

C A M A R A D E R I E

We were a small group of 191 made up of navy, marines, and army people.

Regardless of how we kidded each other about the various services we had

joined, there was one thing we had in common—we were an American unit

and we knew we had to pull together. Some pulled harder, but we all tried

to do our best. For instance, I was a better scrounger than others, while

someone else might be better at physical labor. But as long as we did our

best and we looked after each other, that was what mattered. I can’t really

think of any person in our group who was a slacker or anyone who was a

contentious kind of person, so I considered myself lucky in that respect.

But there was one big fight that happened between John Owens and

Sergeant Homero Martinez, the only noncom in our group. Homero was

a Mexican American and well educated, and John resented having to take

orders from him. It was bare knuckles, and John outweighed Homero by

eighty pounds. They fought until they were exhausted. Afterwards, they

came to a grudging respect for each other because they had stood up to

each other. Other than that one time, everyone got along fine. As we soon

learned, no one had any physical or emotional energy to waste over triv-

ial matters, and to survive, we had to watch out for one another. No one

had to tell us this —we just knew. In retrospect, I think this had a lot to do

with the way most of the guys from Texas had been brought up. They didn’t

even think of it in terms of survival at the beginning. It was just natural for

them to help each other out. These guys, without knowing it, laid the

groundwork for our survival.

Right from the beginning, we formed small tribal groups of two, three,

or four men to look after one another. If three guys were in a group and

one of them got sick and couldn’t boil his own water, the other two guys

would do it for him. When it was time to pick up rations, they would pick

his up too. It was a buddy system. If the illness was not too debilitating, he

could stay in camp and look after little things like boiling water, straight-

ening up the sleeping area, or making sure no one stole anything from them.

Now, if two people got down, it was still possible for one person to help

the other two, and in the direst circumstances, if all three were down, then

some other group would look after them. There was no written contract,

A P R I S O N E R O F T H E J A P A N E S E · 1 3 7

and no one kept scores. We all did it willingly, because “there but for the

grace of God go I.” Being the only Chinatown kid and a loner all my life,

I guess I was the exception to the rule in not belonging to a tribe. I was still

immature and I just didn’t trust myself enough to get close to anyone. As

much as possible, I was determined to make it on my own, although I knew

that if I became completely incapacitated, someone would help me out. I

would literally bet my life on that; comradeship was that strong among us.

In the final analysis, I believe that saved us as much as Dr. Hekking’s med-

ical skills and what little luck we had.

When I first read King Rat by James Clavell, I knew he must have been

a prisoner at one time. There was a scene in which he wrote about two people

who were a group or a tribe sharing a can of condensed milk. They boiled

the water in the can to extract the last bit. No one but a prisoner would do

that. Then he wrote about how one guy, when he had done King Rat a favor,

got a cigarette, and he looked over at his buddy, and they knew that they

were going to share that later on. There were things in the novel that didn’t

take more than one sentence, but it was enough to tell me that this author

hadn’t just researched the subject—he had lived through it. I would have

bet my life on it without looking it up, but, quick like a bunny, I went down

to the public library to check out his biographical background. I was right—

Clavell had been a prisoner of war of the Japanese. I later found out his

wife had suggested that he write King Rat because he was having a mental

block when he tried to do anything else. She told him, “You’ve got to get

those prison camp days behind you. Write about it and get it out of your

system.” So he wrote King Rat. It rang true because he understood the

important role camaraderie plays in any POW’s effort to survive captivity.

1 3 8 · C H A P T E R F O U R

F I V E · A P O W S U R V I V O R

After we had been in the jungle for six months, the Japanese became anxious about

completing the railroad, and the speedo period began. Then it became a matter of

plain survival, and, hopefully, survival with a little dignity left at the end. By that,

I mean you haven’t stolen food from a comrade, you haven’t cheated a friend, and

you haven’t shirked your duty. That was about the best any of us could hope for.

S P E E D O !

S peedo started in May of ’43, after we had moved from 25 Kilo to 30

Kilo. The tide of war had begun to turn against Japan, and the Japa-

nese were desperate to finish the railroad. Nagatomo was given one

year to complete the railroad, and he could see that it was not going to be

finished in that time. He was said to have told Brigadier General Varley

that he would have to commit hara-kiri if they didn’t finish on time. So

the Japanese figured, “Okay, let’s speed everything up!” There were no more

days off, and even the sick were put to work. The workload went up—from

1.5 cubic meters to 2.2, then to 2.8 and 3.2. They just kept increasing the

workload. May was also the beginning of the monsoon season, when we

could get as much as 250 inches of rain in a month. It was like being under

Niagara Falls! It was bad enough carrying dirt the way we did, but carry-

ing waterlogged dirt just added to the load. Of course, by this time most

1 3 9

people had no shoes, so carrying even fifty pounds on slippery ground was

almost an impossibility. It was the general overwork, constant exposure to

weather, and reduced rations that finally took its toll on us. Everybody was

under pressure. The Japanese and the Koreans started a reign of terror. They

would bash us for no apparent reason except that they thought it would

help speed up the work.

By then, our favorite expression to describe a workday was “from can’t

see to can’t see,” meaning we worked from before dawn to after sunset—

basically sixteen, eighteen hours a day. There was no such thing as hoping

that we wouldn’t finish the job and they would send us home. We stayed

out there until the work was done. The first time we were assigned 3.2 cubic

meters, we said to ourselves, “There’s no way in the world that we can do

this in one day.” But we always found a way to get the job done. During

one of the Allied bombing raids, the bombers took out part of the bridge

at Tamarkan. To get the freight across the damaged bridge, we had to unload

it, walk it over a wooden bridge, and reload it onto boxcars on the other

side of the river. We worked like that for five days and five nights contin-

uously—without stopping to sleep. Up to that time, we would have never

thought that possible, but we soon found out that as far as the human body

is concerned, anything is possible. So it’s true that a POW never says “That’s

my limit,” because for him, there is no limit.

As we got further up the railroad, the country changed from level to hilly.

The work was basically still cut and fill, breaking up rocks for ballast, build-

ing bridges, cutting timber, and so on. But we were on shorter rations and

the elements were beginning to get to us —the constant condition of being

soaked and chilled. The humidity was enough to kill you. By then, we had

started to employ tricks —not to sabotage but to cut the workload down.

For example, when we built a bridge, the piling usually started with a hole

that was dug about a foot deep, and the Japanese would mark the pole to

the depth that they wanted it to go. If we had the opportunity, we would

change the mark so that instead of driving it in ten feet, we would try to

get away with five feet.

Rations got shorter for two reasons. One, the supply line from Than-

byuzayat was longer, and pilfering along the way depleted what was being

brought up. And two, the men were getting sicker and fewer people were

1 4 0 · C H A P T E R F I V E

going out on working parties, so our rations were being cut all the time. I

found out later that we were being weighed periodically because the Japa-

nese had this idea that the less a person weighed, the less rations he needed.

So we’re talking about a vicious cycle now. Assuming that you could stay

fairly healthy, you’re still going to lose weight from the hard work and the

fact that you’re on reduced rations. I was just amazed that that was why

we were being weighed. Even the scrounging got harder, because the Japa-

nese were on pretty thin rations themselves. Toward the end of the rail-

road, we got boxes of rotten meat. It had been sent up from base camp,

and by the time it got to us, it was completely rotten and there was noth-

ing we could do about it. Without opening the cases, we knew what would

happen—maggots would be crawling out, besides the stink of the rotten

meat. We had no choice but to bury the cases.

M E N T A L T O R T U R E

When we sat around in groups after work, the subject was always food. We

not only talked about food that we had had; we talked about food that we

were going to have; and we talked about how we would prepare it or what

we would order. This was usually after a meal; otherwise, it would liter-

ally drive us up the wall, because our gastric juices would be operating with-

out anything to encourage it. There were times like the emperor’s birthday,

when they would give us a day off and extras —a whole hog for the camp

and maybe a little sake. I remember it was on one of those occasions that

Sergeant Powell impressed me all to hell. He was born in India and had

chosen to become a Muslim, and, as such, he didn’t eat pork. That day, he

even refused to eat the gravy that the cook had made from the pork. He

took his ration of gravy and swapped it with four other men for rice so that

he wouldn’t take all of one man’s rations. So they all had extra gravy and

he had extra rice. Here was a British soldier in the middle of nowhere. There

was no one to monitor him; yet he remained true to his belief. If there was

anything that he thought was tainted with pork, he would not eat it, which

was pretty darn hard to do.

Anyhow, on days like that, when we had had a relatively satisfying meal,

we would sit around and talk about food. Then the next thing would be

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 4 1

family. You would think that a bunch of men would talk about sex, but

that was so far down the line it almost never came up. People would just

talk to get their minds off the situation they were in, because we all knew

we weren’t going to be going home any day soon. We knew everything there

was to know about someone’s life—whether he liked his cousins or not,

whether he had problems with his siblings or parents —there were no secrets.

I would listen, but I didn’t feel the need to share anything about myself.

For one thing, my background was so different that I wasn’t sure they would

understand. How do you explain to someone that you were only allowed

to live in twelve square blocks of a city ? Secondly, I really didn’t know that

much about my own family, except the obvious things, like their graduat-

ing from Lowell High and going on to UC Berkeley. So that was why I never

got started on my family. You could always tell when Thanksgiving or Christ-

mas came around. Guys would be down in the dumps because they were

thinking of their families and the holidays. Coming from a different cul-

tural background, I was fortunate not to have these bouts of depression.

As far as Chinese New Year was concerned, I didn’t know when it was going

to happen anyhow, so that didn’t bother me.1

But, as I soon learned, being Chinese did have its disadvantages. One

time I was tortured by the Japanese, another time by two Chinese boat-

men, and it was only because I was Chinese. The first time was at 55 Kilo.

The Japanese had used hand grenades to dynamite and gather a whole bunch

of fish, and they were making fish cakes. They even had tangerine peels! I

didn’t know where they had gotten them, but I knew exactly what they were

going to do with them. They had five or six Japanese filleting and chop-

ping, and the other one was cooking the fish stock. They had a big mos-

quito net so that the bones wouldn’t fall into the soup, and there was nothing

I could scrounge! The fish heads, the carcasses, everything was going into

the fish stock. There was one guy making fu jook (dried bean curd). I had

never seen it done before, but I knew exactly what it was. He had a big ket-

tle, and as the soybean was forming a skin on the top, he would take a lit-

tle stick and roll it out. Then he would hang them on bamboo poles to dry.

Because I was Chinese, I knew it was fu jook, and I knew what the fish cakes

were going to taste like with tangerine peels and everything in it.

The second time it happened was when we were working near the bridge

1 4 2 · C H A P T E R F I V E

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 4 3

F I G . 2 5 . Three water-stained

photos that Eddie carried with

him through the war: sister

Jessie with her daughter Karen;

niece Karen on a walker; and

sisters Mary (left) and Jessie

(right) with their mother and

sister Mints at graduation from

UC Berkeley.

on the River Kwai. One day, I smelled sawn jue ow see (garlic and black

bean sauce)—any Cantonese Chinese knows what that means. These two

Chinese boatmen were taking a little break. They had a jug of whiskey and

they were cooking some spare ribs with sawn jue ow see. And it drove me

nuts! I knew what they were cooking; I could smell what they were cook-

ing. I didn’t care about the whiskey, but I couldn’t go up to them and beg

for some spareribs. What people call torture is always a picture of physi-

cal torture, but mental torture is worse!

T R O P I C A L D I S E A S E S

It was during the speedo period that Dr. Hekking saved my life twice. The

first time was when I had two ulcers, one on each leg—right and left shin-

bones —and they were getting to be about two square inches in size. That

was when he told me, “I’ve got to scrape all the dead flesh away.” And he

said, “You’ve got to help me by letting me do this.” This meant that either

I bear the pain or someone would have to hold me down. An ulcer of that

size took the doc about ten minutes each, and I was able to put my leg up

so that he could hold it with one hand and scrape with the other. All he

had to do was scrape it until blood showed, because blood was considered

an antiseptic. That was the worst pain I had ever felt. There was no disin-

fectant, so what I had to do was sterilize a piece of cloth in boiling water,

place it on top of the wound, and hold it in place with a bandage. As a rule,

you didn’t go back to work until after it had started to scab. I was out for

about a week. Up to then, I had never wanted to go on sick call because,

one, I was afraid it would be too hard for me to pick up the load again; two,

I knew that they couldn’t do anything for me in the hospital; and three, as

long as I could report to work, I knew there would be one more full ration.

But Dr. Hekking convinced me that I shouldn’t take any chances on the

ulcers.

The second time Dr. Hekking saved my life was when I had malaria

and dysentery. The medic did the usual thing—he gave me quinine. It

turned out that I was allergic to quinine, and Dr. Hekking had to pull me

out of that. He basically shocked me out of the allergy. Then he told me,

“Eddie, you can’t take quinine—it’s poisonous to your system. So from

1 4 4 · C H A P T E R F I V E

now on when you get malaria, all you can do is cover up and sweat it out.”

That was the sickest I ever got. I was down to sixty pounds and basically

skin and bones. You can’t imagine how awful it is to be hit by malaria and

dysentery at the same time. Malaria gives you chills and fevers, and you’re

thirsty as hell, so you have to keep drinking; otherwise, you’re going to

get dehydrated. With dysentery, it’s a natural method of dehydrating, so

it’s a double whammy. There’s only so much you can do about hydrating

yourself when water is all you have. So I kept boiling and drinking water.

The other thing I had to do was force myself to eat even though I didn’t

have any appetite, because if I didn’t, it would just make my condition

worse. I was laid up for two weeks, and I basically stayed in bed except to

go to the latrine.

Dysentery was usually spread by flies in the food or in the rations some-

where along the line. It was so common that 99 percent of the POWs got

it. After we came back to the States, the doctors at Walter Reed Hospital

used to ask us, “How did you know what kind of dysentery you had?” (There

were two kinds: amoebic and bacillus.) “Did you have a lab test ?” We all

used to laugh, “Where do you think we were, Doc?” “Then how did you

know?” Well, with amoebic, you might have to go fifteen, thirty times a

day, and with bacillus, you might go seventy-five, one hundred times a day,

but it doesn’t reoccur, so that’s how you know. The same way, we knew

what kind of malaria we had—you can tell from the cycles of fever and

chills. The doctors at Walter Reed would say, “That’s not very scientific.”

And we would reply, “Well, that’s the best we can do.”

I happened to have the bacillus type, which meant I was forever sitting

in the benjo (toilet). When I got there, I would put a palm leaf under my

butt and hopefully see mucus and not blood, because blood would mean

that I was hemorrhaging inside. After that main bout, I never got dysen-

tery again. With malaria, we found out there were many kinds, and the worst

kind to get was cerebral—it literally cooked the brain. I just remember shak-

ing a lot when I had the chills, and burning up when I had the fever. The

first bout lasted about four weeks, although I forced myself to go back to

work after two weeks. Later, I was able to fight it off in a matter of a week

or so. They say you don’t build up immunity to it, but for some reason my

body was able to fight it off.

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 4 5

That was the worst physical point in my captivity. I had never had a

death wish before, but I was debating, “Do I want to fight this or do I want

to just let go and forget the whole thing?” Adding up the pros and cons,

the only thing that tipped the balance was my curious nature. I wanted to

see what the next day would bring; whether it was good, bad, or indiffer-

ent, I just wanted to know. So I hung in there. Of course, I could have

been worse off than that. A lot of the other fellows got beriberi, pellagra,

and dengue fever.2 We were just lucky we didn’t catch cholera from the

natives. When I heard that people were dying wholesale, it horrified me

because of what my mother had always warned me about cholera. People

would vomit and excrete, as if they were dying at both ends. You could

literally see them melt in front of you and fade away. After cholera broke

out in one of the British camps, you could smell that camp for miles. And

before they cleared out of the camp, they had to burn people who were

not quite dead yet. But they had to leave, and they couldn’t take any

chances. There was only one other time that I lived in mortal fear of my

life: I had run out of water when I was out on a working party and I came

across a running brook. Remembering my Boy Scout training, I figured

this had to be purified water because it had been running for miles. I took

a drink, and from that moment on, I lived in apprehension for days, wor-

rying that I might get cholera. I swore from then on, every drop of water

was going to be boiled—never again!

M O U N T I N G C A S U A L T I E S A T 1 0 5 K I L O

Things got worse and worse until we got to 105 Kilo—that was absolutely

the bottom of the pit. It was high up in the mountains, and we experienced

our first cold spell. We were still in the monsoon season and supplies were

short. I even had to scrounge rice and basic camp supplies. The work was

no different, but people were dying every day from disease and malnutri-

tion. Some just found it easier to give up than to endure the suffering. The

classic case was this little Dutchman. He had said if he were not free by a

certain date that he would kill himself. And he did. Other people would

start thinking about how depressing the conditions were, what it was like

at home, and how great it would be to be home again, not realizing that

1 4 6 · C H A P T E R F I V E

they had to get through this period of hell first. Somewhere in between,

they just didn’t make it.

The closest person to me to die was W. F. Mattfeld. He was from Oak-

land, and the fact that he was from across the Bay made us feel almost like

relatives. Mattie died of beriberi and cardiac arrest. We had just come back

from work, and he told his buddy, “Red, I feel a little tired. I think I’ll take

a little nap before dinner.” So Charles “Red” Oosting said, “Don’t worry,

Matt, I’ll go get your chow. You just relax.” After Red came back with the

food and had finished eating, he noticed, “Gee, Mattie’s food is getting cold.”

