In the early 1950′s, the years following the war with Japan and now in another with Korea, I was the only child of a young Chinese American couple.  My dad was finally home from Korea, where he served as an combat Army officer and was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions in a piece of Hell called ‘The Punch Bowl’.  He was home to his wife and son, ready to continue our lives in a new town.  Mother was just starting a job as a bookkeeper for an accountant and my dad, my hero, was learning his future trade as a butcher for his struggling, family-owned grocery store.  Dad’s older brother kept the store running during the war.  One by one, his 5 other brothers and one brother-in-law would come home from the war. Even though we were Chinese, it took time and long hours to build a good reputation as well as customer trust in our store so shortly after the war.  For some, a gook was still a gook.  With all the brothers back, in a few short years of hard work, the reputation of always having quality produce and meat, the veteran-owned grocery store would become very popular in the county and with the Pebble Beach celebrities in the Monterey Peninsula and my dad would become the friendly, helpful and handsome hometown butcher.  Dad was working long hours in the beginning.  He rented an old house downtown on Lincoln St., next to a gravel parking lot, so he could be closer to the market that was right behind the library on Main St.  The YMCA was across the street, but I was too young to play over there.  Like all kids, I found my fun, laughter and heroes to admire in comics, movies, and our new TV set.  I watched them defeat the enemy, kill the bad guy, score the winning touchdown, hit the winning home run, run into a burning house to save a life, do the right thing, overcome overwhelming odds at great risk to his own life.  In the afternoons, I would watch ” The Three Stooges”, ” The Mickey Mouse Club” and “ The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show”.  But my favorite shows were the action shows like “Combat”, “Superman”, and “Have Gun Will Travel”.  I was so into Paladin’s style of western justice and the way he enforced it.  I often wore my Halloween cowboy clothes to watch.  Each episode would have a different opening.  1st Intro and 2nd Intro.  Then one day, my curiosity got the best of me.  As I was exploring my dad’s ‘hands-off’ dresser before the show, I found the key to my dad’s Army locker and found a pump-action BB gun he had kept hidden, probably from me.  I took the gun out, and shook it to hear if it was loaded.  Hearing nothing, I ran out to the TV just as the show was starting and got into my stance like this kid. young actor.  I don’t know why I did it, but I pulled the trigger and heard the sound of a crack.  The titles were still rolling. I shot BB hole in the glass that shielded the TV tube and the hole was dead-center in the glass covering Paladin’s image.  I didn’t know was loaded, I checked.  Bull’s eye.  My joy was soon turned to panic when I realized the consequences of pulling the trigger, I caused a hole the size of a BB and sat down on the couch and waited for the enevitable to come from working all day.  I don’t remember if I got punished, maybe I’m blocking that as well, but that was the first time I ever fired a weapon. 

