Our Dad

1923 to 1954

As mentioned in the previous section, our dad was born in Gung Yik City on August 29, 1923. His birth name was Lew Yen Gene in Toisan. That name was registered in the village temple. But most people in Toisan knew him as Lew Gene Ming, which became his nickname "Jimmy" in the US. When he came to the US, he used his paper-son name, Lew Gum Bok in Cantonese. He had bought his paper-son identity from his uncle (our Uncle Bill's father) who was born in the US and therefore a US citizen. Our dad spelled that name as "Gimpock" on his immigration papers. (See the section on Our Chinese Names for more about our dad's name.)

He had many fond memories of Gung Yik where he grew up surrounded by relatives. (It was the main port city for access from Toisan County to Hong Kong and Guangzhou.) He once told Lauren (for a 4th grade assignment) that in 1932 there were many Chinese who had returned from North and South America because of the Great Depression. Because of that, he learned some English and Spanish when he was 10 years old in Gung Yik.

He met his father for the first time in 1934 when he was 5 years old. Our mom mentioned out dad attended a Christian school in Guangzhou (Canton), but our dad never mentioned that. 

Although our grandfather held relatively simple jobs in the US (working in restaurants), he was rich by China standards. Our grandfather moved our dad and grandmother to Hong Kong in early 1935. Our dad was 11 and stayed in Hong Kong to age 16, except when he went back to the village for 6 months when the Japanese surrounded Hong Kong (in Fall 1938). In Hong Kong, our dad attended an English curriculum Catholic boarding school in Kowloon. In Toisan he had a very traditional Chinese school education, focused on Chinese history and philosophy. The Hong Kong school had a more modern and international curriculum.

Our dad arrived in the US when he was almost 17 years old on July 27, 1940, leaving his mother in Hong Kong.  (That was well before Japan invaded Hong Kong in December 1941.) His father (our grandfather) came to the US as a paper son and his name in the US was Ping Wong, although his real name was Jun Dick Lew. 

But Jun Dick's brother (Jun Yok Lau) was born in the US and was a US citizen because of that. Jun Yok wanted to go to UC Berkeley but was denied admission. (Apparently, he had a half-brother who did attend UC Berkeley.) So, he went to China and attended college for 4 years and then got married. He had two kids (our Uncle Bill and one of our aunts) before returning to the US. But when he arrived in the US, he told authorities he got married right after going to China and had 4 children. That gave him two papers to sell. Our dad bought one of those papers (which, as a "native son paper" was more expensive than the business person's son paper that our grandfather had). Jun Yok returned to China later and had three more kids, including our Uncles Jason and Andy (see the Lew Father's Side Family Tree). 

So, our dad came to the US as the paper son of his uncle (Jun Yok). That is why our dad was able to keep his surname, Lew (or Lau in Cantonese). Because he knew his uncle well, he was able to pass the immigration interview with no problem, although he said he also needed to pay some money under the table. 

Our dad adopted the middle name “Pierce” after the boat he came on, the S.S. President Pierce (a Dollar Steamship Line boat). According to the passenger manifest, he arrived in Los Angeles (San Pedro, Long Beach) with $10 in his pocket. He was also traveling with “Ho Shee” (who might have been related to his grandmother). The trip normally would take 30 days, but one of the propellers broke and it took 40 days. Those trips often included stops at ports in China and Japan on the way, but most all of the passengers were Chinese. 

In the US he used the name Gimpock Pierce Lew, though most Americans, including our mom, called him “Jimmy”. Jimmy is derived from his name in China, Gin Ming, which is pronounced "jin ming" in Toisan (and "yen ming" in Cantonese). At McClellan AFB, where he worked for 31 years, they called him "Gene".

Alameda

Our dad lived in the same rooming house as his father at 280 9th Street in Oakland's Chinatown. He said they would put a board on top of the bathtub to turn it into a bed at night. He graduated from Lincoln Junior High School on January 2, 1941, and Alameda High School on June 17, 1943. He attended night school to catch up with other students and finish faster than normal. But he also found time to be on his high school's swim team. 