So he shook Mattie—no response. It suddenly dawned on Red that Mat-

tie had died, but he looked so peaceful that no one could believe he was

dead. He just lay down, and that was it. My first thought was, “I hope I can

go that easily when it’s my turn.” Now, Mattie had a billfold with a two-

dollar bill in it, and he had asked Red, “If I don’t make it through, would

you take this back to my mother ?” Red had said, “Sure, don’t worry, you

can take it back yourself.” So with Mattie gone, Red was now in charge of

the billfold and the two-dollar bill. He could have spent that two dollars

to help himself and replaced it later, but he didn’t. Mattie wanted that bill-

fold and that two dollars to go to his mother, and that was what happened.

I have to admire people like that. I don’t care what he’s done or what he

might become. For nothing else, I respect him for that one act alone.

There was one other example of brotherly love in the face of death that

I will never forget. We called them Mutt and Jeff, although Clifford

England’s nickname was Pee Wee and R. L. Eckland’s name was Swede. But

in our minds, they were Mutt and Jeff, because Swede was six feet two and

Pee Wee was small like me. Somehow, the Swede went out of his mind,

and for some reason, the Japanese never bothered with anyone who was

crazy. As he walked from his bed to the railroad station with all his belong-

ings —his blanket, his canteen, his mess kit, everything—he started to give

his things away. Pee Wee, following right behind him, would explain to

people that the Swede was out of his mind and would they please give the

stuff back. Everyone understood and returned the stuff, and Pee Wee would

carry it. When they got to the guard shack, the Swede just sat there by the

railway track. Pee Wee tried to explain to the Japanese that he was crazy

and that he was waiting for a train to take him home. They just left both

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 4 7

of them alone. After a while the Swede got hungry and thirsty and he decided

he wanted a drink. Pee Wee had his canteen, but he didn’t give him a drink.

Instead, he said, “Let’s go back to camp and we’ll get a drink and maybe

something to eat.” So he got him back to camp, and the Swede died dur-

ing the evening hours. Pee Wee took it pretty hard because they had been

through thick and thin together. Of course, by that time we were on our

last legs. We were weak physically, but on the other hand, mentally we knew

the railroad was almost done, and sooner or later things would get better.

Pee Wee had hoped that maybe the Swede would make it, but he didn’t.

We didn’t have a morgue as such, so we put the Swede near the latrine

area until he could be buried the next day. And that night, because we were

up in the high hill country and it seemed to affect our kidneys, we were

going to the latrine quite frequently. As we passed him, we could see that

the Swede was going through the various stages of rigor mortis. One time

his knees would be drawn up; another time his legs would be sticking out.

So each time we went by, we would try to put him back into repose. Of

course, it didn’t work, because rigor mortis takes its own course. It was

touching and almost humorous in that we were treating the Swede as if he

was still around. He was, but he was dead.

In general, when a person died, he was taken to an area of the hospital,

which served as the morgue, to be prepared for burial the next day. In the

beginning, we tried to give each man a decent burial—a coffin and an honor

guard. But toward the end of the railroad, a man was lucky if he had a rice

sack for a shroud, and, depending on the weather conditions, if we could

dig a hole to cover him up. We would bury him, say a few words, and make

a simple cross with his name and the pertinent data—unit, rank, serial num-

ber, date of birth, and date of death. Within our group someone always

recorded the information and the exact location of the burial site. All of

this came in handy after the war, because the military decided to disinter

all 133 American bodies and bring them back to the States. Some were

reburied at Punchbowl in Hawaii; most were brought back to their home-

towns. Although the cemeteries in Kanburi (Kanchaniburi), Thanbyuzayat,

and Chungkai were all well tended, we didn’t want to leave one American

behind.

1 4 8 · C H A P T E R F I V E

C O M P L E T I O N O F T H E R A I L R O A D

The railroad was officially finished on October 17, 1943, when the two

stretches of rail— one snaking down from Thanbyuzayat and the other up

from Bampong—were linked at Konkoita. But we didn’t know this until

we heard it from someone who was passing through on his way to the base

hospital at 85 Kilo. What he told us didn’t mean anything, because we were

still working. I remember distinctly that we were doing ballast work. And

we kept working until the train came to take us to Kanburi on the Thai-

land side of the border in January. Other than an inspection by Nagatomo

and General Varley, we had no inkling that the railroad was completed.

That was the second time I saw Nagatomo—the first time had been at the

beginning of the railroad. We were standing at attention, and he was check-

ing the troops to see how we were faring. And just as he got in front of me,

I fainted dead away. What happened was that I forgot to wiggle my toes.

(When you are standing at attention, absolutely stock-still, you need to do

something like wiggle your toes to keep your blood circulating; otherwise,

the blood will pool to your feet.) Fortunately for me, Nagatomo chose to

ignore me and just continued on with his inspection.

I remember they were using one of these hand-pumped trolleys to make

sure that the railroad was really passable. Up to then, the only things that

had traveled on the railroad were these diesel trucks with a set of rail wheels

that could be raised and lowered. They would drive these trucks right over

the train tracks, lower these sets of wheels, raise it until the tires were off

the ground, and then it became a locomotive. As much as we hated the Japa-

nese, there were times when we really had to admire them for their inge-

nuity. The nice thing about the diesel truck was that if it derailed, all the

engineer had to do was scream for a bunch of POWs to lift it back up. None

of us ever got a hernia; we always managed to muscle it back up on the

tracks. But when it came to derailed steam engines, we tried, but we could

never do it. The Japanese always thought that if they could just get enough

men on a job, anything was possible. No way ! It didn’t matter how small

the steam train was, it was still a massive, inert piece of metal !

So for us, 105 Kilo was it as far as railroad building was concerned. We

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 4 9

packed up and took everything with us on the train ride to Kanburi—the

camp cooks took their woks, and the doctors took all their medical supplies.

It turned out to be a forty-two-hour train ride, and we made it in one fell

swoop. That was when we had our first look at the railway south of 105 Kilo.

The terrain we passed kept getting rougher and more mountainous, until

we were almost on the side of the mountain. As we looked down, we could

see the long distance that we would fall should the train derail. The train

took it ver-r-y slowly over some of those tracks. And we were thinking, “Holy

smoke, hope all these rickety structures hold up,” because if the Brits had

sabotaged it, we would go right over the side of the mountain. Seeing the

Thailand side of the railroad for the first time, we suddenly realized how

horrendous their work had been compared to ours. We passed through the

stretch called Hellfire Pass that was complete granite, and POWs had had

to somehow dynamite through it. There were also hilly sections where they

had had to build viaducts that were eighty feet high—literally tiers of

wooden structures that didn’t look very safe. That was when we realized how

darn lucky we had been, working the northern stretch that we had.

L A N D O F M I L K A N D H O N E Y

Compared to where we had been, Kanburi was a land of milk and honey.

The work was reasonable, we had enough to eat, and we could even buy

things if we had any money. We went out on work details pretty much like

before, loading and unloading supplies, but we weren’t under the gun as

we had been on the railroad. And when we got back from work, we were

even able to take a shower. The guys had rigged up a four-man water pump.

That was a godsend because the temperature in Thailand was around 85

to 90 degrees, day and night. Four guys took turns pumping the water,

because no one could pump continuously for more than a half hour at a

time. To show you that the camp was now a formal POW camp, the officers

would shower first!

The rations were fairly decent. We each had at least two bowls of rice

twice a day, and the cooks, with access to a little seasoning, were able to

make the stew more palatable. Every once in a while, we got fish. The first

time it happened, I said, “Oh, boy, they’re giving us a whole fried fish.”

1 5 0 · C H A P T E R F I V E

After I got mine, I noticed some of the fellows were eating it and putting

the head, spine, and tail aside. I said, “Are you guys going to throw that

away ?” And they said, “You want this, Eddie ?” So I got all the fish heads,

all the bones, and all the tails together, and boiled it into a broth. After I

strained it, I mixed in a little ginger and a little sugar, and pounded up some

rice to thicken it. Then, at the next meal, I stood at the end of the line where

they were dishing it out and gave everyone a little spoon of gravy to go on

top of their rice. And the guys said appreciatively, “Oh, you can do some-

thing with the fish heads.”

We could also buy things at the canteen for reasonable prices. Eggs cost

ten cents, bananas were five cents apiece, and a jigger full of peanuts was

a nickel. We had gone from ten cents a day for enlisted men to fifteen cents

a day, so, assuming that we worked thirty days, that would make it $4.50.

That amount didn’t buy you much; what you had to do was figure a way

to earn more money. There was one guy we called “Ma” Ballew, because

he took in laundry from the officers. Others would mend people’s clothes —

like a tailor. How I made my money was in scrounging and then selling

what I scrounged to the native traders.

E X T R A C A S H

The best haul I ever made was a case of quinine. I was working in Japanese

headquarters, and there was a medical officer who kept his supplies there.

Dr. Hekking said to me one day, “When you’re out on the working party,

see if you can scrounge some quinine—I’m almost out.” And he added,

“Do what you can, but don’t get into any trouble.” The first day, I found

out where the medical supplies were, and there were four cases of quinine.

I cased the place for two days and found a way in through the back by unty-

ing the matting. What I should have done was to steal the quinine, sell it

to a native trader, take the money, and give it to the doc to buy quinine.

Instead of that, I stole the whole case of quinine. I took it out bottle by

bottle—twenty-four bottles in a wooden crate with straw. Then I got the

case back in order, put the top back on, and put the empty case on the bot-

tom. I figured it would take some time before the Japanese medic got to

the bottom case, and by then I would be gone.

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 5 1

I was in charge of the food baskets that day, and my instinct was, “They’re

not going to search me today.” The question was, “Do I bring back four,

five bottles at a time, or try to take the whole thing in?” My instinct said,

“Do it once—if you’re caught, you’re caught. If you take back six bottles

at a time, you take four times the chance.” There was an Australian who

was helping me carry the pole at one end of the load. He said, “Eddie, you’re

going to get us killed.” I said, “No, they’re not going to search us.” So I put

some bananas on top of the baskets, and I said, “I’ll give you half for help-

ing me carry it in.” He said, “What are you going to do with it ?” I said,

“Give it to the doc for the hospital.” “Now,” he said, “if you’re going to do

that, I’ll help you carry it in.” We got it in. So I told the Australian, “You

can take half to your doctor if you want.” He said, “Let’s see what your

doctor wants first. If he’s a good bloke, he’ll share it with us.” And that was

what Doc did—he shared it with all the other doctors. Doc saved my life

twice, so I will always be beholden to him. He knew he could count on me

whenever he needed anything. In fact, I asked him before I got the quinine,

“You want a microscope? They got a microscope in there, and a nice wooden

case too.” He said in exasperation, “Eddie, I would love that microscope,

but where am I going to hide it ?”

After I requisitioned the quinine for Dr. Hekking, I decided every

opportunity I had to work at Japanese headquarters, I would make arrange-

ments to do some trading. There was this food vendor who was Thai, but

he looked Chinese, and it got to the point where anytime I was working at

Japanese headquarters, he would fill my mess kit with chow fun (a Chinese

pasta dish). I started feeling him out to see if he knew any traders, because

I never saw him doing any trading. He said, “Well, let me look around, and

the next time you’re here, we can talk about it.” So the next time I was there,

I asked him, “Did you have any luck?” He said, “Yeah, I found someone.”

He pointed to a spot and said, “He’ll be right over that fence. All you have

to do is throw whatever you want to sell over the fence and he will pay you

the money through the fence.” No negotiations; it was whatever he was

willing to give me. Once I threw it over the fence, he could walk away. Luck-

ily, I was never cheated. When you’re trading, you have to find someone

trustworthy.

There were established traders in the camp who would take things out

1 5 2 · C H A P T E R F I V E

to sell to the natives for a commission, but I didn’t want to play that mid-

dleman role. If a friend said he would like to get ten dollars for something,

and I couldn’t get ten dollars for it, I would feel bad. If I got twenty dol-

lars for the article, then I would be in a dilemma— should I give him the

extra ten dollars or keep it ? Usually, the trader got a 10–percent commis-

sion for the sale. But when you think about it, a 10–percent commission

on twenty dollars is only two dollars. Why should I fuss about two dollars

when I could just take stuff from Japanese headquarters and get full value,

and no one else would be involved except the native trader on the other

side of the fence ? If I got caught, I would be the only one. I was very lucky

that I never got caught because if I had, besides beating me up, they would

have turned me over to the kempetai, the Japanese equivalent of the

Gestapo.

When I had accumulated $200, I decided it was time to give myself a

birthday party. I had actually turned twenty-one a year earlier, and before

I left home, Mom had told me, “That’s going to be an important day in

your life—you will become a man.” I had not been able to fulfill my mom’s

wish to celebrate at the time, because we were too deep into the speedo

cycle, and I was pretty sick besides. And there had been nothing to have a

birthday party with, not even for myself, so I decided now was the time.

There was a Chinese merchant who often came to the camp commissary.

I told him, “I would like you to bring me some food for my twenty-first

birthday party, however much food $200 can buy.” And I said, “We have

a couple of hundred Americans here, and I would like to give them a good

Chinese meal. I’ll leave it up to you.” He brought in four dishes —pork,

duck, chicken, and fish. At mealtime, I set all the food at the end of the

chow line. Everyone got the regular food and then a spoonful of each of

the four dishes. I don’t think that merchant cheated me, because I know I

got my money’s worth. And being Chinese, he understood what I was try-

ing to do.

I left my money with Captain Fitzsimmons for safe keeping, and George

Reis, who was master sergeant of Headquarters Battery, approached Cap-

tain Fitzsimmons and said, “Would you ask Eddie if he would be willing

to lend me 100 ticals, and I will pay him four American dollars for every

tical when we are freed and I get home ?” So Captain Fitzsimmons asked

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 5 3

me, and I said, “Well, I feel I’m exploiting the situation. Four to one sounds

pretty outrageous.” The captain said, “He was the one who made the offer.

You didn’t ask for it. If he’s willing to pay you four for one, that’s what he’s

willing to pay.” I said, “You don’t think I’m being a shark?” He said, “No,

you’re not trying to set the rates. He’s only asking if you’re willing to accept

the rates.” The three of us got together, and George said, “Do you want me

to write a note for you, Ed?” And I said, “No, George, that’s not necessary.

You’ve given me your word. Let’s take the two possibilities. If I don’t make

it through, I will suspect you would be willing to send the $400 to my fam-

ily. If you don’t make it through, I’m not going to ask your family for 100

ticals and add to their misery of finding out their son didn’t make it.” So

I said, “If we can accept those terms, there’s no need for a piece of paper.

We don’t even need Captain Fitzsimmons as the witness. As far as I’m con-

cerned, I’m willing to take your word for it.” Sure enough, by the time I

got back to San Francisco from Walter Reed Hospital, there was a letter

with a Park Avenue address, and inside was a check for $400 and an invi-

tation to George’s wedding. I remember thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if

all human relationships were this above board?”

L E A R N I N G F R O M O T H E R S

We used to sit around and talk about how much back pay we had coming.

That was when George Reis, who had graduated from Cornell in ’35, gave

us our first lesson in economics. He told us, “Assuming that you’re paid

$30 a month, in twelve months you have $360, and in three years, you’ll

have over $1,000.” So we said, “Gee, George, back in the days of Camp

Bowie, you could buy a brand new car for $600.” And he said, “Yeah, but

what makes you think that the price of the car, assuming you can get one,

is still $600?” That was when he taught us about inflation. “You remem-

ber when we first got into Burma? A catty of sugar was $2.50. By the time

we got to 85 Kilo, it was $25. For the trader to come all the way up to 85

Kilo takes him more time. So even though he can still buy a catty of sugar

for a dollar, now he’s got to sell it for more in order to make his trip worth-

while.” Then he said, “Now, the same thing is happening in the United

States. You’re still thinking in terms of 1940, but it’s now 1944. In the first

1 5 4 · C H A P T E R F I V E

place, they’re probably not making automobiles, because all production is

going towards the war.” We were thinking that with $1,000 back pay, we

would be able to go into a store and buy a suit and dicker for a discount

because there would be thirty or fifty of us. But George told us that the fact

that we could go in there as a group would not make any difference because,

most likely, stores wouldn’t have any goods to sell us. And we kept think-

ing, “He’s crazy, how could there not be consumer goods?” As it turned

out, he was right, and as Rip Van Winkles frozen in the time frame of 1941,

we were in for a rude awakening.

There were other people at Kanburi from whom I learned things. Char-

lie Mott had been with the Flying Tigers and been shot down in Burma.

He was a terrific chess player. We found out that he was the junior cham-

pion of Southern California at one time. One day he set up a simultaneous

chess match where he played ten people all at once, one after the other. We

asked him, “Charlie, aren’t you chewing a lot more than you can swallow?”

He said, “Oh no, duck soup. If you got any money at all, bet on me and

get the best odds you can.” And he said, “I’ll take at least eight out of ten,

and with any luck at all, I’ll take all ten.” So we decided, “Okay, we don’t

know you from Adam, but if you say you’re that good, we’ll bet on you.”

Sure enough, he took all ten; not even one draw. Afterwards, we asked him

how he could play ten guys simultaneously and keep track of each game.

