Our Stories

I met the most interesting and charming man today. His name is Wayne Hung Wong and he is the author of American Paper Son: A Chinese Immigrant in the Midwest. Mr. Wong is a resident of Wichita, has been since 1936 when he came here from China at the age of 13. During the anti-Chinese U.S. immigration laws, Chinese immigrants were only able to come to America illegally under false papers identifying them as the sons of those who had returned to China to get married and have children. Mr. Wong was a paper son.

Now, he is a citizen of the U.S., has lived in the same house with his wife since 1973, has been a successful entrepreneur, and most importantly, is a veteran of World War II. Mr. Wong enlisted just weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and was assigned to the all Chinese-American regiment, the 987th Signal Company, which served as a communications service and liaison for American and Chinese troops. In 1944, the 987th arrived in the China-Burma-India theater, field assignment Kaiyuan.

There they established management and support services, and operated field teams of 2 to 4 (mostly on horseback) to various remote locations to assist U.S. Army Infantry Liaison teams and the Chinese Army units guarding the border between Indo-China and China. The Company gradually took over communication services for the widely scattered Allied ground units, assumed two U.S. Army Headquarters Stations in Southern Yunnan and furnished communication services for Recon Patrol that penetrated into Japanese occupied Indo-China.

Mr. Wong served 36 months and returned to the US on Dec. 12, 1945. He was awarded the Bronze Star, the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal, the China War Memorial ribbon, the WWII Victory medal and the Good Conduct Medal.

He is extremely proud of his military service, but it is more than that. He is proud to have fought for the U.S. He is proud to be a Wichitan. He is proud to be a Chinese American.

He is a man of principal and optimism. In the hour and a half that I spent with him, I was touched by his sincerity and his belief in his fellow man. His is a story of prejudice when he first arrived and following his service. He shared with me the words a white soldier said to a group of Chinese Americans as they were returning to the U.S. following the war and talking about "going home." The soldier said to them, "You know, going home for you isn't the same as for us.' Sadly he was right.

But Mr. Wong carries no anger, none. He touched briefly on the bad and spoke only of the good. And what stayed with me, possibly because I am a writer and share his belief, is that he feels that "we will never understand or know one another if we fail to tell our stories, if we fail to share our histories."

When I first spoke with Mr. Wong by phone, I shared that I had purchased his book, but had yet to read it due to my busy class/reading/writing schedule. Today, he brought me a copy of "The History of the 14th Air Service Group and the 987th Signal Co. (including the organization chart of the Flying Tigers), a copy of the 2006 Combined Reunion program from their reunion in D.C., and a notebook that contains photocopies of his newspaper clippings, his book reviews, and pictures that he had of two Japanese generals surrendering to his company in August 1945. He also gave me two pictures of himself. In both he is wearing his American Legion life member shirt with his Flying Tiger blue jacket and his V.F.W. Life member cap. One picture he is standing in front of his home in Wichita, the American flag waving behind him. The second is inside his home against a wall where two banners hang. The white one is an embroidered picture that was his uncle's and in Chinese is written"Freedom restored-time to get married," and "Japanese expelled-Time to raise family. "The red banner was presented to him when he returned to China as one of 60 from his regiment to be honored, it reads "Your enthusiastic support for education," and "Your deep compassion for community."

Mr. Wayne Wong is a gem and I am so humbled to now own such personal items from his history, his legacy. He gave them to me because he said "I think you understand me and how important it is to tell a story." I hope he knows how important this morning was for me. How honored I feel to have sat beside him, to listen as he poured out his life, marked places in the books he felt I would enjoy or parts he felt I needed to understand.

And he is so right. If we only took the time to share our stories, if we only took the time to listen.

You may find Mr. Wong's book at Amazon