When he was in Hong Kong our dad's dream was to learn how to fly airplanes in the US, and then return to China. The US had entered World War II in 1941, and his friends talked a lot about joining the Navy or US Army Air Force after high school to fight against the Axis powers (Germany and Japan). Because of those influences, he enrolled in an airplane mechanics program in high school, which was taught because of the war. He would take three regularly classes in the morning and learn aircraft mechanics in the afternoon. Using that education, after high school (June 1943) he went to work as a mechanic's assistant at the Alameda Naval Air Station. 

He worked half-time (afternoons only) on airplane engines there for nine months. He had learned a little sheet metal work in high school and wanted to learn more. So in the mornings he attended a sheet metal class at his old Alameda High School (or maybe Lincoln Junior High School), which is what he ended up doing most of his life in Sacramento. 

Our dad joined the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) on March 25, 1944 (also known as the US Army Air Corp, part of the US Army). He wanted to become a pilot in the USAAF, but they had too many applications for pilot training, and he was put on a waiting list. He was sent to San Antonio, Texas, where he was an interpreter helping train pilots from China for a short time. He was also stationed in Houston, Texas. He did not like being a cadet in the USAAF and managed to be honorably discharged on November 13, 1945 which was earlier than normal. As part of the discharge agreement, he had to join the USAAF Reserves. He signed up for a second 4-year term in 1949 with the US Air Force (USAF) Reserves after it was founded in 1947. 

Washington, DC

Our dad was discharge when stationed at Maxwell Field, Alabama on November 13, 1945 (Private First Class). He came back to California to meet up with his cousin Bill Lau was discharged from the Navy a week before our dad's discharge. They decided to go to Washington, DC to help a restaurant started by Bill's uncle (his mother's brother). The restaurant was at the southwest corner of Constitution Ave and 2nd Street (kitty corner from the Hart Senate Office Building). 

While in Washington DC, he completed an architectural drafting class through the US Armed Forces Institute (through the USAAF reserves) in January 1946. His first reserves tenure ended soon after that. In June of 1946, he received a certificate in Architectural Drafting from Columbia Technical Institute in Washington, DC. He later used his drafting skills both in remodeling his garage into an apartment at his first house in Sacramento, and to expand our Tallac Street house.

The restaurant they worked in was not successful. It only lasted one year and closed in late 1946. Our dad and Uncle Bill visited New York for a few days, and they took the train back to California. Uncle Billl got off in Sacramento where his girlfriend, Barbara, was. Our Aunt Barbara was born in Hawaii and Bill met her there when he was in the Navy. Our dad's English was much better than Bills, so he would write letters to her each week from Washington DC and sign Bill's name to them. She knew that our dad was the one writing them.

So it seems that the reason our family ended up in Sacramento was because our Aunt Barbara was there. That was why Uncle Bill went there. And because his cousin Bill was there, our eventually moved there (more on that below).

Los Angeles, San Francisco, & Stockton

Our dad continued to San Francisco, then went down to Los Angeles. He worked as an extra in some movies (he does not remember which) where he could either be a Chinese or an American Indian. His paper mother's 5th son had a bar called the Bamboo Garden in Los Angeles Chinatown. Hollywood producers would come to him when looking for Chinese in their movies. Our dad would mostly hang around one of the Fan Tan gambling houses (Fan Tan Gwun). (Fan Tan had been illegal in California since 1885). This was in 1947.

Someone at the Fan Tan house from Del Mar studios offered to help our dad by correcting his English and finding work as an extra. Our dad had learned bareback horse riding when he was stationed in Houston, Texas, which landed him some American Indian roles (when they needed a large group of Indians on horseback).