In 1954, we moved ino our brand-new house in a new neighborhood.  Those Roosevelt Elementary School years were ok.  I made friends in class and recess was fun because I could play a good game of marbles, but my classmates lived too far away from me to play with.  With both parents at work and having no brothers or sisters to annoy, I was always alone when I got home from school.  I was certain I could make new friends in my neighborhood.  Every kid in the country would use their neighborhood day and night playing cops ‘n robbers with their cap guns and imitations of police gunfire and the rapid fire of tommy guns only the bad guys would have.  The kids would let me play with them, but I could tell they were uncomfortable with me.  We would simulate air-to-air combat by attaching playing cards or pieces of scrap cardboard to the spokes of our bicycle’s and buzz in and around, sometimes over each other, pretending we were flying aces. The stiffer the cardboard the better and more of ‘em made you sound like a fighter jet in Korea than a fighter plane in WWII.  We even attached flashlights with electrical tape and twine for night combat missions in Korea.  My friends said we had to have the correct planes to keep it more authentic.  When we played war, each side built their own impenetrable forts and attack the enemy mercilessly, running around screaming, faking dramatic death scenes, while making loud sounds of grenade explosions and machine gun fire from make-believe fakes we made of the real plastic guns we finally got for Christmas.  And, finally, we had to have the good guys and the bad guys.  America won one war and in another, both against Asians.  Since I was an Asian, I was the obvious choice.  I became the member of the deadly Japanese Yakuza, the evil Japanese Zero pilot, and the communist North Korean invader hell-bent on destroying America.  And since the other kids were all  Americans, they should be the good guys…only for play.  I complained and told them I was born in America too, they reassured me that they knew we were all Americans and that we were just playing make believe.  Besides, if I wanted to play with them, I would have to be the bad guy to prove my worthiness to be their friend and, then, I could be a good guy too.  After many failed attempts become friends, two bloody bicycle crashes, and a few cuts and bruises, I finally got the idea that I was still the enemy.  I could play with them, but they didn’t want to play with me.  I soon retreated to the loneliness of my room and sought my friendships in comic books, TV, and movies.  I treasured my comics, especially my superhero comics.  Whenever I got punished and sent to my room or banned from the TV during my studies, I would go to my room, close the door and I would hide of my prized comics under my homework and seek looks now and then.  I imagined I was Superman, performing my super-human feats of strength, turning bad into good and injustice into right.  But I knew that Superman was only a comic book character, I didn’t care. I was a kid.  On Saturday and Sunday, I watched my heroes score the winning touchdown, hit the winning home run, run into a burning house to save a life, do the right thing, kill the bad guy, defeat the enemy, overcome overwhelming odds at great risk to his own life.  In the movies, my heroes were larger than life.  I would save my allowance and go to the Saturday afternoon matinees in the summer and see his larger than life image and his incredible heroics in movies.  Going downtown to the movies on a Saturday afternoon was the best.  Those were the days of the double feature.  By now, I was old enough to bike downtown and park my bike in the market’s storage room and have my choice of 5 theaterswithin walking distance.  The Fox Theater was the fanciest: large lobby, plush red velvet seats, and a large red velvet curtain opened up to reveal a large wide movie screen. First, you would see previews of upcoming movies, then a Loony Tunes cartoon or a black and white MovieTone newsreel and finally the first movie.  When the movie ended, the curtains would close for intermission and open again for another cartoon before the second movie.  I would buy my buttered popcorn and soda and watch in amazement how my heroes used their unique strength, skills and moral convictions to battle their enemy to victory.  And when my hero died, he died heroically and for the greater good.  John Wayne was my hero.  He portrayed characters I knew I wanted to grow up to be like.  When John portrayed a hardened Marine fighter-pilot in the movie “The Flying Leathernecks”, and a battle-tested and battle-weary Marine sergeant in “The Sands of Iwo Jima”. See Movie trailer .  He acted like I knew a true Marine would, like my hero did, like I would if I ever became a Marine. When Sgt. Stryker was killed, he died heroically, killed the enemy, inspired his men, and only after he completed his mission.  See Sgt. Stryker is killed.  The only sign that you see that he was dead was that he was face down, motionless, and there was little bloody hole in his back caused by a Japanese sniper’s bullet.  Jack Web portrayed a battle-hardened Marine drill instructor at Parris Island MCRD in the 1957 movie, “The D.I.”, and I ate it up. movie trailer .  The movie showed me a glimpse of how mentally and physically tough it was to become a Marine.  And more importantly, I saw how much history, tradition, honor, and responsibility that comes with the title of United States Marine.  “Semper fidelis”  Always faithful.

Because concepts like social integration and acceptance were in their infancy, all my friends and school activities for the most part were with my Chinese friends.  But, I felt like I didn’t belong with them either.  They spoke Chinese equally with English in their more traditional households and the only time my parents spoke Chinese was when they were talking about something they didn’t want me to know.  Our family was becoming more Americanized.  I did not think in Chinese.  The only time I knew I was Chinese is when I looked in a mirror.  I was becoming lost.