He said, “That’s the beauty of playing simultaneous chess —you act spon-

taneously. You look at the board, make your play in no more than thirty

seconds, and move on to the next game. It’s not as difficult as you think.

If you really want to get difficult, try blindfolded chess.” He explained that

in blindfolded chess, the opponent tells you the move that he has made

and you memorize it in your mind’s eye. “To an outsider,” he said, “it seems

very difficult. But to a chess player, if he concentrates, he can do it.” So I

learned from people like Charlie. It may seem trivial or it may not even be

profitable for me to know things like this, but I learned what people were

capable of.

On a personal level, it was Dr. Hekking who helped me come to terms

with my ethnic identity as a Chinese American. I remember when I first

arrived in the jungle, Captain Fitzsimmons called me in one day and said,

“Eddie, I can change your service record so it reads that you’re half Chi-

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 5 5

nese.” And I said, “Why would we do that, Captain?” He said, “They may

not be as rough on a half Chinese.” I told Captain Fitzsimmons, “My father

would turn over in his grave if I did that. Let’s just take our chances and

leave it the way it is.” That was when I realized that I was Chinese cultur-

ally and philosophically. There was nothing I could do to change that. I

wasn’t extra proud of it; I wasn’t ashamed of it; I just knew that was the

reality of it—I am Chinese, period.

Dr. Hekking reinforced this when he gave me a copy of Lin Yutang’s

Importance of Living to read. I think from our past conversations, he could

sense my ambivalence about being Chinese. I told him I had left home twice,

and he probably wondered, “What are you running from? After all, at six-

teen years old, you haven’t even gotten your education yet.” Since he was

born in Indonesia and had dealt with a lot of natives, he probably could

see how the natives had suffered under the Dutch restrictions that were

imposed on them. Maybe that was what he saw as the analogy to the

restricted life I had experienced in San Francisco Chinatown, and the expla-

nation as to why I felt almost ashamed of being Chinese. I think he gave

me Lin Yutang’s book because he wanted me to learn about China’s rich

culture and history. I read The Importance of Living a number of times, but

it wasn’t until years later, after I had married Lois, that it made an impact

on my sense of ethnic pride.

T H E J A P A N E S E W A Y O F T H I N K I N G

We got our first and only Red Cross package when we were in Kanburi.

There was a card with each package that we had to sign, and it went back

to the Red Cross, acknowledging the receipt of said package. The Japanese

told us it was six men to a package, but we each had to sign a card. In other

words, they kept the other five packages. We didn’t argue about who was

going to get what. The evaporated milk went to the hospital—that was the

one thing that we all agreed on. After that, everything was split among the

six men. Cigarettes were the most difficult because there were ten. That

meant we each got one cigarette. With the remaining four, the guys would

light one up and each person would take a draw. Since I was the pipe smoker,

the guys gave me all the pipe tobacco, which I thought was pretty gener-

1 5 6 · C H A P T E R F I V E

ous of them. We found out after the war that there were books and ath-

letic equipment from the Red Cross locked up in the Japanese warehouses,

and we hated them not so much for keeping back the athletic equipment—

but the reading material, we could have used that. Same thing with our

mail—they kept saying they needed time to censor it. When we offered to

help, they said, “No, no, we’ll do it ourselves.” After the war, there were

sacks and sacks of mail waiting to be delivered.

The Japanese did not want us getting any news except from them. Gus

Forsman, a sailor, and Captain Parker were incarcerated by the kempetai

for trying to smuggle in a Thai newspaper written in English. For that, they

were sentenced to seven years in prison. Of course, we thought it was funny

as hell—you’re a prisoner of war and you’re being sentenced! They were

tortured too because the Japanese wanted to know who else was implicated,

but the men stuck to their story. The Japanese would tell us these stories

about the fantastic deeds of Japanese soldiers and airmen. One guy on a

bombing raid got all shot up, but he managed to fly his plane back to the

base. It turned out that he had been dead for hours! Another guy in a fighter

plane was strafing a ship and ran out of ammunition. So he flew at deck

level, drew a samurai sword, and cut off the captain’s head! It was amaz-

ing to us that they could print such childish propaganda in newspapers like

the Rangoon Times and expect people to believe it.

We just never understood the Japanese way of thinking. At times, it

almost seemed comical. For example, toward the end of the war, they

decided that maybe our prayers were helping us win the war. So they told

us, “No more church services” and “No more chaplains to give services,”

as if a person could not pray by himself. We thought, “This is really funny

if they think this is going to help them win the war.” As another example:

We had been plagued by flies since the beginning. They were big and thick

and everywhere— on our food and in the latrines —and we really couldn’t

do anything about it. But at Kanburi, the Japanese decided, “There are too

many flies in this camp.” So every man had to catch a quota of 100 flies

every day and take them to the guardhouse to be counted. They kept it up

for a couple of weeks before they realized that it wasn’t making the slight-

est dent in the fly population. Of course, there were guys who took advan-

tage of the fact that the Japanese wanted the flies, so they would start

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 5 7

breeding flies or they would cut the big flies into halves. There were all sorts

of ways we would try to cheat the Japanese. Sometimes we got away with

it and sometimes we didn’t. Later, when I applied for a job at Livermore

Lab and one section of the application form said “List all the jobs that you’ve

been paid for,” I put down “fly catching” just as a joke, because we had

been paid a penny for 100 flies. Would you believe I got called in for a job

dealing with small animals and environmental studies!

The Japanese got a laugh out of me one day. We were working near the

kitchen at Japanese headquarters and the cook called us over with that Ori-

ental hand gesture—palm down. He had put out two buckets of food for

us — one with rice and one with some stew. The guys were scrambling to

get their mess kits. What I did was grab one of those big palm leaves, wipe

it off, and fold it as I would a corner for joong (glutinous rice wrapped in

bamboo leaves). Then I broke off two twigs for chopsticks. I was the first

one there, and the cook looked at me and he laughed. He gave me a big

scoop of rice and put some stew on top. I walked aside and began eating

with my makeshift chopsticks —and he was still laughing. Meanwhile,

these other guys were still trying to scrounge up mess kits. So you never

know what to expect from a Japanese. Some will treat you like a human

being, but most of them will treat you like a dog. But you always remem-

ber the ones who treated you like a human being. It was rare, but we did

meet some.

A L L I E D B O M B I N G S

Beginning in ’44, the Allied bombing raids came pretty regularly at Kan-

buri and Tamarkan. The first time we were bombed was in Kanburi. They

were bombing the Japanese headquarters area and the bombs were com-

ing out of the bomb bays like a farmer pitching hay. It was the first time

we had seen B-24s. I said to myself, “That’s got to be it; that’s got to be the

bomb load!” They were using the smokestack of the paper mill that was

about two miles from our camp as the “initial point” or landmark. Slug

Wright had an empty peach can practically fall on his head. Some guy in

the crew had eaten peaches, and Slug swore there was still syrup in the can

that he could wipe off and taste. The second time they came over, they were

1 5 8 · C H A P T E R F I V E

trying to hit the bridge at Tamarkan, and the Japanese were foolish enough

to open up fire. Unfortunately, some of the bombs hit the base camp and

killed some POWs. When we heard that, we started cursing the bombers.

We had just gotten out of the jungles, and now our own people were after

us. Thanbyuzayat was bombed twice. The first time, twelve people were

killed and thirty-two wounded. The second time, seventeen people were

killed and about forty wounded. Colonel Black was in the foxhole when a

500–pound bomb hit nearby. He suffered internal injuries and was deaf

for months afterwards. He also got shot with a .50–caliber in his arm and

he carried that wound until the day he died. He used to show it to people

and say, “That wasn’t by a Nip; that was by an American!” We thought,

“Good god, what kind of intelligence do these people have ?” After the war,

the Air Force said that they thought it was a supply depot and that there

were no Red Cross markings on the grounds or the huts.

The Japanese didn’t like it one bit, and to boost their morale, they took

it out on us. So now we were being hit from both sides. Then, too, when-

ever the bombers hit the railroad or knocked out a bridge, we would have

to work overtime to repair them. If the damage was extensive and we

couldn’t repair it right away, we would have to carry everything across the

river and trans-ship it to another boxcar. It just made a lot of extra work

for us. I remember one time we were working in the Tamarkan area when

we were bombed. We could hear the planes starting to come over and there

we were, coming home over the bridge. So the first thing we did was run

like hell to get off the bridge, then head into the jungles and find any cover

we could. Since then, whenever I hear an airplane engine—and I don’t care

if it’s a jet or a propeller—I want to know exactly where that airplane is,

because throughout the war, a plane always meant danger to us, whether

it belonged to the Japanese or the Allies.

There were many times when we wondered whether this might not

become the most dangerous part of our captivity. Of course, we were begin-

ning to hear rumors that there might be a wholesale slaughter if the Japa-

nese lost the war. With their attitude of not taking prisoners and not

becoming prisoners, some credence was put upon that rumor. When they

had us dig a large moat all around the whole camp, we started thinking,

“Holy smoke, this could be the death trap!” It was a ditch about nine feet

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 5 9

wide at the top, tapering down to four-and-a-half feet at the bottom, and

it had to be at least eight feet deep. We imagined that we would all be forced

into the moat, and with four machine guns — one at each corner—there

would be no way to escape. We decided that if worse comes to worst, we

would try to pole vault over the ditch or overtake the guards. We weren’t

going to just sit there and be slaughtered like sheep.

Soon after, the officers and the men were separated, and we figured they

were trying to get to the point where they could say that they had lived up

to the Geneva Conventions. The scuttlebutt was that negotiations were going

on, so we thought that maybe we were getting close to the end of the war.

We found out later that the Japanese actually destroyed all the plans and

correspondence regarding the railroad, as if the physical presence of the

railroad would not testify to the fact that it had been built! After the war,

we also found out about the “annihilation order.” There were similar orders

for all the camps, which basically called for the final disposal of all prison-

ers in case we got in the way of the last-ditch fight. So there has never been

1 6 0 · C H A P T E R F I V E

F I G . 2 6 . The “bridge on the River Kwai” in Tamarkan, Thailand, after an Allied

bombing raid in 1945. Eddie was there at the beginning of the bombing raids in

November 1944. Courtesy Australian War Memorial, 122329.

any doubt in my mind that had the U.S. not dropped the atom bomb and

forced Japan to surrender, we would have all been killed.

L I B E R A T I O N

Each group of POWs had a different liberation date. Ours was August 19,

1945. We were working at our last camp in Nakhon Nayok, digging caves

and building roads, because this was supposed to be “Custer’s Last Stand”

for the Japanese. A few days before the war ended, we were scheduled to

go out on a work party. We had been issued our lunches and we were ready

to go to work, but it was called off. The following day, we were called for

another work detail, but again we didn’t go out. At first we didn’t think

anything of it, because there were always things to catch up on in camp—

I remember I got a haircut. By the third day, we started wondering if some-

A P O W S U R V I V O R · 1 6 1

F I G . 2 7 . The plaque

on the memorial

honoring F Battery

in Jacksboro, Texas.

Eddie’s name is

second in the middle

column.

thing wasn’t going on. Then around ten o’clock, we heard the British bugler

sounding assembly. All of a sudden, in the pit of my stomach, I had this

feeling, “Something really big is going to happen.”

They had us all line up at the parade ground—all 3,000 people—and

Warrant Officer Stimson, who was in charge of the camp, said to us, “Gen-

tlemen, this is the happiest moment of my life. The Japanese commandant

has asked me to inform you that the war has ended.” There was absolute

silence for about a minute. Then one of the British soldiers went, “Hip-

hip-hurrah!” Right after that, there was a race to see who would put up the

first flag. Then the second race was to see who would have the tallest flagstaff.

I was thinking, “Holy smoke, here we go again— same old rat race!” The

Americans had to make a flag because we didn’t have one. That was the

only time we ever regretted that we weren’t thirteen colonies anymore,

because we had to cut out and sew on forty-eight stars. As it turned out,

the Dutch flag was the first to go up, but our flag was the highest. I had

always had doubts about whether I would make it through. I remember

just feeling relieved: “Okay, you’re still here, you’ve made it through.”

I think throughout my ordeal as a POW of the Japanese, my worst

moment had to be in May ’45. I had finally come to terms with my past and

I was looking forward to going home and telling my mother face to face,

“Okay Mom, I understand what you and Pop have been trying to get

through to me—about what it means to be Chinese—and I’m going to try

and live up to it.” But as it turned out, my mother died in May of ’45. It’s

strange, but I knew exactly when she died, because May was the beginning

of the rainy season, and it was then that I had this strong premonition, “I’m

not going to see her again.” There was never a time when I was more down,

even when I had the dysentery and malaria at the same time in ’43. So I’ve

lived with the fact that I was an unfilial son and a disappointment to my

parents. There are two ways that I can put it: If there is an afterlife, then

wherever they are, my parents will know that I’m trying to live the life they

taught me to live. If there isn’t an afterlife, I will know that I’m trying to

live the way they taught me to live. So either way it will all work out.

1 6 2 · C H A P T E R F I V E

S I X · L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F

When I ran away from home and was bumming around in my teens, I never expe-

rienced any hardships. I was just out for adventure. I knew that if some bad things

should happen, that was all part of the adventure. It was only after the prison camp

days that I realized what hard times really meant. I knew that it was going to shape

my life whether I liked it or not. The only control I had was in the shaping it was

going to take—whether it was going to make me a better or lesser person.

G E T T I N G O U T O F C A M P

I think it was the Australians who started it. They didn’t go by the guard

shack to get out of camp. Instead, they climbed over the fence and went

to town to get liquored up. Most of the Americans were pretty well

behaved. We had been notified by the Allies to stay put and wait for some-

one to come get us. The first couple of days, we busied ourselves with house-

keeping chores, like cleaning up the hut and cleaning out the bedbugs. We

found a clear space on the parade ground where we could build little

bonfires. Then we untied the bamboo slats of our beds, took them over to

the fire, and shook out the bedbugs. Even though we were leaving, we weren’t

going to put up with these critters anymore. Besides, we didn’t know how

long it was going to be before anyone would come get us.

The Korean guards had been dismissed, and we only had the Japanese

guards, who told us they were there to protect us! There was no talk about

1 6 3

how we were going to beat up on them or seek some kind of revenge. It

just didn’t seem like it would benefit any of us to start the vicious cycle all

over again. It wasn’t that we would ever forget what the Japanese did to us,

but there was no point in behaving as they had, simply because we could.

Later, we heard that some of the guys who had gone outside the camp met

up with some of the Korean guards, who were moaning and groaning to

the prisoners they met, “How are we going to get home ?” A week before,

we probably would have beaten them senseless. But it was so pathetic, the

guys just told them, “Go find the Red Cross and they will help you, because

there’s nothing we can do for you.”

A week later, the trucks came by to take us to Bangkok, which was about

eighty miles away. We took everything that we had, as if we were moving

to another camp. I had my rucksack, a hatchet, my wooden clogs, G-string,

and wooden dog tag. I didn’t throw anything away until we got to Calcutta.

We stayed in Bangkok no more than three days to get cleaned up and to

get a new uniform so that we would look presentable again. When the British

found out that the U.S. was sending in planes to get the Americans out,

they demanded that the British officers go first. We later heard that the

American pilots told them, “Our orders are to take the Americans first, and

your rank doesn’t mean beans to us.” We got a good laugh over that because

we had never gotten along with the British officers. For them to carry on

for three and a half years as if they were still in a regular army just didn’t

make any sense to us. We got on one of four C-47s in Bangkok, and our

pilot flew about twelve hundred feet over the railroad. He wanted us to see

where we had been, and we told him, “We know where we’ve been.” And

I said, “We also know what you guys did to the railroad.”

On the way to Rangoon, the plane developed engine problems, and the

pilot sent the copilot back to say, “No worries —lots of emergency airstrips

around here.” So they dropped us down on an airstrip and radioed in to

Calcutta for another replacement aircraft. While we were on the ground

waiting for the aircraft, the pilot got us some Number Ten cans of pineap-

ple grapefruit juice to drink. Then the pilot said to the crew chief, “Have

we still got some of those ten-in-one rations?” And the crew chief said, “Oh,

we got lots of those.” We didn’t know what they were, because when we

went over we had C-rations, and they were cans of things like stew. So we

1 6 4 · C H A P T E R S I X

opened up these little cardboard boxes and found little cans of potted meat

and scrambled eggs, some instant coffee, cigarettes, and a small package of

toilet paper. (The reason they called it “ten in one” was because it was ten

days of rations for one person or ten people could have one day’s rations.)

It was quite palatable, and we were eating these things as if we were eating

steak and eggs. The pilot said, “You guys like this stuff ?” And we said, “Yeah,

it’s pretty tasty.” And he said, “I think we got more of them if you want.”

We must have eaten everything they had on the plane, and they couldn’t

get over the fact that we liked the food so much.

When we got to Rangoon, there was a reception committee there—a

group of English ladies to serve us tea and sandwiches. We were so shy that

we just reached out and grabbed a sandwich off the tray and stepped back

six feet. We had been using the “F” word so often that we were afraid to

open our mouths even to say “Thank you.” It suddenly occurred to us that

we were going to be meeting women again, and we had better start learn-

ing how to behave as civilized people in mixed society. That was why it was

a relief for us when we arrived at the 142nd General Army Hospital in Cal-

cutta. We were back in the army again. Even though the army nurses were

women too, they were officers, and, as enlisted men, we knew how to behave

toward them.