He then returned to San Francisco, maybe in 1948, and ran around as a "playboy" with Jimmy Kee and Archie (last name unknown) and Harry Lew. They did odd jobs, such as working as occasional waiters, to earn money. They stayed up late at night partying with Chinese college girls. (Uncle Harry was also a college student at that time.) One day, our dad saw Archie standing in front of the National Dollar Store's main branch (and office) on Market Street. He was working there. Through that connection, our dad landed a job as the manager of the National Dollar Store in Stockton, California. 

Our dad would visit San Francisco most weekends to see his friends, until Jimmy Kee and Archie's visas ran out and they had to return to Canada where they were from.

The Stockton store did very well under his management, and after a year or so (about 1949) they sent him to other stores that needed help, including San Bernardino and Vallejo. But Stockton was his home store.  

The Korean War started on June 25, 1950, and our dad was called up from the reserves to serve in the US Air Force. He was getting ready to go to Korea in 1951, which he was looking forward to. But just before he shipped out, it was announced that reservists who had less than 9 months left in their 4-year contract would not be sent to Korea. Our dad had 9 months left, so he did not go. (Our mom wrote that he was concerned that American soldiers might mistake him for a Korean. But he never mentioned that.)

He was honorably discharged from the US Air Force on November 13, 1952. He then returned to the National Dollar Store and was the manager in Stockton, California, although he told them he would only do that temporarily. After a short time, he quite that job to try a stint as a professional gambler in Reno, Nevada. He would often go to Reno on weekends and had developed a "system" on the roulette table which seemed to earn him about $100 dollars each weekend (that would be equivalent to about $1000 in 2022).  But when he tried the system full-time, it did not work. 

Sacramento

In addition to Reno, he would often come to Sacramento from Stockton on weekends to hang out with his cousin, Bill Lau (our Uncle Bill). I believe Uncle Bill already worked at McClellan Air Force Base and told our dad about an opening for a one-year sheet metal internship position. Because of his post-high school class and he had done some sheet metal work in the USAF, he got that internship position. 

That was probably in late 1952 or early 1953. Our dad bought his first house at that time, which was a duplex at 1411 / 1413 Q Street in Sacramento. He shared one of the units it with three other young Chinese men, including a distant cousin, and he rented the other unit.

For the Chinese from Toisan, Sacramento was called “Yih Fauh” (the second port city); San Francisco was “Daih Fauh” (the big port city). It is said that the area between Sacramento and San Francisco used to have many Chinese pagodas. Locke, CA, is the only remaining rural Chinatown in that region today.

After his sheet metal internship ended he made a trip across the US to visit friends and relative in Washington, DC, New York, and eventually to Toronto, Canada. One of his best friends, Jimmy Kee, was from Toronto and that is where our dad eventually to meet our mom. He told me he helped out in Chinese restaurants along the way to earn money.

Our Parents Meet in Toronto

Our parents met when he was in Toronto, Canada and were married there on July 7, 1954. That was a few months before our dad's mother was to arrive from China (on November 17, 1954). According to our mom, he did not want his mother to arrange his marriage. (More on our parent's meeting and marriage is in the "Mom Comes to America" section).

Our mom finally got her visa to enter the US on January 29, 1955. Our parents left Toronto and took Route 66 to California, with a detour at the end through Las Vegas, Reno, and San Francisco, arriving in mid-February. Alan was born 3 months later in Sacramento on April 13, 1955.

Yeh-Yeh liked our mom right off, but Unging was not happy that our dad married a German instead of a Chinese woman (she had one she wanted him to meet). But she came to accept their marriage once our mom started having sons.

More on this period is in the section on Our Mom Comes to America.

After China opened up to tourists in the 1980s, our dad would often visit Kei Mei village. He liked to donate money to the Lei-Au village area school, which included his village. The school had ceramic photos of our parents, Alan, our sister Ronnie, and her husband Mark displayed in their auditorium because of the donations that we had made in their names through our dad.

