On Gold Mountain Page 36

  *

  From the day Fong Dun Shung left South China to become an herbalist on the railroad, the See and Fong family destinies had been deeply entwined in the political and economic conditions of the times. Some of these periods—Exclusion and the Driving Out—had been directed solely at the Chinese. Others—the Depression and World War II—had affected everyone across the country, including the Sees and Fongs.

  December 7, 1941, marked several changes for the See and Fong families. The waterways remained virtually closed for the duration of the war, with the result that, through 1945, little new merchandise crossed the Pacific. No antiques. No water chestnuts. No silk. For many of the mom-and-pop shops in Chinatown, this meant buying cheap goods from Mexico. For stores like F. Suie One and F. See On, it meant a shift from high-grade merchandise imported from China to things that could be picked up at auction, items of lesser quality dredged up from the deepest and darkest depths of warehouses, even curios. At the end of 1941, neither Fong See nor Ticie could know how this would affect business. Nor could Ray and Bennie, for whom Pearl Harbor also marked a turning point. The See Manufacturing Company, which had flourished making bedroom suites for movie stars, was converted to the war effort, and this would change their lives.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE MISSION FAMILY GETS A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW

  1942–45

  WHEN the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, 42,000 native-born Japanese lived in California, as did 97,000 Germans and 114,000 Italians. The three groups were classified as “enemy aliens,” and were forbidden to enter military installations or the Canal Zone—as if anyone were traveling down there. They weren’t allowed to fly in airplanes or change residences within their own cities. They could no longer purchase or possess firearms, cameras, short-wave radios, codes, or invisible ink. Soon all enemy alien funds were frozen, and banks owned by enemy aliens were locked up—regardless of who the depositors were.

  In addition to these governmental restrictions, the populace at large—petrified by the possibility of radio-directed air raids—began making life difficult for the most easily recognizable enemy, the Japanese. Landlords evicted Japanese families; wholesalers stopped supplying products to Japanese businesses. The Japanese couldn’t get driver’s licenses, credit from banks, or milk delivered.

  On February 2, 1942, federal troops sealed the drawbridge and commandeered the ferry between Terminal Island and Long Beach. Of the four thousand people who lived on Terminal Island, more than half were Japanese farmers. The heads of all Japanese families were put under presidential arrest. On that same day, Attorney General Earl Warren recommended and received approval for a plan to have all Japanese aliens moved two hundred miles inland for the duration of the war. On February 19, a little over two weeks later, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to establish military zones within the United States from which any person might be excluded, subject to military regulation.

  At the end of February, the worst fears of Angelenos seemed to be realized when an unidentified submarine sent a few shells into an oilfield near Santa Barbara. The next night an unidentified airplane was spotted farther south, sending the Los Angeles air-raid system into action. The night sky was pierced by sirens, while searchlights arced across the sky. Residents panicked, turned on their lights and ran out into the streets, totally invalidating the blackout. The army, meanwhile, fired 1,430 shells at the would-be attackers. No planes were hit, but five people died in the pandemonium—two from heart attacks, another three in car accidents. A few garages, patios, cars, and outbuildings were destroyed when the antiaircraft shells fell back to earth. The hysteria subsided only when it was determined that the “attack” had been a false alarm.

  On March 18, Roosevelt created the War Relocation Authority, to be headed by Milton Eisenhower, the brother of General Dwight Eisenhower. “I feel most deeply that when this war is over and we consider calmly this unprecedented migration of 100,000 people,” Eisenhower said, “we are as Americans going to regret the avoidable injustices that may have occurred.” A few weeks later the evacuation began. On that occasion, General DeWitt, who was in charge of the evacuation, stated, “A Jap’s a Jap. They are a dangerous element, whether loyal or not. There is no way to determine their loyalty. … It makes no difference whether he is an American; theoretically he is still a Japanese, and you can’t change him.”