The nurses proved to be as tough as any officer could be when we got

out of line. The first night we slept over, a nurse found us all sleeping on

the concrete floor when she came in the next morning. She looked at us and

she said, “If this ward is not shipshape in five minutes, all of you are going

to be on report.” We got all the mattresses back on the cots, made up the

beds, and she didn’t say another word. A few days later, we heard that the

nurse complained to the head doctor about how unruly we were. Essentially,

the doctor told the nurses to give us some slack: “Check them out at bed-

time, then taps and lights out. If they’re in bed, they’re in bed.” So we caught

on. As soon as the lights were out and the nurse went back to her desk, we

slept on the floor, and before reveille, all the beds were made up. I’m not

sure if the nurses ever understood why we couldn’t sleep on a soft bed. We

appreciated the clean sheets and everything, but for the longest time, we

just couldn’t sleep on anything unless it was absolutely hard and flat.

We had gotten into Calcutta late at night, and the mess sergeant had

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 6 5

been very nice to us. He gave us each macaroni and cheese, half a pint of

milk, and fruit salad. And he said, “This is all I can do for you tonight, but

I’ll set you up with a breakfast tomorrow that you’ll never forget.” Next

morning, we got ham, bacon, sausage, eggs any style, all kinds of fruit, cof-

fee, and milk. We took our regular ranch-hand breakfast and we couldn’t

eat one tenth of what we took. When the doctors made the rounds, we asked

them, “How come we can’t eat ?” And the doctor said, “Your stomach is

the size of a fist or smaller. If you eat too much greasy food, you’re going

to have the runs. Just get used to it gradually.” I remember I had my first

cup of coffee in three and a half years. I practically inhaled it before sitting

down and savoring at least five or six cups of it. At the time, even army

coffee smelled and tasted good.

We were there for about three weeks to be fattened up. They served us

lots of food cafeteria style, but our chow line was for ex-prisoners only. I

guess even the cooks and the doctors had a lot to learn from that first break-

fast. They had tried to be real nice to us, but our stomachs couldn’t take it.

We were allowed to go to town. The first place I looked for was a Chinese

restaurant. I found one and I had chow mein— curried flavor chow mein.

I didn’t know why it was that I had spent most of my life escaping China-

town, and the first chance I had, I would try to get in touch with anything

Chinese. I just knew I felt homesick for Chinese food. I walked around town,

enjoying the sights, and blew my first paycheck on a blue sapphire ring for

my mother. Once I got used to the idea that cows were sacred in India, I

wasn’t even bothered by all the cows wandering in the streets. Other than

going to town, I frequented the PX on the hospital grounds. The word was

that ex-prisoners could walk into the PX anytime and order anything they

wanted, and they were not to be charged. So we had milk shakes and Coca–

Colas galore—the exact thing that the doctors had warned us against. My

main thing was milk shakes. I had two at a time and I paid for it afterwards

with the runs, but I didn’t care.

B A C K I N T H E U . S . A .

The route of the plane ride from Calcutta to Washington, DC, was Karachi

to Tripoli, Tripoli to Casablanca, Casablanca to the Azores, Azores to New-

1 6 6 · C H A P T E R S I X

foundland, and then Newfoundland to Washington, DC. That was because

of the limited range of the two-engine DC-3 aircraft we were on. The plan

was to get us on a four-engine aircraft in Casablanca. We had a four-hour

layover in Casablanca, and they gave us the same prime-rib dinner that

Churchill and Roosevelt had had at their big meeting in 1943. Prior to our

flying out, they took us through ditching procedures, in case the plane had

to come down at sea. That was when we began wondering whether we

couldn’t find some other way to get home. When we passed New York, I

remember that the pilot circled the Statue of Liberty three times after he

found out that we had been away from the country for so long. That was

when it hit us —that we were actually home and back in the good old U.S.A.

By the time we got to Walter Reed Hospital, we were all somewhat pre-

sentable. My weight was up to 100 pounds, from my lowest weight of 60

pounds. That was because we had been recuperating from the time we left

the jungle in January of ’44—twenty months earlier. At Walter Reed, we

were basically on duty every day from 8:00 to 5:00 in the sense that we were

at the beck and call of all the doctors. They took our history about malaria,

dysentery, and so on. We had proctology examinations to see what dam-

age had been done to the rectum. Back in those days, they didn’t have things

like endoscopes with fiber optics. Instead, they inserted a tube that was close

to three-fourths of an inch in diameter, and you had to be positioned in a

certain way so that your rectum was lined up with the sigmoid. That was

the worst examination we had. The one that was most perplexing was the

psychological examination. We had to go through several locked doors to

get to the “nut ward.” From some of the questions that the psychiatrists

asked us, we thought they were nuts: “How do you feel about girls?” We

told them that we hadn’t had a chance to really find out yet. “Do you have

a normal sex drive ?” We said that we thought we did. It went on in this

vein, and we just could not understand, “Where is all this getting to?”

The other bad thing we had happen to us was the de-worming session.

We evidently all had tapeworms inside our stomach linings from walking

barefoot in the jungles. They gave us a pill that had to be the size of a golf

ball. I’ll never forget the army nurse, Captain Adams, who administered it

to us. The pill had chloroform that was supposed to kill the tapeworm, and

after we swallowed it, it would help expel the worm. So we said to her, “Is

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 6 7

this to kill the worms or us?” And she said, “You guys don’t shut up, I’ll

feed you another one.” Of course, the doctors could never figure it out—

here we were on a starvation diet and then we had worms on top of that!

As I said, they would ask us how we knew what kind of malaria we had,

what kind of dysentery we had, and so on. And when we told them about

the beriberi, pellagra, and the other tropical diseases, a lot of them really

did not know what we were talking about. All of these exams took over a

week. With the army, it was always “Hurry up and wait.”

H O M E C O M I N G

I didn’t call home until we had arrived safely at Walter Reed. I could have

cabled from Calcutta, but I decided that there was still a lot of ground to

cover before I got home. There was always the possibility of a plane crash.

After all, I had never flown before, and I wasn’t sure when I was going to

get in. When I did call home on September 21, a cousin of ours was at the

house and he answered the phone. Since he only spoke Chinese, I had to

ask in Chinese to speak to my mother. I said, “This is Man Quong.” He

hesitated and said, “Your mother gwo hau,” meaning “she has passed away.”

I thought he said, “Gwo fow,” meaning “out of town.” I assumed he meant

she was at the butcher shop in Lodi. I asked, “When is she coming back?”

At that point, he turned the phone over to Myra Lee, who had gone to school

with me. I heard her voice and said, “What are you doing at the house ?”

She said, “I’m married to your brother Bill.” So that took me off the track.

Even before I got home from Walter Reed, the word must have gone around:

“Ed is a little crazy—he thinks his mommy’s going to come back.”

When I finally got home, it was late in the evening, and I found Ah So

and Myra home. Ah So wanted to get some firecrackers and shoot them

off, and I said, “Don’t do that—it’ll wake up the whole neighborhood.”

Then when I got it straight from Myra about Mom being dead and I started

to walk out of the house, Ah So said, “You’re not going to do anything fool-

ish, are you, Eddie ?” I said, “Don’t be silly. I’m just going out for some

fresh air, just want to be by myself for a while.” I remember I was feeling

disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to talk to Mom at least one more

time. But by that time I was pretty used to things not turning out the way

1 6 8 · C H A P T E R S I X

I had anticipated. I decided there was nothing to hang around San Fran-

cisco for, so I headed down to Santa Barbara for “R and R.”

My “R and R” was spent at the Biltmore Hotel, which was nearest my

home town. We had been told that after sixty days, we would be given an

automatic extension of “R and R” if we requested it. We could invite guests

to come stay at the Biltmore and there would be no charge. So a lot of the

guys invited their girlfriends, or, in Donald “Pineapple” Johnson’s case, he

invited his parents from Nebraska to come stay with him. The only people

I knew to invite were my sisters. Jess was in Bakersfield, but she couldn’t

come because she had children to take care of. Mints and Grace were work-

ing as waitresses in Hollywood at the time, so they each came and stayed

one night. After two weeks, I was bored out of my skull. I just couldn’t take

the inactivity or fill up time with empty activities. I didn’t drink and I didn’t

know how to jitterbug. There were organized field trips to the missions and

that kind of thing, but I wasn’t interested. I went horseback riding once,

but it didn’t seem as enjoyable as before. Since I wasn’t due to report at

Camp Beale for another month, I decided to go visit my sister in Bakersfield.

R E E N L I S T M E N T

When I finally got to Camp Beale in Marysville, that was when they asked

me if I wanted to stay in the army or not. At that time, you could retire on

50 percent of your pay after twenty years. I had never given any thought

about staying anyplace for twenty years, because growing up in Chinatown,

no one had a steady job; no one thought in terms of staying with a com-

pany, getting a pension, and so on. In fact, when I first got back, I looked

into becoming a plumber. I went to this guy, Rosenbaum, who had a plumb-

ing shop in Chinatown, and I asked him, “How do I go about learning to

be a plumber so I can start my own shop?” He said, “I can teach you every-

thing I know, but you’ll never become a journeyman because you will never

be admitted into the union. And unless you’re in the union, you will never

be able to open your own shop.” I asked him why that was, and he said,

“Because you’re Chinese.” Then he asked me, “Why do you want to

become a plumber ?” And I said, “I notice there aren’t any Chinese

plumbers.” And he said, “Now you know why.” That was when I first became

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 6 9

aware of racial discrimination in the job market. The other reason I con-

sidered reenlisting was that I had no desire to stay home now that Mom

was gone. I also did not want to go back to Texas and be a cowboy. I thought,

“It was okay when you were a snotty-nosed kid, but I don’t think you want

to do that for the rest of your life.” I had grown up, but maturity didn’t

come until at least thirty years later. I decided the easiest thing to do was

to just stay in the army until I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of

my life.

The next question was whether I wanted to stay with the artillery or the

infantry, because the 36th Division was basically an infantry division. I

decided I wanted to give the Air Corps a try, because to any foot soldier

on the ground, an airman looks like he has an easier job: “Those guys can

fly their mission, go home, and have a nice soft bed to sleep in.” Never mind

1 7 0 · C H A P T E R S I X

F I G . 2 8 . Eddie with his sister

Grace at the Biltmore Hotel

in Santa Barbara, 1945.

that the pilot has to fly through flak-infested skies with fighters trying to

knock him down, and that he has to fly in formation slow, straight, and

steady while everybody is gunning for him. I just knew I didn’t want to be

a foot soldier anymore, and the Air Corps seemed the next best thing to

do. So they said, “Okay, if you want to try the Air Corps, we’ll send you

to the Replacement Depot in Wichita Falls, and they can decide what they

want to do with you.”

I got to Shepherd Field in Wichita Falls on a Friday evening, and right

away, they told me I was in charge of quarters, since I was now a corporal.

I was just getting settled in when one of the new draftees came back from

town and said, “Corporal, there’s a big parade downtown, and there’s a

bunch of geezers with stripes just like yours.” He was referring to my seven

stripes — each bar represented six months overseas. He showed me the news-

paper, and I realized the parade was for my group. It mentioned the hotel

where they were going to have the reception that evening. So I went up

there, and as I walked into this big ballroom, I noticed the officers were sit-

ting at the front table. Seeing Colonel Tharp, I went up and saluted him.

Then the guys started yelling, “Hey, Eddie!” And when they saw my uni-

form, they yelled, “You dirty traitor, going over to the Air Corps!” It was

weird in a way because we had gone through three and a half years prac-

tically bare naked, and here we were in full uniform, and I swear to God I

had a tough time recognizing some of them. With a big crowd like that, it

was pretty confusing. Before I had a chance to say hello, someone else would

grab me. But it was also a joyous occasion, especially for the Fitzsimmons

group, because we had been such a tight group through thick and thin.

The Air Corps decided to send me to Lowry Air Force Base, near Den-

ver, to be trained as a clerk-typist, although my first choice had been cryp-

tography school. While at Lowry, I went on an eating binge. They were

serving pork chops one evening, and the military, when they give you a

pork chop, we’re talking about an inch thick. The normal portion was two

chops, and the motto over any mess hall was “Take all you want, but eat

all you take.” I ate my first portion of pork chops with my vegetables and

so on. I went back and I said to the server, “Why don’t you save us both a

lot of trouble and let me have four more ?” He said, “Sure, corporal, any

number you want. Just remember the sign—take all you want but eat all

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 7 1

you take.” So I ate the four pork chops and I went back and said, “How

about another four ?” He called the mess sergeant, and the mess sergeant

said, “What’s the problem?” He said, “The corporal wants another four pork

chops, and he’s already had six.” He said, “Is he eating the pork chops?”

He said, “Yeah, he has an empty tray.” “So give him what he wants.” So I

said, “While you’re at it, make it six. Then I won’t have to come back.”

The mess sergeant got a cup of coffee and sat down by me, and he said,

“Don’t worry corporal, I’m just taking a break.” We got to talking, and he

finally said, “I understand why you’re stuffing yourself, but I don’t know

where you’re putting it!” I said, “I don’t know either, but I’m going to be

full when I’m finished.” He said, “Do you do this all the time ?” I said, “No,

just once in a while. If something looks appealing or appetizing, it just trig-

gers something in me.” So he said, “You know that you can eat all you want

any time you want. As a mess sergeant, I enjoy seeing a man eat.” Every

once in a while, I would go on binges like that, and that was how I got to

be 125 pounds at my discharge point.

After six weeks of training, I was told to report to my duty station,

Andrews Air Force Base in Aberdeen, Maryland. On my way there, I decided

to stop off in Missouri for a haircut. As I walked into this barbershop that

had five or six people in there, all the conversation suddenly stopped. So I

waited until it was my turn and the shop was empty, and I said, “If you

don’t mind my asking, was it because of me that the conversation stopped?”

The barber said, “Those people probably thought you were Japanese.” So

I said, “What difference would that make ? I’ve seen Japanese Americans

in uniform.” He looked at my stripes and he said, “How long have you been

away ?” I said, “We’ve been overseas for forty-six months.” And he said,

“You don’t know about the internment ?” I said, “What internment ?” So

he told me briefly about how thousands of Japanese Americans on the West

Coast had been locked up in internment camps during the war.1 And I said,

“That happened?” And he said, “Yes, it happened. These people probably

thought you were Japanese. I’ve seen Chinese, so I know the difference.” I

said, “How in hell can a thing like that happen in the U.S.?” He said, “Well,

you have to have been here. People were in a state of hysteria, thinking that

the Japs were going to land in the West Coast any minute, and they were

probably looking to lock up Germans on the East Coast.”

1 7 2 · C H A P T E R S I X

It was at that point when I realized there were people who might not

know the difference between a Chinese and Japanese and I would just have

to make allowances for that. I told the barber, “It’s ironic that I’m being

mistaken for a Japanese when I’ve been a guest of the Japanese for three

and a half years.” And he said, “God, you’re not pulling my leg, are you ?

The next time those guys come in, I’m going to tell them.” So I said, “No,

tell them not to be too fast on the trigger, that’s all. Give someone the benefit

of the doubt. That’s all we ask.” I walked away thinking, “I wish people could

learn what we had learned without having to go through all the brutality

and the suffering, but I guess it doesn’t work that way.”

When I got to Andrews Air Force Base, I was assigned to work under

Sergeant Major John Costello, who apparently knew every trick in the book.

He told me, “Eddie, normally I would have to discharge you after six years

in the service, but I’ve got a little gimmick up my sleeve. If you sign up for

six more months, I can give you your reenlistment bonus, which is $50

for each year you’ve served. So right away, that’s $300.” He added, “Before

I sign you up, I’m going to discharge you and send you home and then

bring you back to your place of enlistment. You’re not actually going to

leave; it’s all on paper. So there’s another X number of dollars.” He knew

all the ways to generate dollars, and he said, “But I got to sign you up for

a minimum of six months to do this.” And he said, “If nothing else, it will

give you some more time to decide whether you want to make the army

your career or not.” So I followed his advice and signed up for six more

months.

I turned out to be a lousy clerk-typist. The first assignment I was given

was to type up an order for a person to do something. It took me all day

to type up a simple paragraph, and I still didn’t have it right. John Costello

came by and said, “Having a little trouble, Eddie ?” I said, “John, I’m just

not cut out to be a clerk-typist.” So he took the form that I was supposed

to type out, went to his desk, got out three sheets of paper, put the carbon

paper in between, tapped the paper evenly, slipped it into his typewriter,

and within thirty seconds, he had the order typed out. And he said, “Eddie,

it’s going to take you a while, because I’m one of the best typists in the army.”

He told me that he gave demonstrations and that he could type rhythm on

a typewriter. “They won’t allow me on the teletype because I jam it up—

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 7 3

I type too fast.” And he said, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get the hang of

it.” I said, “John, I don’t think so. I’m all thumbs.”

Before I decided to quit the air force, I said to John, “If I asked to go to

another school or train for something else, do you think I would get it ?”

He replied, “If you sign up for a three-year enlistment, I’ll almost guaran-

tee it. Did you have something in mind?” I said, “No, I’m not sure there’s

anything I can really do for the Air Corps that someone else can’t do.” I

decided that I had better take my discharge at that point and be done with

it. I knew by then that if I stayed in the army, it would have been for the

wrong reason—that it was a safe cocoon—and that was not the way I wanted

to live my life.