Our Dad's Generation 

Our dad was an only child, and we have few relatives from of Lew descent in the US and China. Yeh-Yeh (our grandfather) had one brother and no sisters. Our dad’s uncle had 5 kids all of whom migrated to the US. They were Uncle Bill Lau, Uncle Jason Yee, Uncle Andrew Yee, Aunt May, and Aunt Judy. Our Uncle Bill (passed away September 5, 2009) was about the same age as our dad and lived in the south part of Sacramento with his wife, Barbara and 3 kids: Yvonne, Johnson, and Stanford. We saw Uncle Bill and his family a lot when we lived in downtown Sacramento, but only occasionally after we moved to the suburbs northeast of town. Barbara and Yvonne attended our dad's funeral in 2001.

Uncle Jason is a retired MD in Los Angeles. We visited his house in Beverly Hills on a couple of our trips to Los Angeles when we were young. Uncle Andy had a PhD and worked at Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory in the East Bay. We do not know why they had the last name "Yee" instead of "Lau". They both came to the US much later than our dad and their older brother, Bill. Our dad was a kind of mentor to them when they first arrived. Our Uncle Bill resented the opportunities they had to go to the university and was not close to them.

~~~

Our Uncle Jason Yee was born in 1931, a year older than our mom. In 2017 he wrote: Hi Alan, I made several trips to Beijing around 1999 to see several friends in the China Health Ministry. They asked me to help them to set up a Continuing Medical Education for their Western Doctors (over a million). In 1995 [that should have been in the late 1940s], I stayed in Hong Kong for over a year, waiting for my US Immigration papers to be processed. While there, I went to evening school to learn more English. Afterward I was able to read "Treasure Island" fluently.

I turned 18 when I arrived in San Francisco [that would have been 1949]. Your Dad drove me around in his brand-new NASH car. He was the manager of the local Dollar Store [that would have been in Stockton]. I was very impressed. He tested my English proficiency and asked me to read "Treasure Island." He told me to get rid of the British accent. He also told me to study hard in order to get ahead. -- Uncle Jason

~~~

Alan Remembers: We met them all of our dad's cousins at one time or another, but I only remember the three boys. I also only remember Uncle Bill's children. Uncle Andy and his wife and a daughter attended Mable and my wedding in Fremont in 1987, invited by our dad.

I used to communicate with him a lot about our house in the village with Uncle Jason. After our Uncle Bill passed away in 2009, he and I were the two legal owners of that house. I last spoke with him after my trip to our village in 2018. Uncle Jason also owns a small resort in Rosarita, Mexico. 

~~~

Our grandmother (the Chew clan) had one much younger brother who we called “Uncle Mau”. He lives near San Francisco City College, and we last saw him in Sacramento at the large dim sum gathering in summer 2016. He has 5 kids (see the Lew-Mother's side Family Tree). The eldest lives in San Francsico's Chinatown (last I heard). The 2nd eldest is David Chew (Chew Dot Wah). He is about Alan's age, and we communicate occasionally. He and his younger brother, Tommy, owned a Chinese restaurant in Reno form many years. Tommy still lives in Reno. David lives on Bethel Island in the Sacramento River Delta where he goes fishing from his backyard.

~~~

Alan Remembers

When I was an exchange student in Hong Kong our dad was trying to convince David Chew to swim to Hong Kong to escape the People's Republic of China. Our dad told me that David was too afraid to do that. But not everyone survived that swim, so maybe he was too smart to do that.

~~~

Our grandmother also had 3 half-siblings from her father who remarried after her mother died. Our dad sponsored her two brother to come to the US, settling in Sacramento. The one sister preferred to stay in China. But 4 of the 5 children of the sister in China came to the US, all of them settling in Sacramento. Diane Chan is one of those children. She is our dad's cousin and is about our age. She was the first of the Chinese relatives that our dad sponsored to come to the US, arriving in 1981. 