This is my 1963 sophomore class photo. My life in the early 60′s was just like the shows like “American Grafitti”, add a  touch of “Happy Days”, toss in few Asian teenagers as extras and you got Salinas in the ’60′s.  My social life in high school was anything but happy. I was too skinny, too weak, too short, too slow to play any popular high school sports well enough to be among the popular crowd, go to any parties, or impress the girls.  I dated only once in high school and that was awkward and embarrassing.   Even though I had my driver’s license, my dad insisted on driving. We dated for about 3 months, just to high school activities, never a real date.  The last time we dated, she told me that she couldn’t see me any more because she had fallen in love with another guy and was getting married.  I never even got to kiss her.  I obviously went stag to the Senior Prom.I graduated from high school just an average 17 year old kid with average grades, still riding my bike, no girlfriend, and no immediate plans for the future except go to Hartnell Junior College for a couple of years until can I transfer.  If they were disappointed in me, I felt even worse about myself.  I felt they were disappointed in me and that I embarrassed them while their relatives, brothers and sister’s whose children, my cousins have gone or are going to a major college like Berkeley or USC.  Because they were only able to have me, they made me feel that I had blown their only chance to continue our proud Chinese family tradition.  My dad made me even worse.  Over the years, he made me feel like I didn’t turn out to be the young man he had always imagined.  He thought I had grown up to be a momma’s boy.  Once he even called me a ‘pussy’ at dinner because I chose to eat my chicken with silverware instead of my bare hands like a man, like him.  The first few months at Hartnell proved un-inspiring.  I felt lost and very much alone.  Mother didn’t speak much about her disappointment, but I could tell.  If ever I was going to make my dad proud of me, I would have to do what he did.  He became an Army officer and was awarded a medal for his bravery in battle.  My mother’s brothers were in the service and my dad has always been proud of his sides’s three generations of military service to our country.  I invite you to watch a 2008 video I made of him.  3 generations of military service

I decided to join the Marine Corps because they are the toughest and the best and I wanted to test myself.  I also chose the Corps because I wanted to let my mother know that I wasn’t flaking out, and to make my father proud of me.  I wanted to show the rest of our family that I also wanted to serve with the best.  I enlisted two weeks before I was to leave for boot camp, but I didn’t tell my parents until the night before I had to leave.  I don’t know why I waited so long to tell them, probably so they couldn’t stop me.  Mother came into my room crying, gave me a hug, a kiss, went into her bedroom and collapsed. Dad soon followed and told me he understood.  Before dad was sent to Korea, he was commanded a basic training company at Fort Ord.  As I was gathering the few things I was going to take, he gave me some advice that would help me through the ordeal of Marine Corps boot camp.  In the morning, he drove me to the recruiting station at the main post office where they were in the process of loading recruits of all branches of the service.  We shook hands as stepped onto the bus and he watched me leave. It was Flag Day, June 14th, 1966.

I survived 12 hot, exhausting, painful, and agonizing weeks of D.I.’s, boot camp in the heat of the San Diego summer.\”Full Metal Jacket\” . I saw how proud my parents were when they watched me march in formation on the parade field on graduation day.  By then, I was more physically fit than I ever had been in my life, rifle expert, performed tasks and feats I thought my body and mind could never do and learned about the proud Marine Corps history, tradition, and responsibility I was about to become part of.  Graduation day was the proudest I had ever felt about myself and parents had a son they could be proud of.  I was a United States Marine.  Semper fidelis.  I was prepared for war.

After graduation, I was selected to receive advanced infantry training at Camp Pendleton before being shipped to my first duty station, a combat battalion based in Hawaii.  My parents asked me to take a portrait and the other is the night before I left to Hawaii.  Kaneohe MCAS 1967  I was put with a 60mm mortar platoon where I learned how to receive, chart, and execute fire missions.  In the 9 months our battalion was in Hawaii, we went on many war exercises, many using live rounds, and amphibious landings in the waters surrounding Oahu and Molokai.  Then, the battalion loaded on a couple of Navy transport ships and joined a large Naval fleet that made an amphibious landing at Camp Pendleton.  While at Camp Pendleton I took language test, and because I did so well,I was encouraged to take the Vietnamese language course for 12 weeks at the language school only 20 miles from my hometown.  I told them I didn’t even speak Chinese.They said the Corps needed more qualified interpreters in the field, but if I declined, I would just ship out as normal with my battalion.  The course meant that I could stay in the States for another 3 months before being sent to Vietnam, and be stationed only 20 miles from my friends and family.  When the course was over, I had graduated with honors.  Now, I was ready to go to Vietnam.  I was a Marine, trained well and ready to go to war.  Duty, Honor, Country.  I was a Marine.  “Semper fidelis”  I was ready for combat.  I was not.