W O R K A N D S C H O O L I N G I N B A K E R S F I E L D

After I was discharged, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next, so I went

home. But for some reason, San Francisco seemed awfully cold to me. At

first I thought it was because my body was still in the tropics. But then,

even in Aberdeen, where it snowed, I had not felt cold. That was when Jess

suggested I come down to Bakersfield, where it was a little warmer, so that

I could get my thermostat readjusted. I knew I couldn’t live in San Fran-

cisco anymore. With my mother gone, the city just didn’t hold any special

attraction for me. She was the main reason, the only reason I had wanted

to come back.

When I got to Bakersfield, I decided right away that I couldn’t stay idle.

So Jessie introduced me to Jack Quan, a wholesale meat jobber, and she

told him that I knew something about meat cutting. Jack said, “You want

a job?” And I said, “I have to tell you, I barely got started on learning the

meat-cutting trade. I haven’t touched any tools since I was fourteen years

old.” “Oh,” he said, “I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” He was

desperate for help, so that was how I got started working as a meat cutter

again.

What Jack did was to sell cut-up meat to small grocery stores and restau-

rants. Basically, he would buy the beef halves and we would cut it up for

steaks, and the rest would be used for hamburger. We would make pork

sausage and prepare trays of pork chops cut for display. All that the small-

1 7 4 · C H A P T E R S I X

grocery owner had to do was to put them in his display case. Occasionally,

we would fill orders for veal chops, rib steaks, or T-bone steaks —whatever

they thought would sell in their neighborhood stores. Then there were always

the special demands of the restaurants from day to day, depending on their

menus. I worked eight hours a day and I was paid sixty dollars a month at

the beginning. After a year, it was kicked up to eighty dollars. That was pretty

good, considering that Jack had to teach me everything. The work wasn’t

hard—all I had to do was take the orders in the morning, deal with the

orders, and then deliver them.

Since I had a little spare time in the evenings, I decided to take some

night courses at the high school nearby— courses like algebra and geom-

etry that I had never had. It was Jess who told me that there was a JC ( junior

college) in Bakersfield. I said to her, “Jess, I’m a dropout from the junior

year of high school. I don’t think I’m ready to go to junior college yet.” So

she said, “Well, what you can do is go talk to a counselor and see whether

you should take night courses or try to matriculate at a JC.” So I went there

and found out about the GED test that could qualify me for a high school

diploma. I didn’t want to jump into it right away, so I waited a year before

I took the four-hour exam covering math, history, English, and so on. A

couple of months later, I got word that I had passed the test. The coun-

selor jokingly said, “Now that you’re going to get your GED diploma, what

high school do you want it from?” I had already decided that I was going

to major in chemistry because of Captain Cates. He was the officer who

asked us to be on the lookout for acetic acid in Java. At that time, I thought

it was magic and something I would like to learn more about.

When I found out how little books and tuition would cost, I decided to

save the GI Bill for later, because I still had three and a half years of back

pay to cover it all. I also had all the war bonds that my mother had bought

in my name with the pay that the army had sent her while I was a POW.

So in terms of finances, I could quit my job and just concentrate on school.

The counselor had warned me that I was going to have to make up all these

courses I had not taken in high school, and they would be accelerated courses

and probably hard for me. The first semester I took twenty-three units, and

when Jessie found out, she said, “Ed, for God’s sake, you’re just starting off

and if you fail, it’s just going to knock you back. Take the normal load—

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 7 5

fifteen, sixteen units. If you want to stretch it, maybe eighteen, but definitely

not more.” So I decided, “Okay, that’s probably good advice,” and I cut

back to sixteen units. Then, at the end of the semester, she read in the jun-

ior college paper that I had made the honor roll. I said, “What’s that ?” And

she said, “That means you hold a certain grade point average.” I didn’t think

it was any big deal because, after all, I was just taking preliminary courses.

Then the second semester of my freshman year, she said, “Ed, you’re on

the honor roll again!” I said, “I’m not paying attention to grades. I’m just

pounding the books.” I guess like everything else I have ever tried, I always

put my heart and soul into it. For two years in a row, I made the honor

roll, and Jess was more amazed than I was —that I could actually make good

grades and finish JC in two years.

One of the best teachers I had at the junior college was Mr. Van Ewert,

who taught history and philosophy. He had been an intelligence officer in

the navy. One day we were just gassing, and he said, “You people have the

wrong idea about my being an intelligence officer. I was in intelligence

because I have a history background. A lot of what is called ‘intelligence’

is just basic research.” Up to that point, I had studied history in school but

had never been able to relate to it. Right from the beginning, Mr. Van Ewert

told us, “I know some of you people don’t want to be here, but you have

to be here. The first thing I will tell you is that you’re not required to mem-

orize any dates, because you can always look that up in the almanac. What

I want you to do is to be able to see history as a continuous, evolving story

of mankind.” And he added, “You people who have been through World

War II do not think of yourself as being part of history. Twenty years from

now, you will begin to see that you were part of history. No matter how

small a part you played, you were there.”

I remember I would get really engrossed in the papers I had to do for

his class. One day, as he was handing me back my paper, he asked me, “Ed,

what’s your major ?” I said, “Chemistry.” And he said, “You really should

think about history as your major. I can tell from the paper you wrote that

you love it.” I said, “I love it in the sense that you have piqued my interest

by making history a living thing, but I can’t change my major, because I’m

Chinese.” He seemed puzzled, “What does that have to do with your chang-

ing your major ?” I said, “Well, being practical, I have to think about mak-

1 7 6 · C H A P T E R S I X

ing a living.” He said, “Don’t worry about making a living. Do what you

enjoy, and the living part will take care of itself.” And I said, “No, I’m sorry

Mr. Van Ewert, we’re brought up to be more practical than that.” It’s the

kind of advice that older people give to young people, who don’t have the

perspective yet to see how right the advice is. Later, I learned about the Chi-

nese saying, “Get a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

So maybe he was right, and I was too practical. But that’s water over the

dam now, except that I do think about it often. I think about how people

like Mr. Van Ewert can influence a person’s life, even in the short time that

I knew him.

M Y F I R S T M A R R I A G E

Jess thought that I should get to know people and have a normal life of

dating, so she suggested the Chinese church might be a good place to start.

That was where I got acquainted with my first wife. Apparently, no one

had ever seriously dated her because—to put it kindly— she was a very naive

person. We’re talking about a person who in her early twenties still did not

know how to take the streetcar by herself. She was overly protected. In a

way, I married her for all the wrong reasons. I saw this helpless person, and

I couldn’t see any reason for it. I thought I could help bring her out of her

shell. For her part, she wanted to get away from her parents and try being

married. But that didn’t work, because we stayed in the same town. I won’t

say it was all her fault, because at that time my libido was overriding a lot

of things. I remember these old-timers in Bakersfield used to tell me, “Ed,

right now, your sex drive is almost dictating to you. The most peaceful time

of your life will be when your sex drive is down.” I thought, “Gee, must be

sour grapes.” Only in retrospect could I see the wisdom of what they were

saying. To make matters worse, we got married shortly after I had started

junior college. To take on two major events in my life at the same time was

just not a good idea.

She was so protected that she didn’t know what life was all about, and

that was partly the reason why we got divorced two years later. When we

got married, her mother wanted to buy her a mink coat. I said, “Mrs. Lee,

I can’t even afford to put that thing in storage, much less have her wear it.”

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 7 7

Then when her mother found out that I was going to transfer to Stanford,

she started talking about buying a house up in Palo Alto so that she and

her husband could move up there. (I found out later that my wife had been

adopted, and her adoptive parents made a big deal about revealing this to

her when she became twenty-one years old. My feeling was that they should

tell her only if and when she expressed interest in knowing.) What hap-

pened was that right before I finished my second year of JC, she had a nerv-

ous breakdown. I was just getting ready for my finals and I probably wasn’t

paying her as much attention as I should have. Of course, instead of get-

ting her the professional care that she needed, her parents were saying, “She

was never like this before she got married to you.” I said, “I’m perfectly

willing to take any and all blame. The important thing now is to get her

professional help.”

We decided to put her in a psychiatric clinic in Los Angeles, where she

underwent insulin shock. Insulin shock was supposed to be more benign

than electrical shock, but shock is shock—to overload anyone’s system with

insulin is inhumane. When I visited her at the clinic, she begged me to take

her home, but I couldn’t because I had to follow the best medical advice I

could get at that time. My brother-in-law Jim, who was a psychologist, kept

telling me, “If you weaken at this stage and take her home, she’ll never get

well, and it may get worse. You’ve got to gut it through, Ed.” Then after

she was out of the hospital, the dilemma became: “Does she stay with me

or go back to her parents?” She decided she was more comfortable with

her parents. I didn’t dispute it. I decided, “This is at least one decision you

are going to make on your own.”

By the time I transferred to Stanford, the divorce was in interlocutory.

The next time I saw her, she was attending San Jose State College and liv-

ing in a sorority house. I asked her how she was doing, and she said, “Fine.”

I said, “Look like you’ll finish?” And she said, “Oh, no problem.” I said,

“You’re getting on with your life ? You’re seeing other people ?” And she

said, “Oh, yeah.” I wanted her to know that I was still concerned about her,

and that was about the extent of it. I didn’t feel that an apology would do

any good—it would almost be like crocodile tears. I never got over the fact

that I had meddled in her life and in the process caused her to have a men-

tal breakdown. If I had not married her, or if I had been more attentive to

1 7 8 · C H A P T E R S I X

her needs, it might not have happened. Other than killing someone, I don’t

think there is any greater offense you can do to another person than to hurt

them. And, as I had been brought up to believe that every wrongdoing has

its price, I decided not to take a degree from Stanford, even though I had

completed all the requirements for graduation. That was the price I chose

to pay for contributing to my wife’s breakdown.

G O I N G T O S T A N F O R D

My JC teacher, Miss Horn, had advised me to apply to Stanford, UC Berke-

ley, and Reed College when it was time for me to move on to upper-division

work. I was accepted at all three, but I chose Stanford because the advisor

at Reed was not very encouraging and I didn’t want to go to Cal since every-

one else in my family had gone there—I wanted to maintain my reputa-

tion as the “black sheep” of the family. As it turned out, that may not have

been the best move for me, because I had to switch from a semester to a

quarter system, and the atmosphere at Stanford was quite different. The

classes were much larger and more impersonal, and I saw more of the TA’s

than the professors. Then, just before finals in my junior year, I picked up

a case of poison oak. I had a car, and I used to go out into the hills to study.

Coming back, I drove through some smoke, and immediately I felt the itch.

Somebody had been burning some brush and it had poison oak in it. Before

that night was over, I had broken out all over. The people in the infirmary

offered, “We can tell the professors that you should put off your finals.”

But I didn’t want to ask for any special favors, so I took the finals without

having time to cram for them. I passed with C’s, and that set me back. I

didn’t do much better in my senior year. It wasn’t that the work was hard;

I just found it hard adjusting to Stanford. And my feeling guilty over the

divorce didn’t help matters.

While at Stanford, I lived in the Stanford Village dorms with eight other

vets. The janitors told us the dorms had previously been the psych wards

for the Veterans Administration, and we thought that was pretty apropos. I

asked for and got a room all to myself, because privacy was something I had

never had in Chinatown, at the ranch, in the army, and certainly not in the

camps. But I hung out with the other vets more than anyone else. We never

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 7 9

talked about our war experiences; it was just that we felt we had more in com-

mon. For instance, the first time I ever tried to stop smoking was with Eugene

“Rip” Rypka. I had picked up the habit after the war. Rip was going for his

PhD and he lived in the dorm next to me. We were studying for a chemistry

exam, and it was two o’clock in the morning when we suddenly realized we

were both out of cigarettes. Without saying a word, we both started ripping

apart cigarette butts and putting the tobacco in one pile. Then Rip looked

up and said, “What are we going to do for paper, Ed?” And I said, “Rip, this

is good old U.S. of A. If nothing else, there’s toilet paper, there’s newspaper,

and even our textbooks are made out of paper. Don’t worry about paper.”

So we got some tissue paper, rolled the cigarettes, lit up, and took a deep

draw. Then we looked at each other, and I said, “It’s kind of silly for two

grown men to act like this —let’s quit!” Of course, that didn’t last long, and

it wasn’t until after I married Lois that I gave up smoking for good.

In my senior year, they teamed me up with a Japanese American by the

name of Seiji Kami. He had been interned at Heart Mountain during the

war. Toward the end of the war, someone came by his camp and asked if

anyone wanted to learn how to be a mechanic. Wanting to get out of the

internment camp, Seiji volunteered. So that was how Seiji learned to

become a master mechanic. During spring break of our senior year, my ’41

1 8 0 · C H A P T E R S I X

F I G . 2 9 . Eddie (right) with

his nephew Herbie (left)

in San Francisco while

on summer break from

Stanford, 1951.

Chevy started to sound sick, and Seiji offered to overhaul the engine for

me at his uncle’s home in San Mateo. After we pulled the car into the garage,

he looked at me and said, “I know you guys in the army always brag about

how you can strip any weapon that you use blindfolded. I’m going to show

you I can strip an engine down blindfolded.” I said, “Oh, Seiji, I’m not going

to fall for that.” And he said, “You watch.” First thing we did, we drained

the oil out of the engine crankcase. Then the next morning, Seiji laid out

newspapers all over the garage, and he started stripping that engine blind-

folded and putting the parts exactly where he wanted them. In a matter of

a day and a half, he had overhauled the engine completely and it was run-

ning like a Swiss watch. And he said, “That’s what I was taught—to be a

master mechanic.”

So if he was a master mechanic, what was he doing in college ? Well, he

was going with a girl who was a schoolteacher. Amy knew that Seiji could

make a good living being a master mechanic, but she said, “I’m not going

to marry you unless you have a college degree.” So Seiji decided, “Okay,

closest thing to that would be mechanical engineering.” He eventually

graduated and got married. I said, “Gee, Seiji, I don’t know, I think I would

have looked for another girl.” He said, “Oh, no. Amy and I are meant for

each other. And if that’s what she wants, I’ll be a mechanical engineer.” I

have to hand it to him, because he was willing to sacrifice four years of his

life to get that degree for her.

One other time Seiji walked into our room with a Japanese fellow, and

I figured, “It’s probably just someone he knows.” And he said, “Ed, I want

to introduce you to so-and-so.” This guy bowed to me, and I bowed to him,

and Seiji was off to the side laughing. I said, “What’s the joke, Seiji ?” He

said, “This man was with the Java invasion forces.” I said, “Oh, no!” And

the fellow said, “Oh, don’t worry, I wasn’t a fighting man. Back then I was

with supplies. But I was part of the invasion force.” It turned out that he

was over here for an advanced degree in economics. All I could think of

was how small the world was getting to be.

Overall, I didn’t have a bad time at Stanford. It was just that I was still

getting over my divorce. I tried going to the VA (Veterans Administration)

Hospital in San Francisco for psychiatric advice. But after a year of one-

to-one therapy, I stopped going because nothing good came of it—my guilt

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 8 1

never felt less. I pretty much isolated myself; I didn’t go to any of the big

games or join any clubs. Anyone who needed an extra ticket for a girlfriend

or parent knew I was a soft touch. I didn’t even go on any dates, except

once, and that one time earned me a bad reputation with one of the soror-

ities. I had taken June Wong out for coffee, and what happened was that I

didn’t have my car at the time. So we walked to a coffee shop in Palo Alto.

It was about a mile and a quarter away, and I didn’t think anything of it.

We had our coffee and walked back. The following day, one of her soror-

ity sisters said, “You took June out for coffee, right ?” I said, “Yes.” She said,

“When she got home, she plopped down on the bed and went to sleep imme-

diately with all her clothes on— she was so pooped.” She said everyone got

a laugh out of it. And that was the last time I saw June or went out on a

date until I met Lois in 1955.

A M E T A L L U R G I S T A T W E S T E R N G E A R

Near the end of my senior year I went to the employment office at Stan-

ford, and I said, “What does it look like for a chem lab technician around

here ?” They looked up some data and they said, “Western Gear is looking

for a lab technician.” So I went there and was interviewed by the person-

nel manager. He took me out to see the metallurgist, who was George

Leghorn, and George said, “Here’s what I need you to do, that’s what the

job requirements are.” And I said, “That’s simple. I think any first year chem

student could do that.” He said, “If you want the job, you can have it.” And

that was how I got started at Western Gear in Belmont, a little town located

thirty miles south of San Francisco.

What they had there was a lot of plating solutions associated with the

heat-treating plant. All the chemicals in the various tanks had to be kept

to a certain standard. My job was to check them daily and make the adjust-

ments necessary to bring them up to the required standards. I found out

that even if I did my job conscientiously, I still had about four hours left

in the day, so I spent the time observing what the other half of the plant

was doing and reading up on the lab work. After a while, I told George,

“I’m only working about four hours a day on the plating report. If there’s

anything I can do to help you, let me know.” So he started to give me lit-

1 8 2 · C H A P T E R S I X

tle jobs, which had nothing to do with chemistry. Pretty soon I was spend-

ing as much time with metallurgy as I was with chemistry. And that was

how I got into metallurgy. Nowadays, they call it “material science.”