  The 42,000 native-born Japanese in California also had families—many with American-born children. This meant that 94,000 Japanese from California—and another 24,000 Japanese from Washington and Oregon—were viewed as “potential enemies” and subsequently interned. Amazingly, despite their internment, 33,000 Nisei—American-born Japanese—served in the U.S. armed forces.

  Eddy’s old friend Benji Okubo went—first to a place in Pomona, then farther inland to Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Another friend stored his paintings, promising him that she would return them when the war ended. Others weren’t so lucky. Many Japanese had to sell their businesses or homes overnight. Others just walked away. Eddy, Stella, Richard, and Ted rented a house on the Micheltorena Hill from a Japanese family, the Okis, who were interned. They promised to take care of the house until the Okis were released.

  While the Japanese suffered, many of the Chinese profited—in business, in status. The Woo family, for example, bought their produce company from an interned Japanese family, changed the name to the Chungking Produce Company, and went on to make a fortune. Another man bought a large quantity of rice at the beginning of the war. When imports from China ceased, he was able to sell his rice for greatly inflated prices.

  The See Manufacturing Company, which had been in operation for a little more than twenty years, was converted to the war effort. In the past, Ray had designed furniture for Mae West, Anna May Wong, Edward G. Robinson, and Howard Hughes; Bennie had executed those designs with precision, speed, and cheap materials. Now, instead of making end tables, the factory turned out plywood map holders to fit snugly against an airplane’s fuselage. Where once it had made intricately carved headboards, the factory now built airplane wings. Like the Woo family and the man with his warehouse filled with rice, Ray and Bennie were suddenly making a lot of money.

  In a whole other category were the new opportunities for jobs that opened up as large numbers of white Americans shipped out. During the war, it was estimated that thirty percent of all Chinese American men in New York’s Chinatown were working in defense plants. On the opposite coast, Haw, Uncle’s third son, who now had a son and a daughter of his own, wanted a deferment. He got his nerve up, went to Fong See, his longtime employer and benefactor, and told him he was leaving the company. “I can’t help it. They’re going to start taking men with children.” Haw took a job as a tool designer in a Culver City defense plant. His salary was doubled, then doubled again, so that he was earning one hundred dollars a week. “That’s a lot of money,” Haw boasted.

  Odds were that after the war, Haw, like others who had gotten better jobs in the outside world, wouldn’t come back to Chinatown. This would prove to be an accurate guess. Between 1940 and 1950—while the percentage of Chinese men working in restaurants and laundries would remain high compared to the rest of the population—Chinese men in craft occupations would increase from 1.4 percent to 3.5 percent, and in professional and technical occupations from 2.5 percent to 6.6 percent.

  But, given their history in the country, the Chinese knew they had to be careful, too. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association printed up insignias with flags of the United States and China flying side by side and the words “Your Allies” printed below. The association also distributed registration certificates stating that the holder was a member of the Chinese race. The people of Chinatown snapped up these items to paste in the windows of their homes, businesses, and automobiles. The Chinese wore pins with the Chinese flag and armbands that read “China” or “Chinese.” About this, the Los Angeles Examiner wrote, “Make no mistake
about it, a Chinese is a Chinese—and not a Jap.” “Those lo fan,” people in Chinatown said, mystified, bemused, and a little fearful, “they can’t tell the difference between a Chinese and a Japanese.”

  The fact that the Exclusion Act remained on the books undermined the United States’ stance as the protector of democracy. It didn’t help that even though the Chinese population in the United States had sunk to between 75,000 and 78,000—of which men still outnumbered women three to one—nearly one-fourth of the men were engaged in the war effort at home and abroad. (It must be noted, however, that many Chinese armed-forces recruits were sent straight to cook school.) Many enlisted, not through any great sense of patriotism, but as a way of automatically gaining their citizenship, and thus opening the door ever so slightly to the possibility of going to China one day and bringing back a “wife of an American citizen.”

