By Shirley Lew
AsAmNews Staff Writer
An unprecedented gathering of descendants of Chinese American WWII veterans came to Manhattan’s Chinatown American Legion for a group photo to gain support of the Congressional Gold Medal Act.
Lilian Bit is a descendant of two WWII veterans, her grandfather and father. She felt a group photo would be a notable effort to gain support of HR2358, the Congressional Gold Medal Act of the Chinese American WWII Veterans Recognition Project. The Senate version, S1050, passed a month ago. HR2358 only needs just 48 more co-sponsors to reach the minimum 290 required from the House of Representatives for it to pass. The descendants are encouraged to send the group photo to their Congressional representatives to show them the faces of these heroes that fought for the nation’s freedom at a time racism against the Chinese was widespread.
Bit, along with her co-organizers, photojournalist Corky Lee and myself expected about 40-50 people to attend. However, to our amazement, we had well over 100 and ran out of chairs at the American Legion Lt. Kimlau Post 1291 and had to take three separate group photos instead of just one photo.
One woman traveled from Connecticut. Others came from New Jersey and the surrounding tri-state area. Attendees were to bring 8×10 photos of the veterans in their uniform. Some even had their discharge papers and another woman wanted to bring her 96-year-old father, a WWII veteran, but he was not able to attend due to the rain. 19- year-old Brittany Lew of NJ brought her great grandfather’s photo.
Thomas Lee, a Vietnam veteran and member of the American Legion, shared that he and his six brothers all served in the military. Holding back tears, he told the audience his oldest brother was shot in France and did not come home. What also crushed me was that he said his family did not have a car and could not afford to hire a driver to attend the funeral, but nevertheless, his father spent several weeks wages from working in the laundry business to get the family to the funeral.
I had the opportunity to explain to the audience what an average day of advocating is like at the Capitol, what is involved and what our advocating team’s language is when we are meeting with the legislative aid. I felt that this would give the general public an idea of what the process is like so that they may know what is involved to get our heroes recognized.
Attendees of the group photo shoot were encouraged to “snail mail,” tweet and or tag their Congressional members on Facebook to gain support. Making a telephone call to the Congressional members’ Washington DC office would also work in lieu of a group photo.
We are also asking all supporters to download the image of the banner and to use that as their Facebook cover photo to bring awareness of the Congressional Gold Medal act. A big thank you to Donald Yee who donated the banner for the event.
An internet search turned up nothing similar to our gathering of descendants in the US, therefore, we are unofficially declaring this the first gathering of its kind. In Australia, descendants of Chinese Austrailian WWII veterans recently marched on Anzac Day for the first time to commemorate their ancestors’ service.
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