(That’s the technology they use to come up with the new aluminum skis

and stiff but springy tennis rackets.) After I had been working a year, George

said, “I put in for an assistant. If you want the job, I’ll give you a try.” I

said, “George, you can hire any four-year degree man for $400 a month.”

But he said, “I know that, Ed, but I think you’re a natural. What you don’t

know or can’t learn from books, I’ll teach you.” So that was how I got hired

on as an assistant metallurgist.

Six months later, the plant manager, Bill Heard, called me in and he said,

“Ed, we’re going to give you a raise of seventy-five dollars.” I said, “Okay,

thanks. Is that all, sir ? I want to get back to work.” Six months later, he

called me in again and he told me, “You got another raise coming, Ed.” I

said, “Mr. Heard, it would save us both a lot of time if you didn’t call me

in. I’ll notice on my paycheck if you gave me a raise. I can be doing my

work instead of getting the details from you first hand.” Then the word got

around the plant that I was abrupt with the plant manager. You see, when

I get involved with work or a job, I always throw myself completely at it.

It was that way when I started delivering papers when I was eleven and again

when I worked at the ranch. There’s no other way I know how to do a job.

The plant ran twenty-four hours a day, and I put in whatever hours were

necessary to do my job. I remember early on in ’53, I went through a year

of insomnia. So during that time, when I couldn’t sleep, I thought I might

as well work. So there was another rumor that went around the plant about

me: “Ed doesn’t sleep.” One day, Thelma, the bookkeeper, came over to

the plant, and she said, “Ed, there’s a mistake in your time card.” I said,

“How so? I’m almost positive I filled it in correctly.” She said, “Well, accord-

ing to your time sheet, you came in on Monday and you didn’t check out

until Friday.” I said, “I was here.” And she said, “What did you do about

meals?” I said, “I just called on the phone and had them delivered.” She

said, “You mean you never left the plant physically ?” I said, “No.” Thelma

said, “I never heard of such a thing.” I said, “You can check with the jour-

neymen if you want. I was here all the time.” And she said, “I believe you,

but I’ve never encountered it before.” And I said, “You better stand by for

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 8 3

a lot more, because I’m unpredictable.” It wasn’t a matter of paying me

overtime, because I was paid the same amount each month regardless of

how many hours I put in. It was just that at the time, I was having insom-

nia and I was really into my new job.

P T S D H I T S

After my discharge I noticed I had this shortness of temper. I just couldn’t

put up with people who whined about things —like shortages after the war—

or people who were basically selfish about getting their way. One time, I

was crossing the street, and some guy in a car started beeping at another

car and yelling something about the ineptness of the driver. I felt like punch-

ing him out simply because he wasn’t giving any allowances for other

people’s shortcomings. He was only concerned about his getting somewhere,

and I was thinking, “Even if you get there in a hurry, chances are it’s going

to be just like the army, and you’re going to have to wait.” I think things

like that put me into a state of rage because we had gotten so used to help-

ing each other out in the camps. I always wondered, “How come other

people can’t do that ? Do they have to be put in a situation like ours before

they can learn to treat each other as human beings?” This went on for at

least three, four years after the war. I had to watch myself because I was

afraid I might strike out. Rather than solve anything, it would have just

created more problems.

It was at that point that I went to the VA Hospital in San Francisco and

told them, “I have these uncontrollable urges to punch people out for prac-

tically no reason at all.” Well, the first thing he did was reach into the drawer

and offer me some pills. I told him, “No, I don’t want to take pills. I want

to find out why I’m having these uncontrollable periods of anger.” He said,

“Well, that’s all we have to offer you.” I said, “If that’s the best you can do,

then I’ll have to try and resolve it myself.” I finally figured out that I had a

very low tolerance for people’s selfish behaviors, and that the best thing for

me to do was stay away from people, period. That didn’t solve the prob-

lem, but at least I could distance myself from the problem. That wasn’t hard

to do, because I was basically a loner anyway.

What was it that the author Gavan Daws said? “Memories are buried in

1 8 4 · C H A P T E R S I X

a very shallow grave.” In other words, they can surface almost anytime,

sparked by the backfire of a car, sudden noises, or airplanes. They are sup-

pressed so that we can get on with our normal lives. That’s why, as POW

survivors, we all had phobias, except that ours were so bizarre that people

probably wondered why. To this day, many of us still refuse to eat anything

that looks orangey, that reminds us of pumpkin or yam. Pee Wee England

had two giant freezers full of food. I used to hoard twenty pounds of cof-

fee in the house and drink thirty cups a day. At one time, some of the guys

drank as if distilleries were going out of business, and they smoked like

chimneys. The year after we got back from the war, I heard that one of the

guys committed suicide. I could never understand how anyone could have

gone through what we did and then commit suicide. But I guess we all

resolved our problems in our own way. That was why some of the wives

almost had to be saints to put up with us in the early stages after the war.

A couple of times early on in my marriage to Lois, I had nightmares. She

would tell me the following morning that I had cried out or flailed out dur-

ing the night, and I wasn’t even aware of it.

I didn’t think about my fits of anger and insomnia in terms of post-

traumatic stress disorder until thirty-five years later, when the VA called

me in because they had started a PTSD clinic. Actually, the Vietnam vet-

erans got it started—they were the ones who made enough noise that some-

one finally listened. One of the nurses at the VA Hospital once told me that

they could always tell the World War II from the Vietnam vets. The World

War II vets will sit there all day and wait for their names to be called. The

Vietnam people will come up every ten minutes and demand, “When am

I going to be called?” Maybe we’re too laid back, because nothing was ever

done for us until the Vietnam vets started raising hell. Anyhow, all the POWs

in California were called in because they felt that the trauma of being a pris-

oner was just as severe as that of being in actual combat.

I think all of us felt guilty when we came back because we were being

treated as heroes just for having survived. But we never thought of our-

selves as heroes. On the contrary, we thought that it was because we hadn’t

done enough to fight the Japanese that we had become prisoners. Looking

at it rationally, there wasn’t anything we could have done except die, and

that won’t have helped matters. It won’t have changed the war; it won’t

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 8 5

have stopped the Japanese; it won’t have changed the course of history one

bit. But it would have made us feel better—that we had done our level best

by paying the ultimate price of dying. The sense of guilt for us didn’t sur-

face until later—that’s why they call it “posttraumatic.” Any psychiatrist

will tell you that you shouldn’t feel guilty about surviving—that never eases

your situation. Brody, my sergeant, was ten times the man I could ever be,

and yet he died.2 You know there’s no point in beating yourself over the

head because you survived and someone else didn’t, but you can’t help

wondering why. I don’t think you ever find an answer to questions like

that. For me, I was working at a new job, so that usually took my mind off

of anything that bothered me. As long as I kept busy, that was my solution

to almost everything.

M Y M A R R I A G E T O L O I S

After I started my job at Western Gear, I buried myself in work, and my

sisters were getting concerned about the fact that I had no social life. My

sister Mints had a friend by the name of Emma who knew Lois. They had

grown up together in Reno and they happened to be working in the same

lab. Mints was saying, “I have a brother that’s perfect for Lois,” and Emma

was saying, “And Lois is probably perfect for him, except how do we get

these two people together ? They don’t go to church, they don’t go to night-

clubs, they don’t really socialize.” Then Emma found out that Lois had

signed up for a class in social dancing at the YWCA in Berkeley, so Mints

enrolled me in the same class. She called me on the phone and said, “I’ve

enrolled you already. You ought to at least give it a try and learn how to

dance.” And I said, “Well, if you’ve gone to all that trouble, I’ll try it out.”

So that was how I first got to meet Lois.

We were the only two Chinese in the class, and we started talking about

our respective jobs. She worked as a microbiologist for the Water Sani-

tation Department in Berkeley. I remember saying, “I almost started to

work there because I took the test for a chemistry position. If I had taken

a job there, I would probably be your subordinate.” We made light talk,

but neither one of us was very good at it. She was more amused by my

intense concentration when the instructor showed us the basic steps. She

1 8 6 · C H A P T E R S I X

told me later, “I have never seen such intensity in a person, and all we

were doing was learning dance steps.” And I said, “Well, you’re going to

find out that when I start to learn anything new, I get very intense about

it.” There was no instant chemistry; there was no instant attraction. But

a month later, when my birthday came around, I decided to use that as

an excuse to ask her for a date, to help me celebrate my birthday. After

dinner, she said, “Would you like to have coffee at my place ?” When I

hesitated, she said, “Don’t worry, I live with my father. We’ll be well chap-

eroned.” When we got to her flat, lo and behold, she had a birthday cake!

She set out the candles and she said, “Happy birthday, Ed.” It turned out

that she had baked the cake herself, and if there’s any way you can get to

me, it’s through my stomach.

A couple of weeks later, I called her up and asked her to go out to din-

ner. She said, “Ed, do you really enjoy going out to dinner ? We can have

dinner at home.” And she said, “Do you like Chinese food?” I said, “I love

Chinese food.” From then on, it was almost a natural evolution, because

we found out that we both liked Chinese food, and I found out that she

could cook almost any kind of Chinese food for any occasion. Her father

had run a restaurant with his wife in Reno for many years, so the whole

family knew something about cooking. Then we found out that we were

not church-going people, but we were moral—we had standards. We both

thought of God as female, as Mother Nature, as a gentler force than the

vindictive God who burned down Sodom and Gomorrah for some infrac-

tion or another. Politically, we were both Democrats, not that it mattered

that much, but it made things a lot easier. And she could read and write

Chinese with proficiency.

After I got to know her, I said, “How many years of Chinese school did

you have ?” She said, “Only about three years.” And I said, “How in the

world did you learn so much Chinese in such a short time ?” She answered,

“Well, when I was a little girl, my father would hold me in his arms while

he was reading the Chinese paper, and pretty soon he would start read-

ing aloud, and his finger would follow what he was reading.” And she said,

“I’m not sure that you can learn Chinese that way, but from the time I

was two or three years, I remember doing that.” Unlike me, she said she

had no trouble learning Chinese at all. The family had gone back to China

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 8 7

at least two times before the war in the 1930s, and each time they had stayed

a few months. That probably helped her become more proficient in Chi-

nese as well.

As far as courting was concerned, we’re not talking about flowers and

candy and that sort of thing. It was more of getting to know each other,

what our likes and dislikes were. We would go window-shopping or to the

light opera, even though I wasn’t too crazy about either, or we would sit

home and listen to classical music. Then I found out that she was an avid

bridge player, and that was when I found out there was an absolutely other

side to this person— she was a card shark. But cooking was the main thing

we both loved, and I learned a lot more about Chinese cooking from her.

The other thing I noticed about her: Whenever we came back to China-

town from a walk downtown, as soon as we crossed California Street (into

Chinatown)—and we might have been holding hands or arm in arm— she

would sweep away, about a foot apart. I instinctively knew that was the

proper thing to do, but it took me a while to figure that one out. In those

days, outward display of affection was just not done as far as the Chinese

were concerned, and we both knew to observe what was proper. The high-

est compliment I could pay her would be, “I think if my mom could have

picked out a wife for me, she would have approved of you.” That was because

we were both Chinese in our cultural and philosophical outlooks. Even

though we both worked outside, where we were in daily contact with sai

yun (Westerners), as far as our personal lives were concerned, it was dic-

tated by our Chinese background.

As I soon found out, Lois was a very quiet person, but she had this nice,

soft-spoken kind of humor that kind of knocks you over like a steamroller

when it hits. We were sitting down one time when we were still courting,

and I said to her, “Lois, I’m going to ask your father for your hand.” She

looked at me and she said, “Is that all you want ?” That was when I knew,

“She’s the one; she’s absolutely the one!” We made an agreement right from

the beginning. She was thirty-six, and I was thirty-four when we got mar-

ried, and we said we were not going to try to have children. We both said,

“If it happens, it happens; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.” As it turned out, we did

not have children. So one time when we were at a POW reunion, one of

the ladies asked Lois if we had any children, and she answered, “We don’t

1 8 8 · C H A P T E R S I X

have any, but I have one.” “Oh,” the lady said, “from a previous marriage ?”

Lois said, “Oh, no, this is my first marriage.” Then she pointed at me and

said, “That’s my kid.”

After a couple of months, we were pretty sure that we wanted to get mar-

ried. I knew she was apprehensive at first because she had heard stories about

my divorce. All I could tell her was, “What you see is what you get. That’s

all there is.” I had to also take into consideration that she was living with

her father, and I wanted to make sure that it was okay with him. I wanted

him to know that I was gaining a father-in-law and he was gaining a son-

in-law, and he was welcome to live with us as long as he wanted. We got

married in church, not because either one of us was a churchgoer, but

because we didn’t want something as cold as a civil ceremony at City Hall.

And we picked the Unitarian Church because it was nondenominational.

My brother Bill was the best man, and Emma was the matron of honor.

Then we invited the immediate family to a Chinese banquet at the Far East

Café in Chinatown.

We went on a month-long camping trip to Canada for our honeymoon.

Lois didn’t like it at all, because when I go camping, it’s just a sleeping bag

and a tent, although on this trip, I found a campground with hot water for

showers. The first morning, there was a solid mass of horseflies on the screen

door. The next night, it was mosquitoes. She asked me at that point, “How

can you enjoy this?” I said, “Sometimes, there are things which get in the

way of enjoyment, but most of the time, you don’t have these aggravations.”

We went camping every year for the next eight years. Lois was willing to

put up with it because she knew I enjoyed it, but the other reason was for

us to do some shopping for her father. When he found out that we were

going to Canada, he made a shopping list—Chinese herbs. Back in those

days, it was illegal to bring it in because the U.S. had broken off diplomatic

relations with Communist China in 1949. We would buy all this stuff from

this store in Vancouver, and after we had camped for about three weeks,

we would head east and return via Montana or some out-of-the-way place

to avoid detection. Her daddy was so happy—it was like Christmas for him.

Almost every day, he would open the packages and look at them to make

sure they weren’t getting wormy, or he would put them out in the sun so

there was less chance of them getting wormy. So every year that we went

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 8 9

1 9 0 · C H A P T E R S I X

up to Vancouver, he was like a little kid. He would write out his Christmas

list, and since he got so much enjoyment out of it, we just went ahead and

did it. Lois asked me, “Aren’t you worried about bringing illegal stuff in?”

I said, “No, no, I just look upon it like trying to run the guard shack when

the Japanese were in charge. The only difference is, we have the U.S. in

charge. Otherwise, the basic principle is the same. They’re the antagonists

and we’re the protagonists.” After her father passed away, we stopped going.

It was less fun, and there really wasn’t that much that we wanted from

Canada. By then Lois had started attending the annual reunions in Texas

with me, and we were starting to take longer trips to Asia.

Lois was the kind of person I had been looking for all my life. Six years

after our marriage, Dr. Hekking came over from the Netherlands with his

family for a visit. They were in the States to check out a son-in-law—that

was how old fashioned they were. He called me from Fisherman’s Wharf,

and before Doc arrived, I told Lois, “Whatever we have which is mine

belongs to that man. If I find that he needs anything, I’ll freely give it to

him, but not what is yours, what is communal property.” Without know-

ing anything about Dr. Hekking, she agreed. She was a very understand-

ing person. Whenever I go out to eat, I usually eat everything that is in front

of me, including the garnish. So one time she said, “Ed, can you at least

leave the garnish?” “Gee, Lois,” I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embar-

rass you. I just cannot waste food.” She said, “I understand, but you can

make adjustments.”

Lois was the one who taught me that being Chinese wasn’t just about

being born Chinese and looking Chinese. There were things you did that

made you Chinese, like being part of a family and celebrating the holidays.

Of course, her customs and foods were particular to Toishan people, and

my folks were from Enping District. For instance, on Chinese New Year’s

Eve, she would put a pair of tangerines, preferably with leaves on them, to

show that they’re flourishing, in each room. And she would cook a pot of

rice that could feed an army, because we had to have plenty of leftover rice

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 9 1

F I G . 3 0 . Lois and Eddie on their wedding day, July 8, 1956.

F I G . 3 1 . Eddie with his siblings on his wedding day. Left to right, front row: Grace, Jessie,

Mints, and Mary; back row: Al, Pee Wee, Eddie, and Bill.

to start off the new year with. She would leave the lights on to greet the

new year, and, of course, clean the house beforehand. It was not just the

fact that she knew all about the Chinese customs; she actually lived them.

She would tell me about these sayings that her mother had taught her for

different situations. And for every occasion, whether it was New Year’s,

Dragon Boat Festival, Moon Festival, Ching Ming, or whatever, she would

tell me what the appropriate foods were and the stories behind them. She

had an enormous store of knowledge that she was willing to pass on to me,

and that just made Chinese culture come alive for me. In essence, Lois helped

me develop as a Chinese person. It was kind of like the old trite saying about

how the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. So here I was,

running like mad from Chinatown, and I was back and enjoying it. As she

said, “The fact that you don’t speak Chinese should not preclude you from

being Chinese.” Of course, all my siblings were amused that I had become

so Chinese compared to them.

M O V I N G F R O M W E S T E R N G E A R T O L I V E R M O R E L A B

I had been working at Western Gear for eight or nine years when this new

plant manager took over, and he decided he was going to cut costs. We

had been producing gear parts for tanks for over ten years, and each set

of gears had to be certified to military specifications. He called me into

the office one day, and he said, “Ed, how long have we been making gears?”

I said, “Well, as far back as I can remember, and before that probably.”