  Many joined the fight for repeal of the exclusion acts—from Ng Poon Chew, the Chinese journalist and lecturer, to Pearl Buck, who had become a celebrity after the success of the book and screen versions of The Good Earth. In San Francisco, the city board of supervisors—reflecting the attitude of the area’s citizens—passed a special resolution encouraging repeal. But for every voice raised in support of repeal, numerous others opposed it, including the American Federation of Labor, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Native Sons of the Golden West, and the Crusading Mothers of Pennsylvania.

  In late June 1942, Mrs. Leong—language teacher, active fund raiser for China Relief, and mother of Gilbert Leong—sat in the main dining room of Soochow Restaurant, preparing for the banquet to celebrate the marriage between her son and Sissee See. She pulled out a bobby pin, scratched her scalp with it, then tucked a few loose strands of hair into the tightly woven bun which lay at the nape of her neck. Ignoring the high-pitched chatter in the kitchen, she tried to concentrate on the list of chores that would occupy her in the next few days. For fifty years now—ever since the missionaries had taught her how to harness her brain to shut out trouble—she had focused her energies on work during upsetting times. But today her heart was so broken that her mind wandered as if looking for that injured organ.

  She knew what the people of Chinatown thought of her: that she was rich, that she would not mind her own business, that she put too much importance on old things, that she was too crazy liking that American football, that she kept her children—Ed, Gilbert, Elmer, and Margie—under her thumb. She knew the kinds of words they spoke behind her back. “Mrs. Leong wears the pants in the family.” (Not true.) “She’s a tough old dame who’ll go clear to hell and gone to buy a leg of pork for the restaurant.” (True.) “Mrs. Leong is controlling of her children. No wonder they’ve come out the way they have.” (This made her mad!) Even her daughter Margie laughed off these stupid comments. “Ah, Mom, you don’t run the family. You’re just business-minded.” But now Mrs. Leong’s neighbors would see how she had failed. She knew they would laugh and jeer. She knew also that she would continue in her service to them, because, above all else, she was a good Christian woman.

  For almost twenty years she had held classes at the Methodist Mission on the second floor of the building at the corner of Marchessault and Los Angeles streets, directly above the F. Suie One Company. Each day she had driven herself from her house on Ivadel down to this last remaining block of Old Chinatown, climbed the narrow stairs, and drilled her students on their memorization and written language skills. Every evening she had walked down the block past Fong See’s store to her family’s Soochow Restaurant, where she’d looked over the books, made sure the kitchen ran smoothly, and written up the order for the early-morning run to the wholesale stalls at City Market.

  In all these years she had made it her business not to associate with the white woman who ran the F. Suie One Company with her half-Caucasian sons. When the mission had moved to New High Street, Mrs. Leong had thought she would never have to deal with Mrs. See. Now See-bok was renting the mission’s old space and living there with his new wife—a clear lapse in decency, even if it was part of Chinese tradition.

  If anyone had asked Mrs. Leong about her seemingly un-Christian stance on multiple wives, she would have answered hotly, “In China, we have multiple wives for many reasons. Sometimes a family cannot have sons. Sometimes a poor family has girls. Before you know it, there are concubines. That’s been done for thousands of years! This is a Chinese tradition that does not conflict with my belief in Christianity.” But no one had asked her, so she supposed people thought she was against the impending marriage between Gilbert and Sissee simply because See-bok had more than one wife.

  There were so many things the people of Chinatown didn’t understand about her. Her family celebrated Christmas and New Year’s—with a combination of American and Chinese dishes—because they were Christians, but she insisted they also celebrate the Chinese New Year. “Why should we follow the Chinese New Year when we’re here in the United States?” her daughter asked each spring. And each spring, Mrs. Leong answered, “We follow the Chinese calendar because we want to remember we are Chinese.”