~~~

Calvin Remembers

Calvin went to China with our dad and Unging in February 1980. It was our dad and Unging's first trip back to China since they came to the US. They went via Hong Kong and did a one-day trip by hydrofoil to the old Macau, well before all the Las Vegas-style casinos were built there. Calvin remembers our dad telling him to go to the US consulate in Hong Kong and to tell them he was engaged to Diane to help her to come to the US. He also suggested that Calvin give the consulate person some cash to help that process. Calvin refused to do that. 

Alan Remembers

Alan also remembers our dad trying to get him to do something similar when he was in Hong Kong (1974-6) to help Diane come to the US. But China was still closed to most visitors at that time and Alan was not able to go there. Alan also remembers our dad was encouraging David Chew (Chew Dot Wah) to swim to Hong Kong while Alan was there. David refused to do that, and our dad said he wasn't brave enough.  

~~~

As can be seen in the Lew-Mother's Side Family Tree, there are many distant Chew relatives (with different surnames) scattered around the US. And there are many who live in and around Sacramento after being sponsored by our dad to come to the US.

Our dad was always interested in finding and connecting with relatives and other Chinese when he traveled. He treated anyone who was in any way relate to us the same, no matter how distant that relationship was. (That may have come from his being an only child.) He seemed to consider anyone who was from Toisan or Sunwui counties (his father's and mother's counties) as more distant relatives, but still connected to us. 

So, everywhere he went, our dad would go to local Chinese restaurants and would often end up speaking with the owner and chefs. They were mostly from Toisan in the past, although nowadays they could be from almost anywhere in China.

There are overseas Chinese family associations that are based on Toisan and other counties in Guangdong Province (not just based on family names). They provide a lot of immigration support to people from the same home area, like Toisan. Because of that tradition, in the early days of Chinese immigration to the US, Toisan was the main source of those immigrants. For example, Alan's wife, Mable, is also a descendent of Toisan immigrants. Alan also remembers visiting Belize and it seemed every small town had a Toisan immigrant-run grocery store. 

Most of the Chinese in Thailand and Vietnam are from Guangdong Province, with many also from Toisan. (By contrast, the main source of Chinese immigrants to Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia is Fujian Province, closer to Taiwan. Singapore's Chinatown district, however, was all Cantonese.) We had a Kei Mei Village relative in Thailand who our dad would visit when he was there. His daughter, Pawana Chinatchit (not sure of the spelling), was a famous actress in Thailand when Alan was an exchange student in Hong Kong.  

There are three family associations in San Francisco's Chinatown that we are members of:

• The Lung Gong (or Lung Kong) Association, which includes the Lew, Guan, Jeung, and Chew families (see the section on Mom Comes to America for more on that)

• The Lew/Lau Family Association where we would sometimes go for Chinese New Year dinners and where our grandmother would play mahjong, and 

• The Lei Au Villages Association, which is very small, but is where our Uncle Ham (Lew Jun Ham on the father's side family tree) lived after our dad brought him back from New York City.

~~~

Alan Remembers

I went with our dad to Houston in May 2000 to visit one of his distant cousins, Bill Wing. Houston became a popular destination for Chinese because it was easier for them to go to Mexico first, then cross the border into the US, than to go through the West Coast. Bill told us that when his father passed away, he found 3 or 4 passports in his dad's safe deposit box. They all had the same photo, but with a different name! 

Bill has a sister, Lotus, in Houston, and another, Mary, in Portland, OR, who our dad visited shortly before he passed away in 2001.

I also met another distant cousin, Maria Choy, twice. She was born in Peru and spoke fluent Spanish. She migrated to New York City when she was young and was a newly graduated neurologist there when I first met her in Summer 1989. She then had a private practice in New Jersey, and now has a natural foods farm in NJ (she is on Facebook). She has 2 daughters that are about the same age as Skylan and Chynna. 