He said, “Have we ever failed a certification?” I said, “No, sir. We’ve been

audited, and they’ve checked all our samples, and they’re satisfied we’re

telling them the truth.” “Well,” he said, “Why don’t you just go ahead and

sign the certifications and not perform the test ?” And I said, “I can’t do

that. If I put my name on a piece of paper, it means it’s been done.” “But,”

he said, “think of all the money we’ll save.” So I told him, “There’s a very

simple way that we can do this. You can sign the certifications; I won’t do

it.” A friend of mine heard about it, and he said, “Ed, what you got to do

is start writing letters to protect yourself.” I said, “Carter, I work for West-

ern Gear. If I have to protect myself from Western Gear, what am I doing

here ?” That was when I told Lois that I was going to have to quit. “There’s

1 9 2 · C H A P T E R S I X

no way in the world I can work with that person from this point on. He’ll

never forget it, and neither will I.”

By then I had become buddies with Bill Watson, who had been captured

in the Philippines. I overheard him talking to another foreman during our

lunch break about the things that he had had to eat, and I turned around

and said, “Bill, you must have been taken in the Philippines.” He looked

at me and said, “Yeah, how did you know?” I said, “I was also a guest of

the Japanese.” So Watson asked me, “Where were you taken?” I said, “Java.”

And he said, “I didn’t know we had troops in Java.” I said, “It’s not gener-

ally known, but there was one battalion of artillery there.” He said, “What

in the hell was the artillery doing there with no infantry ?” I said, “Who

knows? We just went because we were ordered to go.” Then he found out

I had wound up going up to Burma to work on the railroad, and he said,

“Oh, you guys had it rough.” I said, “Well, from what I can gather, it was

no picnic being in Japan with the severe winters they have. At least in the

tropics, weather is fairly temperate the year round.” And he said, “Yeah,

there’s that to be said about it.” Right away, he and I bonded. So one of the

other reasons I decided to quit Western Gear was that they had fired Wat-

son for no particular reason at all. I protested and said that was no way to

treat a good foreman. I guess that didn’t go over too well with manage-

ment either, aside from the fact that I had refused to do what they had asked

of me. So I knew that my time was getting pretty short at Western Gear. I

quit Western Gear on my fortieth birthday.

It wasn’t long before I found a job at Livermore Laboratory doing what

I wanted to do—research. Lee Roberts knew that I had worked as a met-

allurgist, but he didn’t know that I didn’t have a degree until I applied for

the job. He said, “Ed, I know you’ve been working as a metallurgist, but

my hands are tied. Unless you have a degree, I can’t hire you as a metal-

lurgist. But I’ll do the next best thing—I’ll make you a technologist.” I

didn’t care, because as long as I was doing the kind of work that was inter-

esting to me, that was all that mattered. Western Gear had been basically

a production line, whereas at Livermore, I worked on research projects.

The physicist would come to the materials department and say, “We want

a material that will withstand this number of pounds of pressure under

these ambient conditions, plus at 125 degrees all the way down to 0, and

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 9 3

we want this material to be able to hold this pressure for five years.” There

was no such material, so we had to basically design the alloy. That was

what made the job interesting in the sense that it wasn’t cut and dry. It

was always something that had never been done before. A lot of the work

had to do with nuclear devices and was top secret at the time. We were

only responsible for making the prototype. Once the design was finalized

and all the bugs worked out, then someone else took over the production

of the device.

When I first started at Livermore, I made a hundred dollars less than at

Western Gear. Within a year, I had made that up. Then, counting all the

time I was there—a total of fourteen years —I made more money than I

would have if I had stayed at Western Gear. I had told Lois, “I will be get-

ting less money to begin with, but I think the future is brighter in the sense

that there’s more room for advancement.” That turned out to be true. But

more importantly, Lois was my safety net. She was working, and even if I

couldn’t find a job for a year or two, I knew that she would be willing to

carry me, give me credit. Still, fortunately for me, there was no time lag

from one job to the other.

M Y L O S T B A T T A L I O N B U D D I E S

Ever since that big parade in Wichita Falls in 1945, the guys had been get-

ting together every year in Texas around August 15th, the official V-J Day.

Actually, it was the wives and mothers who really started the whole thing.

From the time we were reported missing-in-action in September of 1942,

they kept bugging the War Department about our whereabouts. When the

War Department said they didn’t know what had happened to us, they asked,

“How can you lose a whole battalion of men?” The news media picked up

on that, and by the time we finally returned, we were known as the “Texas

Lost Battalion.”3 Soon after, the Lost Battalion Association was formed, con-

sisting of survivors of the 2nd Battalion and the USS Houston. I had lost

touch with them and didn’t even know they were having these annual

reunions. So I didn’t start attending until 1964, when Buck Lawley, who

was president that year, called me up about it. Lois was apprehensive about

going because she didn’t know what to expect. When we got to Odessa,

1 9 4 · C H A P T E R S I X

where the reunion was held that year, we were met at the airport by John

Owens and a bunch of other guys. John gave me a big hug and said to Lois,

“Mrs. Fung, I won’t hug any other man like this except Eddie because I

love him.” Even in ’64—and we’re talking about twenty years after the fact—

it was as if we had just seen each other last week. The bond was so strong

that even if we hadn’t seen each other for twenty years, we knew we still

loved each other.

We got to the reunion headquarters and right away I realized that I could

recognize the faces, but with all their clothes on, I couldn’t remember every-

body’s names. For instance, the cook who was with us all the way came up

to me and said, “You remember me, don’t you Eddie ?” Recognizing his

voice, I immediately said, “Pinky !” even though his nametag said Garth.

He said, “You remember!” And I said, “To tell you the truth, I never knew

that your Christian name was Garth. I always used Pinky.” Then I noticed

Pinky had on a beautiful pair of cowboy boots, and I was admiring them.

And he said, “Eddie, you like these boots?” “Oh,” I said, “they’re beauti-

ful.” He started to take them off. I said, “Pinky, Pinky, the most I want to

know is who made them. I don’t want them. We’re probably not even the

same size.” Afterwards, when we were alone, Lois said, “Are they all like

that because you’ve been prisoners?” I said, “Well, the basic nature of a Texan

is to be hospitable to begin with, but with Pinky, it’s not a gesture—he means

it. He will literally give me the boots off his feet. So I have to be careful

about what I say because they’ll take me literally.”

The following morning I was down in the lobby and I was inquiring at

the car rental agency about the rates. Paul Leatherwood, for whom I had

scrounged barbering scissors when we were in camp, saw me and he asked,

“Do you need a car, Eddie ?” I said, “No, no, I’m just making inquiries in

case I do need one.” He said, “I’ve got cars at home. If you want a car, just

let me know, and I’ll have one of the kids bring it over.” Lois asked me

afterwards, when we got home, “Does Paul really mean that?” I said, “You’re

going to have to learn one thing. They always mean what they say and they

say what they mean.” She wasn’t used to that. And I said, “That’s the way

we are.” I tried to explain to her that we were almost like family, except for

one difference: “Family, you can’t avoid because you’re born into it. With

us, we want to stay in touch, so we’re closer than family.” And I said, “There’s

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 9 5

no blood involved except the blood and tears that we have suffered

together.”

Lois had asked me before, “What do you guys do for three days? Tell

war stories?” I said, “Oh no, that’s the last thing we do.” And I asked her,

“How many close friends do you have ?” She said, “Probably three or four.”

I said, “Well, with this group of men, we’re all close friends, and there’s no

need for pretense. They don’t care if I’m dressed in a three-hundred-dollar

suit or Levi’s and a T-shirt, they know me for who I am. It doesn’t matter

whether I’m poor or rich. If I were wealthy, they would be happy for me.

If I were poor and needed money, they would probably help me out.” I

explained to her that we didn’t usually talk about the war, except in pass-

ing. Of course, when they met Lois, they all wanted to tell Lois stories about

me. I would tell Lois, “I don’t remember half of the things they’re saying

that I did.” They would all say, “Oh, he did it all right.” And I would believe

them, because among friends, there’s no need to color a story. Like the time

this sailor by the name of Bruckner grabbed me and said, “One hundred

pounds of sugar, Eddie!” For the life of me, I didn’t know what he was talk-

ing about until someone said, “Don’t you remember, Eddie, when you

dragged that one hundred pounds of sugar from the Japanese kitchen back

to the hut ?” I said that I remembered the sugar, but I didn’t remember it

being one hundred pounds. But everyone said they remembered it was one

hundred pounds because they couldn’t figure out how I did it. And Lois

dug an elbow in my rib and said, “But you only weighed 103 pounds!”

When Lois passed on in 1999 and I didn’t show up at the reunion that

year, Mrs. Pryor’s daughter JoAnne was thoughtful enough to send me the

rose that was presented at the memorial service in Lois’ honor. Usually before

the business meeting, we have a memorial service for the members or their

wives who had passed on the previous year. JoAnne sent it to me with a

very nice note expressing their condolences. They knew there was nothing

that they could do about my loss, but they wanted me to know that they

felt my loss just the same. And I knew that it was meant with all sincerity,

that the heart was really in it. It’s a nice feeling to know that I have friends

like that—who care about me, and who will do anything for me. And it

works the other way, too. Until the day I die, if any of the guys need my

help, they know I’ll be around to help them.

1 9 6 · C H A P T E R S I X

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 9 7

F I G . 3 2 . Eddie ( front row, third from left) at the Lost Battalion reunion in Dallas,

Texas, 2003.

F I G . 3 3 . Eddie (left)

with his POW

buddies at the Lost

Battalion reunion

in Dallas, Texas,

2005: Eldridge

Rayburn (back),

Willie Hoover

( front), and Jack

Kenner (right).

O U R T R A V E L S T O G E T H E R

When I think about it, Lois and I did a lot of traveling together. We would

drive down to Texas every year for the reunion. Then we would intersperse

it with longer trips to Japan, China, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and

Hong Kong. On our first trip to Japan in 1968, I was feeling apprehensive

because I didn’t know how I would react to any bad memories that it might

trigger. But when I saw these old soldiers in their uniforms begging with

their little caps in their hands, I felt absolutely no animosity toward them.

I was thinking, “We didn’t have any hard feelings for them after the war,

and I don’t have any hard feelings now.” It was very easy for me to imag-

ine myself in that situation. And I thought, “There but for the grace of God

go I.”

On our next trip to the Orient, we decided to take in Bangkok. Once we

got to Thailand, we hired a car and chauffeur to take us to Kanburi. The

place where the camp had been was now a big bus depot. I walked up there,

and the driver said, “What are you looking for ?” And I said, “I’m looking

for the moat that was built by POWs during the war. Ask one of the older

residents if they can remember a moat around this area.” He finally found

someone who was there during World War II, and he said, “Oh, yeah, we

remember. How come you want to find it ?” The driver said, “Well, this

man was there.” I said, “I was not only there, I helped to build the moat.”

We got to talking, and the driver wanted to show me the famous bridge

on the River Kwai. I said, “We’ll get to that later.” I wanted to go where the

Japanese headquarters used to be, where I did my best scrounging. So I said,

“Let’s walk down to the river.” And he said, “You can’t go to the river from

here.” I said, “This was the junction where we either split off to go to work

at the river or Japanese headquarters. I know the way.” But he insisted,

“There’s no way you can go to the river from here.” I said, “Yes, there is.

Ask the people at the village.” Sure enough, the villagers pointed the way.

When we got to the river, he said, “How did you know?” I said, “I used

to work here.” We went to Tamarkan, and I showed him where the anti-

aircraft gun placements had been. “This is where we were bombed by the

Americans,” I told him. He was a professional tour guide in his mid-forties,

and he didn’t know any of these things. I said, “You tell the tourists all about

1 9 8 · C H A P T E R S I X

the bridge, but there’s more to the history of the railroad than just the bridge.

You should find out all about it.” I don’t know if he ever did or not, but

he was amazed to know that Americans had worked on the railroad.

We made a second trip to Thailand in 1980. We could have gone as far

as the Three Pagoda Pass on the Burma side, but I didn’t want to take a

chance of going there unless I could apply for a visa. The Australians could

easily do that because their country had been on friendly terms with the

Burmese government, whereas the U.S. had not. Interestingly enough, this

time the steel bridge on the River Kwai looked different to me. When I saw

it in 1969, twenty-four years after the war, it looked as big as the Golden

Gate Bridge. But when I went back in 1980, I saw it from a different per-

spective. I could reach up and almost touch the arch spans. It was kind of

like these stories you hear about a person going back to his room where he

grew up as a kid, and now it looks so tiny. So in ’69 the bridge was still huge

in my eyes, but in ’80 I finally saw it in its real size.

Someday, I would like to go back to Moulmein and see if that convent

is still there. I suspect that many of the people who threw packages of candy

and cigarettes at us as we marched from Moulmein prison to go to

Thanbyuzayat came from that building. I want to find out more about why

they were willing to risk the wrath of the Japanese by being kind to us. Other

than that, I would like to walk or drive along the railroad line and see what

is left of the railroad, if anything. The only other prominent landmark for

me would be the Thanbyuzayat cemetery. From the pictures I’ve seen, it

looks fairly well maintained. There’s only so much I can do about revisit-

ing memories of a place from the Thailand side when it was the Burma

side where we had worked and experienced our worst moments.

In 1981 Lois and I visited our ancestral villages in Enping and Toishan.

From Shanghai we took a train down to Guangzhou, and from there, we

took a local bus to my village, Lei Yuen. When we arrived at the village, the

first person we met was a cousin who happened to be spreading rice on a

cement floor to dry. He looked up, and he said, “Who are you ?” I replied,

“I’m Lai Kwong’s brother.” (Lai Kwong was the Chinese name of my older

brother, Al.) He looked at me and said, “Oh,” and without knowing who

I was except that I was Al’s brother, he said, “Are you Ah Man or Ah Wai ?”

(In other words, “Are you Ed or Bill ?”) I said, “I am Ah Man.” That was

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 1 9 9

when I realized that my father had sent news back to the village when I was

born so that I could be added to the genealogical records. Then he said,

“Oh, why are you here ?” So I pulled out the map that Al had drawn from

memory. After they found out who I was, they were more than happy to

show me around the village, the fields, and the orchards.

The village was laid out in about four rows of houses back to back, then

there was the alley way and another row of houses back to back. There were

about twenty houses in each row, so that made forty houses and roughly

160 families living in the village. Each house was about twenty by twenty

feet. They had a loft to store extra grain and jars of things, and the lower

level was where the kitchen and bedrooms were. The village was laid out

exactly the way Al had drawn it. I walked to the house where my brother

had lived, and nothing had changed. It was then that I realized why people

didn’t stay in the village if they had a chance to go abroad, because I could

see it would be hard to make a living there. The hot climate reminded me

of the jungles, and the land was overworked. It was basically subsistence farm-

ing. Their cash crops were from the fishponds and the orchards. As far as

rice was concerned, they were lucky if they had enough from year to year.

All of us grew up knowing we were from Lei Yuen village and that we

were Enping people. Even though we didn’t know what that meant, we

always knew where our roots were. When I went back to the village, there

was no feeling of nostalgia or recognition of any changes. It was just the

fact that the Communists, instead of allowing them to keep an ancestral

hall, had turned it into a school. Instead of someone bidding on the

fishpond, the fish now belonged to the entire village. In the old days, from

year to year, the highest bidder would be the owner of all the fish in that

pond, so he could sell it all and hopefully recoup his bid and more. Lei

Yuen village was unique in having two fishponds instead of just one. But

other than that, there was not much to the village. Although I know I’m

from Lei Yuen, I’ve never considered it to be home. I’ve never considered

myself to be Chinese. My feeling has always been that I am a human being

first. I just happen to be of Chinese extraction, and I just happen to be an

American because I was born in the U.S. But it’s very seldom that I think

of myself first as a Chinese. That trip to China and my ancestral village

confirmed it.

2 0 0 · C H A P T E R S I X

R E T I R E M E N T

I had been thinking about retiring since I was forty-five. I enjoyed my work

at Livermore, but I yearned for the freedom to do whatever I wanted when-

ever I wanted. By then, we knew that we weren’t going to have any chil-

dren, and I had made enough outside investments that we didn’t have to

worry about money. So I asked Lois, “Would it be okay with you if I retired?”

She said, “Ed, is there any special thing you want to do right now that you

have to retire at forty-five ?” I said, “No.” And she said, “Well, as a sugges-

tion, you will be able to carry your health plan into your retirement if you

wait until you’re fifty-five. I realize that ten years sounds like a long time,

but why don’t you wait and see what the next project is?” I had just finished

a project, and each project usually took about five or six years to complete.

So I waited. Before I knew it, I was fifty-five. I didn’t have any real plans.

It was just a good feeling to know that I was now completely my own man.

I could take off, go camping, or do nothing.

It was a couple of months later when Lois said, “Didn’t I hear you say

one time that you wanted to learn tai chi ?” She was reading the Chinese

newspaper, and she saw an announcement about a class starting right down

the street from us at the Telegraph Hill Center. She said, “And you don’t

have to pay anything because it’s under the sponsorship of the community

college. Why don’t you go check it out ?” So I decided, “That’s exactly what

I have been looking for.” The class was only for three hours, but I would

be there practicing an hour and a half before class. Then after class, I would

practice another five or six hours. I was spending about eight, nine hours

a day practicing, because I’ve always had two left feet and lack coordina-

tion. I had a hard time seeing each move, and after I saw it, I had a hard

time duplicating it. Finally, I just applied the military system of breaking

the components down to the simplest basics. It took me about six months

to figure out what the basics of tai chi were, and once I figured that out,

there was nothing to it.