  But Mrs. Leong always knew where to draw the line. No door guards stood vigilant outside their home to prevent evil spirits from entering. Her children lit no firecrackers to send the kitchen god to heaven to report on the household’s behavior in the past year. She would not have the children worshipping idols. No red paper banners inscribed with pithy sentiments were festooned about the house. If her neighbors were afraid to use scissors or knives on New Year’s Day because they might cut their luck for the coming year, this was not her concern. These things were all superstition. But the Chinese New Year was based on the lunar calendar. That was not pagan. It was a part of the Chinese culture and heritage. Her family could remember their ancestors, thank them for the gift of life, and ask for their blessings.

  Similarly, she went to the herbalist for remedies and tonics for her family. She would go and sit in the carved teak chairs at the Gee Ning Tong and wait for her prescription to be presented to her, folded in white paper. She would go home and brew the teas herself, or add them to a chicken dish for extra nourishment, knowing that most of the bachelor customers might still be waiting in the shop while the herbalist brewed their bitter tea, for they had no wives, mothers, or sisters to look after them. It could not be helped if her neighbors and her own children did not understand her thoughts on these traditions.

  Now the wedding was just a few days away, and Mrs. Leong still had not met the mother of her future daughter-in-law. Even as the dowry negotiations continued and she and her husband considered how many bride’s cakes—in addition to the whole roast pig—her own family should pay for the bride-price, Mrs. Leong meditated on this turn of events. How could Gilbert marry outside the race, after all she had taught him?

  When her children were younger, she had told them, “You’re more or less ambassadors. You represent all other Chinese kids. People are going to watch your conduct and the way you talk. Many of these Caucasians have never had contact with a Chinese person, so do your best.”

  “Do you want us to be American?” Gilbert or little Margie might ask.

  “No,” she would always respond. “You take the best of Chinese culture, you take the best of American culture, and blend the two. You are American citizens. You were born in this country, so you have to take on American culture too. Do not think everything has to be Chinese. You are Chinese American.”

  When they had lived on Ninth Street down by the City Market, and her husband still had the produce stall, she’d had certain rules for the children. Only speak English when you are outside the house. Speak English at school, on the street, even in the yard. The minute you walk inside the door, you must speak Chinese. These were easy rules to obey, and the children had done as she said. But later she had problems with Margie, who wanted to be a modern American girl. Mrs. Leong insisted—no lipstick, no cosmetics. Her daughter was from a good family and should dress properly—”to a T,” Margi
e often complained reproachfully. This meant no dangling earrings, no silk stockings.

  Now Mrs. Leong wondered what use all her rules had been. For eight years she had thought Gilbert would forget about Fong See’s daughter and marry a Chinese girl. Mrs. Leong had kept her eye on Jennie Chan from the time she was five as a possible future wife for Gilbert. Jennie’s family was poor, but she’d been a dedicated student at the mission. Mrs. Leong had often let Jennie teach the younger children their lessons. Jennie liked football, too, and in the old days, she was the only person Mrs. Leong had let come with her to watch the games at USC. All that was a long time ago. Jennie had married that Eddie Lee, had borne three daughters, and had been the first Chinese hired to work at Bullock’s. Hat department, they said. Was that See girl any better? No! She was an old maid, thirty-three.

  Mrs. Leong never encouraged an early marriage, hoping that Gilbert would take the time to meet a proper girl. Education should come first, she always said, thinking that he would find an educated girl—someone like Ruth Kimm. Mrs. Leong had often told Gilbert how much she liked Ruth. “Such a handsome girl, gracious, well-brought up, a good family, and her father owns a farm. Good fresh produce. She has a good job working in a pharmacy.” But then Ruth married that artist boy, that friend of the See boys. This was not a good match, anyone could see that.

  Still, Mrs. Leong kept wishing that the university held the answer. She told her son, “I do not care how old you are, you must go to school and study. If you do not have the money, I will pay for it.” And she had. She’d paid for his tuition at USC, books, clothes, lunch money, music lessons and car expenses. Then her husband started the Chinese Garden Café in Hollywood. That had been a disaster, and Gilbert had to leave school!