I also met Maria's mom, Lilly Choy, twice. She is our Unging's cousin and was the youngest of 4 sisters and 2 brothers, passing away in August 2016 at age 87. Maria told me her mom used to talk about a cousin in France, though Maria does not know who that is.

Joe King is another of our dad's distant cousins who lived in Louisiana. In 1967 he moved his family to California. They lived with us while he looked for a job, unsuccessfully. His son is Danny King, who is my age and who I last saw in Houston in 1989. Joe King has an interesting name. Joe is the Chinese surname from his father, while King was a Chinese given name. But in the US, he switched those and used Joe as his first/given name and King as his surname. Note also on the Family Tree that Joe King had 9 children from two marriages.

Our grandmother (Unging), Joe King (our dad's age), Bill Wing (younger than our dad), and Maria Choy (our age), are all descendants of a man surnamed "Ngo" (given name unknown) of Sunwui County (next to Toisan). Our dad believes Ngo was one of the earliest Chinese to settle in Houston.

~~~ 

After he retired, our dad focused a lot on his genealogy. He created a chart that shows how we are direct descendants of Liu Bei, the first emperor of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE—220 CE). After retirement, he called himself an historian, and he was trying to write the history of the Toisan Lew Clan from the Han Dynasty to the present day. Alan suggested he should write his own autobiography, but he said no one would be interested in that.

Out dad was often moody, even more so after our mom passed away on October 26, 1998, much earlier that we all expected. He smoked cigarettes his entire life and died of a heart attack on July 6, 2001, a month short of his 78th birthday. The eulogy that Alan read at his funeral is here (it is slightly different from the story told here).

~~~

Alan Remembers

Our dad would talk to me in the Tallac Street kitchen about his ancestors and Chinese history. I don’t remember what he said because I did not find it interesting when I was younger. When I was older, I tried to transcribe some of the history he was telling me. When I showed it to him, he said I got it all wrong. I later found that the problem was there are different versions of the Lew clan history in different books and sources. So, I gave up on that.

~~~

US Citizenship

Because our father came to the US as a paper son, claiming his uncle as his father, he was not a legal US citizen. Because his paper father (his uncle) was a US citizen, the US government considered our dad a US citizen. That was the situation for many Chinese in the US at that time. It was very difficult for Chinese to become US citizens, and even to immigrate to the US without citizenship status. The law changed with the 1952 McCarran-Walter Immigration & Nationality Act, setting a quota on how many Chinese could immigrate to the US each year (the number was only about 150). However, it seems our grandfather was able to use the act to become a naturalized (legal) US citizen in 1953. 

Our mom became a US citizen 3-years 5-months after she entered the US (on July 7, 1958), which seems fast and was probably based on our father's "false" citizenship. But our dad did not become a fully legal US citizen until August 26, 1968. We don't know why he waited that long. Perhaps he was afraid of jeopardizing our mother's citizenship.  

Mable (Alan's wife) said her dad had to apply for US citizenship a second time after passage of the 1965 Immigration & Nationality Act, which also allowed sponsorship of extended relatives for the first time (beyond sons and wives). He had gotten his first citizenship earlier, but he was probably in the same situation as our dad, and it was technically illegal. The 1965 Act was the final ending of the Chinese Exclusion Act laws that gave them both an opportunity to correct their paper son citizenship. Our dad said the main thing was he was able to change his legal father from his uncle (Jun Yok) to his dad (Jun Dick/Ping Wong).

That is different from the "Chinese Confession Program" (1956-1965) that encouraged "paper sons" to confess to the true identity but did not change their immigration status. Our grandfather became a naturliazed (legal) US citizen in 1953. He might have participated in that around 1960. As I recall, he could have switched his name from Ping Wong to Jun Dick Lew about that time but did not. However, he did not need to re-apply for citizenship after 1965, possibly because the Confession Program had a special provision for Chinese immigrants who came to the US prior to 1940.