According to Master Wong, when you’re first doing tai chi, you’re doing

it from the outside in, you’re doing it as a physical exercise. Eventually, when

you get good, and you get your chi (internal energy) flowing, you will be

doing it from the inside out, almost as if there’s an irreversible force that’s

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 2 0 1

carrying you through the exercise. Thinking I was pretty hot stuff after about

three years, I said, “How long will it take for me to do a perfect set ?” Mas-

ter Wong looked at me and said, “Never.” And he said, “If you can’t live

with that, I think you better find something else, like karate, where you can

go from a white belt to a black belt. In tai chi, you are trained to achieve

perfection, but you will never really get there. Because even after you get

to what you think is perfection, the chances are, someone can show you

how to do it better. So don’t worry about perfection. Just do the best you

can with every move you make.” That’s what I love about tai chi—there’s

no competition involved, not even with yourself. You’re just always trying

to be better. I was thinking, “That wouldn’t be a bad attitude to take in

life—just try to be a better person with each passing day.”

In a way, tai chi has been part of my regimen since I retired. I feel a cer-

tain responsibility for keeping my body in as good condition as I can, because

when I came out of the camps after the war, I realized what a marvelous

machine the body is. I figured that if it could take that much abuse and

still work, it should last forever if I took good care of it. So it doesn’t mat-

ter how long I live, I just want to be in good health as long as I’m around.

I used to run seventy miles a week. I would basically run eleven and a half

miles from the house, cross the Golden Gate Bridge to the north parking

lot, get a drink, and come back. I did that for about fifteen years, until I

realized after I retired that it was probably not a good idea for me to keep

running, because it will be rough on my knee joints. That was when I decided

to switch to tai chi, but I’ve always kept my body active. I’ve never been a

bodybuilder. All I look for is general conditioning, good muscle tone, and

stamina. People who know me used to say, “Gee, you run so much, why

don’t you run competitions?” And I would say, “I don’t run for competi-

tiveness. I run just for the joy of running because I’m capable of running.”

I think if I were to ever run in competitions, I would probably hate it because

I would not be doing it for fun anymore—it has to be fun.

The other thing I did after I retired was to go backpacking. I would walk

across the Golden Gate Bridge into the Golden Gate National Recreation

Area, which has some 50,000 acres, and just wander all over. I used to walk

to Stinson Beach with basically a half sleeping bag. If the weather got bad,

I would put a jacket on top. And I would carry supplies that would last

2 0 2 · C H A P T E R S I X

me two or three nights. Again, it was just for the pleasure of walking and

recharging my batteries. I remember Lois saying, “Gee, that’s what you

used to do when you moved from camp to camp, and when you had prac-

tically nothing to your name but a rucksack and a G-string.” I said, “Oh,

no, this is quite different. I don’t have to be anywhere at a specific time.

I’ve got all the food I want, and if I run out, I can buy more. Not the same

thing at all.”

L O S I N G L O I S

Before she retired, Lois had a sudden heart attack. She was in ICU for three

days, and the doctors were treating her hourly. The thought was that if she

could make it through the night, she might have a chance. It was that kind

of a situation. Then it was if she could pull through the next night, then

the prognosis would be even better. Finally, after three days in ICU, they

transferred her to a regular ward. They tried converting the irregular heart

beat to regular, and the success rate at that time was only one in every three

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 2 0 3

F I G . 3 4 . Eddie

leading tai chi

chuan class at

Telegraph Hill

Center in San

Francisco, 1984.

cases. It didn’t convert well, so she ended up with an irregular heartbeat.

That was when her heart began to deteriorate. On top of that, she had a

fibroid tumor, which had been detected before we were married. It grew

to the size of a six- or seven-month fetus, but she refused to have an opera-

tion because it was benign. She held the Chinese belief that the body should

not be cut up. So her death in 1999, ten years after her first heart attack,

was due to a combination of things. I think her heart just failed, because

when I saw her, it reminded me of some of the guys who had died from

cardiac arrest in the camps — she had the same peaceful look on her face.

My nephew Randall, who’s a doctor, said to me, “Uncle Ed, if I had had

Auntie in the hospital with the most modern equipment, chances are I

wouldn’t have been able to save her. Don’t knock yourself out—nothing

could have saved her.”

I was away in Bakersfield visiting Jess when Lois passed away at home.

That was when I started having serious feelings of guilt, because when my

father died, I wasn’t home—I was at the ranch. When my mother died, I

was still in prison camp. And then now my wife dies, and I’m not home.

It was almost as if I am never home when someone dies. I knew there was

nothing I could do to change the past. And I knew I was going to miss her,

but, on the other hand, I never think of her as being gone. She is an inte-

gral part of me as long as I’m alive, and I don’t think even death can change

that. After the funeral, I kidded my nephew Michael, who is my chief execu-

tor and has a key to my house, “Since I’m never around when someone

passes on, chances are I won’t be here when I pass on.”

A strange thing happened when I was looking for a plot for Lois at the

cemetery. Being trained as an infantryman, I picked the high ground. With-

out knowing it, the plot number that I picked was 342. So there’s no way I

can forget her plot number, because 3/8/42 was our capitulation date. And

I have made it a point to visit her on both Ching Ming and Chung Yeung.

The custom is that all Chinese observe Ching Ming, which is popularly

known as Sweeping of the Tombs. Only some Chinese observe Chung Yeung,

Festival of the Dead, when, instead of buying a steamed chicken, you buy

a roast duck. The duck is to transport the dead across the river so that they

can attend the fair. And you burn paper clothes and money so that they

2 0 4 · C H A P T E R S I X

will have new clothes to wear and money to spend at the fair. Lois’s mother,

on her deathbed, had instructed Lois, “I don’t care about Ching Ming, but

I would like you to observe Chung Yeung for me.” So, since it was her

mother’s wish, we’ve always observed Chung Yeung. Now that Lois is gone,

I will observe it, because even though I’ve never met her mother, I am still

her son-in-law. And because it was Lois’s wish as well, I’ll continue the cus-

tom until I pass on.

R E F L E C T I O N S

When we used to sit down to dinner at the Jowell ranch and everything

had been dished out, Mr. Spencer would be asked, “Is there anything else

we can get for you ?” He would look up and just say, “More time.” Basi-

cally, I’m not greedy, but I would love to hang around just to see what other

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 2 0 5

F I G . 3 5 . Eddie and Lois at his 60th birthday party, 1982.

interesting changes are in store for us. I’m still curious, but other than that,

as long as I’m healthy, that’s as much as I can ask. In general, I think life

has treated me fairly. I’ve seen some interesting times and I’ve had some

bad hands dealt to me, but that’s all part of the game. You learn to play the

cards the best you can. When the Survivor series came out, my nephews

were kidding me, “Uncle Ed, you should get in that. You should be able to

win.” And I said, “No, no, they’re just playing at it. Besides that, the prem-

ise is completely different from what we were doing in the camps. We wanted

to get as many people out alive as possible, and here these guys are trying

to knock each other out so that one person winds up with the money.” So

I told them, “We have a saying that we won’t take a million dollars for the

experience, and we won’t take a million dollars to do it again.”

In retrospect, being taken prisoner has been the focal point of my life.

I was a snotty-nose kid just out for adventure, thinking that was all there

was to life. But I’ve never regretted the war or the hardships I’ve suffered,

because it made me a better man. It taught me to respect other people’s

feelings, and not to treat anyone unkindly, as I had been treated. More

importantly, it gave me the self-confidence and tools to solve any problem

that may come up. The thing I have to remember, though, is not to be too

arrogant about it, because Mother Nature has a way of shoving things in

my face to remind me that there are still things I cannot handle.

People who come to know me often ask how I was able to survive the

prison camps. I tell them that it’s only when you are personally put to a

test that you will find out what you are made of. It basically takes guts, the

will to live, and lots of luck. What we learned early on is not to project too

far ahead. When we were first taken on March 8, people were talking about

getting out by July 4. Then it was by Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New

Year’s. Then we realized it might be a matter of months and years. So, grad-

ually, we learned to live day by day. Then we learned how to roll with the

punches, to take the beatings and humiliation without striking back. The

point is, you can give up your pride, but you don’t have to give up your

dignity.

People often also ask if I feel any bitterness toward the Japanese. I don’t,

because I came to understand why they treated us with such contempt. From

their vantage point, no respectable soldier ever allows himself to be taken

2 0 6 · C H A P T E R S I X

alive. On the other hand, I find it hard to forgive the Korean guards who

took such pleasure in beating and torturing us. After the war I had no hes-

itation about buying a Japanese camera or television set, but even if a Korean

company were to offer me their best cars, their best electronics completely

free, I would never accept it. Most people can’t tell if someone is Korean or

not, but I can. Once when I was hiking through Mill Valley, I stopped in a

small park to eat my lunch. A gentleman came by with two young girls —

they couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. We were sitting

about ten feet apart, and the hairs on my arms started standing up. I turned

to this gentleman and I said, “Your girls are partly Korean, aren’t they ?”

And he said, “Yes, how did you know? They’re half.” They didn’t look

Korean, but I knew there was some Korean blood. I don’t know how you

can explain that, because these kids had nothing to do with the war. I know

this is pure prejudice on my part, so whenever I come across a Korean per-

L E A R N I N G T O L I V E W I T H M Y S E L F · 2 0 7

F I G . 3 6 . Eddie shaking hands with President Bill Clinton at the premiere of Montgomery

Hom’s documentary We Served With Pride: The Chinese American Experience in

WW II, in Washington, DC, 1999. Eddie was featured in the film.

son, I bend over backwards to be courteous. Slowly, as I get to know more

Korean Americans, I am starting to come to terms with this last vestige of

the prison camps.

Taking my life as a whole, I’ve had many more good days than I’ve had

bad ones. But even the bad days serve a purpose. They remind me of how

good I have it now, in the sense that if you have never known hunger, you

will not appreciate food; if you have never been enslaved, you will not appre-

ciate what it means to be free. When people ask if I’ve had a good day, and

I know them fairly well, I’ll say that I’ve never had a bad day since August

19, 1945, because nothing can be as bad as those camp days. The one little

glitch was when Lois passed on, but I can accept that because I know that

sooner or later, all of us pass on. The one big glitch was when I interfered

with my first wife’s life and inadvertently caused her mental breakdown.

But I’ve learned that regrets do not change anything. What goes around

comes around; eventually everything will work out. Besides, one regret in

sixty years since the camps is not bad, so I’ll settle for that. In hindsight,

I’ve actually benefited from the camp days, because that’s been my refer-

ence point. Whenever I start feeling sorry for myself, I can always say, “No,

no, Ed, you’ve got a short memory, you’ve forgotten the lessons that you

have undergone.” One lesson I’ve learned well is that every moment that

you’re alive, you’d better take advantage of the fact and enjoy it.

2 0 8 · C H A P T E R S I X

C H R O N O L O G Y

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibits immigration of

Chinese laborers.

1890s Father Fung Chong Poo crosses Canadian border

and enters United States.

1914 Mother Ng Shee immigrates as the “paper wife”

of a merchant.

1922 Edward “Eddie” Fung is born in San Francisco’s

Chinatown.

1929 Stock market crashes and the Great Depression

begins.

1931 Japan occupies Manchuria.

1935 Eddie works as a live-in houseboy in Antioch; Italy

invades Ethiopia.

1936 Eddie works as a meat cutter in Grass Valley;

Germany occupies the Rhineland.

1937 Japan invades China and commits atrocities in Rape

of Nanking.

1938–40 Eddie works as a cowboy in Texas.

2 0 9

1939 Britain and France declare war after Germany invades

Poland.

1940 Eddie joins the Texas National Guard in Lubbock.

1941 Germany conquers most of Europe; Japan signs Tri-

partite Pact with Germany and Italy and begins mili-

tary expansion into Southeast Asia.

Nov. 22, 1941 Eddie and the 2nd Battalion head for the Philippines.

Dec. 7, 1941 Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and U.S. enters World

War II.

Mar. 8, 1942 Allied forces surrender in Java, and Eddie becomes a

POW.

1942–43 Eddie works on Burma-Siam Railroad.

May 8, 1945 V-E Day—Berlin falls and Germany surrenders.

August 15, 1945 V-J Day—Japan surrenders after U.S. drops A-bombs

on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

1946 Eddie joins U.S. Army Air Corps for six months.

1947 Eddie works as a meat cutter, attends junior college,

and marries first wife in Bakersfield, California.

1951 Eddie attends Stanford University on GI Bill and

divorces first wife.

1953 Eddie begins work as a chemist at Western Gear in

Belmont, California.

1956 Eddie marries Lois Yee and moves to San Francisco.

1962 Eddie begins work as a metallurgist at Livermore

Laboratory.

1977 Eddie retires, learns tai chi chuan, and travels to

Japan, Thailand, and China.

1999 Wife Lois dies of a heart attack.

2003 Eddie marries Judy Yung and moves to Santa Cruz,

California.

2 1 0 · C H R O N O L O G Y

N O T E S

I N T R O D U C T I O N

1. Pardee Lowe’s book, which is no longer in print, was published by Little, Brown

in 1943, and Jade Snow Wong’s book was published by Harper in 1950 and reprinted

by University of Washington Press in 1989.

2. Quotes are taken from the dust jacket of Lowe’s book and from Wong’s intro-

duction to the 1989 edition of Fifth Chinese Daughter, p. xi.

3. The Chinese developed an elaborate system by which laborers could still immi-

grate to the United States. Chinese merchants and native-born citizens were

exempt from the Chinese Exclusion Act and were allowed to bring their families

to this country. Upon their return from a visit to China, they would claim the birth

of an offspring, usually a son, and thereby create an immigration slot that would

later help bring another Chinese or fictitious “paper son” to America. Similarly,

the only way Chinese women could immigrate to this country during the Exclu-

sion period from 1882 to 1943 was as a member of the exempt classes. Immigrants

whose applications were based on false documents became known as “paper sons,”

“paper daughters,” and “paper wives.” See Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy

Yung, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940

(San Francisco: HOC-DOC Project, 1980; Seattle: University of Washington Press,

1999), and Erika Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion

Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

4. For a discussion of cultural conflict, marginalization, and hybridity as expe-

2 1 1

rienced by second-generation Chinese Americans in the first half of the twenti-

eth century, see Sucheng Chan, “Race, Ethnic Culture, and Gender in the Con-

struction of Identities among Second-Generation Chinese Americans, 1880s to

1930s,” in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the

Exclusion Era (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998) pp. 127–64; Gloria

Heyung Chun, Of Orphans and Warriors: Inventing Chinese American Culture and

Identity (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000); and Judy Yung,

Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: Uni-

versity of California Press, 1995).

5. As quoted in “Cowboy,” in The New Encyclopedia of the American West, edited

by Howard R. Lamar (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 265. For a his-

tory of the American cowboy, see Joe B. Frantz and Julian Ernest Choate, Jr., The

American Cowboy: The Myth and the Reality (Norman: University of Oklahoma

Press, 1955), and Lonn Taylor and Ingrid Maar, The American Cowboy (New York:

Harper and Row, 1983).

6. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “Table 58, Texas —Race and Hispanic

Origin: 1850 to 1990,” out of a total population of 6,414,824 in 1940, there were 4,751,112

whites, 924,391 blacks, 736,433 Hispanics, 1,785 Asians, and 1,103 American Indians

(www.census.gov/population /documentation /twps0056/tab58.pdf, September 13,

2002). For treatments of blacks and Mexicans in Texas, see Sara R. Massey, ed.,

Black Cowboys of Texas (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2000), and

David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1987).

7. For treatments of the Chinese in Texas, see Edward Rhoads, “The Chinese

in Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 81, no. 1 (July 1977): 1–36, and Mel

Brown, Chinese Heart of Texas: The San Antonio Community, 1875–1975 (Austin:

Lily on the Water Publishing, 2005).

8. Eddie’s descriptions of a cowboy’s life and character ring true when com-

pared to other accounts of West Texans in the 1930s, such as John A. Haley, Wind-

mills, Drouths and Cottonseed Cake: A Biased Biographer of a West Texas Rancher

(Forth Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1995), and Barney Nelson, The Last

Campfire: The Life Story of Ted Gray, A West Texas Rancher (College Station: Texas

A & M University Press, 1984).

9. For a study of the experiences of different racial /ethnic groups in the armed

forces during World War II, see Ronald Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural His-

tory of America in World War II (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2000).

2 1 2 · N O T E S

10. As quoted in the Buckley Armorer, February 4, 1944, p. 4.

11. For treatments of Chinese Americans in the U.S. armed services, see K. Scott

Wong, Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 2005); Christina M. Lim and Sheldon H. Lim, In the Shadow

of the Tiger: The 407th Air Service Squadron, 14th Air Service Group, 14th Air Force,

World War II (San Mateo, Calif.: JACP, Inc., 1993); Marjorie Lee, ed., Duty and Honor:

A Tribute to Chinese American World War II Veterans of Southern California (Los Ange-

les: Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, 1998); and Peter Phan, “Famil-

iar Strangers: The Fourteenth Air Service Group Case Study of Chinese American

Identity during World War II,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives (1993): 75–109.

12. Almost all of the men were captured in the first months of the Pacific war—