(left to right) "Walter," Phyllis Soohoo, and Kenny Kai-Kee outside Sather Gate on the campus of the University of California Berkeley, c. 1940. Photographer unknown (from the collection of Doug Chan).
War and Mother's Remembrance
In an old photograph, a smiling Chinese coed strolls out of the University of California Berkeley’s Sather Gate, circa 1940. Observing this image, one cannot help but infer that my future mother didn’t lack for male companionship eight decades ago. However, beyond the personal anecdote, the photograph of the trio encapsulates a broader narrative about the adventurous spirit of Chinese American youth who began entering college in significant numbers on the cusp of the Second World War.
The Chinese students who enrolled at Cal in the late 1930’s represented a subset of the second or third generation offspring of the Chinese settlers in California. Despite being a minority, these students embodied the inaugural All-American generation of the Chinese diaspora in the US.
Chinese collegians dine at the Persian Room in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, June 12, 1942. Hollywood Nite Club Photos (from the collection of Doug Chan). Phyllis Soohoo appears second from right.
The confluence of access to higher education and the backdrop of WWII proved to be a watershed moment for Chinese American youth. The war coincided with the formation and facilitated the ascent of the first Chinese American middle class.
UC Berkeley classmates Kenny Kai-Kee and Phyllis Soohoo at Lake Lagunitas, March 21, 1940. Photographer unknown (from the collection of Doug Chan).
With the outbreak of war, my mother took breaks to work for Shell Oil Co.'s laboratories, where she contributed to the development and testing of waterproofing treatments for equipment such as tents. Alongside other Chinese American men and women on the homefront, she undertook real jobs for the first time outside of the segregated Chinatowns. Her generation garnered newfound respect from their compatriots and the larger society amidst an era scarred by exclusion.
Time and the passing of her generation have dimmed the sacrifices made by many of my mother's contemporaries and, most poignantly, the memories of young men who had served and fallen in combat.
Kenny Kai-Kee was the classmate and a friend seen at the right in my mother's photograph outside of Sather Gate. Remembered as a jovial and talented athlete who secured a spot on Cal's varsity basketball team, Kenny would earn a lieutenant's commission, joining the US Army Air Force in October 1943 and qualifying as a bomber pilot. As recounted in my earlier writing here, this year marks the 80th anniversary of the downing of Kenny’s B-17 to enemy fire over Austria in late July 1944.
Lt. Kenneth Kai-Kee poses in his US Army Air Force uniform before shipping out for service with the US Army Air Force in Europe, October 1943. Photographer unknown (from the collection of Phyllis Soohoo Chan).
My mother was a compulsive archivist. She kept all of the half-dozen photos of her and her former boyfriend, Kenny. She would continue to refer to grief-stricken parents, Lock and Rita, as “Mom” and “Pop,” and send them a Christmas card every year after that terrible summer of 1944. Years later, when her own family went out for dinner in Oakland, she would meet and greet Kenny’s parents on the sidewalks of Chinatown as the old-time families usually encountered each other going to or from dinners at the old Silver Dragon.
Kenny’s remains had been interred initially in a distant plot. The German records recorded a burial first on July 27, 1944, in the cemetery of St. Jakob i. Walde, Austria. More than five years later, Lock and Rita were notified that Kenny’s remains were coming “home” to be re-interred at the Jefferson National Cemetery Barracks. His parents traveled back to St. Louis, Missouri, to witness the re-interment, which occurred on May 15, 1950.
In a letter to my future mother, dated June 12, 1950, Rita wrote as follows:
“Dear Phyllis, "Please accept a very belated ‘Thanks’ for the cute Mother’s Day card and the kind thoughts conveyed. I was not at home on that day. Lock and I arrived in St. Louis, Mo. on the afternoon of Mother’s day. “I don’t know whether you have heard that Kenneth’s remains were found, together with those of two other boys. Inasmuch as each could not be individually identified the government had them brought back in a group for burial at a national cemetery. St. Louis was chosen as it was the most centrally located for the three families involved. The military services which took place on May 16th were very simple and very nice. … * * * “You young people who were Kenneth’s friends ae always so close to me that I almost feel you are my family. … “Anytime you are around this neighborhood drop in on us. We are always glad to see you. “Thanks again and again. “Love, “’Mom’ Kai-Kee”
No one can recall if Lock and Rita Kai-Kee ever revisited their son’s lonely grave in St. Louis, so far from family, friends and loved ones. If my mother knew of the location of Kenny’s grave when a cross-country motor trip with her family drove her through St. Louis in the summer of 1964, she never mentioned it. On the two or three times when I had asked her about Kenny, I recall her fleeting, faraway look when she mentioned his name. She and millions of other Americans knew first-hand not only the young men who had never returned from the great global conflagration of the 1940s, but the loss, grief, and the devastation of war. Like many other Americans who were left behind in sorrow, my mother emerged from the war years with not only her pharmacist's license but also specific, painful reasons to detest the horrors of the global conflict and its waste of life.
Another decade would pass before Mom crossed paths with my father. He had shared none of the transformational experiences of my mother's college cohort. His family had struggled during the years of the Great Depression in San Francisco Chinatown, and he lacked the means, and perhaps the inclination, to pursue university education before enlisting in the US Coast Guard.
Rita Kai-Kee would carry the bitterness of Kenny's loss and the cruelty of war’s cost until her death in August 1983. Lock died seven months later.
After my mother's passing in 2001, my then-grieving father had dispassionately set all of her personal effects, records, and old photos for disposal. I reclaimed a portion of her captured memories from a grim jumble of items he had discarded for the dump. Among the carefully compiled sets of letters and photos about her side of the family, were the small snapshots of her with Kenny and his portrait in uniform. My mother’s archive provided glimpses into a personal life in which Dad had played no part, separated by a ferry ride and later a new Bay Bridge. As such, her mementos comprised a sentimental narrative, ending on the eve of her encountering my father in San Francisco Chinatown’s Powell Garage in 1953.
I was brought into the world about a year later. Decades later, I would find among a pile of baby gift cards from family and friends the small card sent to my mother by “Mom” and “Pop” Kai-Kee. My mother had included their names on my birth announcement list.
The loss of Kenny Kai-Kee, the only son of a pioneering family, was doubly bitter because he exemplified the first All-American generation of Chinese. Death deprived him of the realization that the Second World War proved to be a watershed event for Chinese American youth. The young men and boys who flew in the B-17s of the 8th and 15th Air Forces came home to a Chinese America not quite free of the strictures of white racism, but well on its way to equal rights for Chinese Americans, freed from the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The war coincided with the making, and spurred the rise, of the first Chinese American middle class. As the image and condition of the Chinese in America changed, so did its economic opportunities. By 1943 -- the year the Exclusion Act was repealed -- 15 percent of the shipyard workers on San Francisco Bay were Chinese. During the war, Chinese American men and women were working real jobs for the first time in the world’s only industrial behemoth and gaining new respect from their fellow citizens.
Had he returned to Oakland, Kenny would have heard the laughter of unprecedented numbers of children in the Nation’s Chinatowns. He would have seen his buddies buying houses in gradually desegregating neighborhoods, resuming college careers on the G.I. Bill, and wading into the social and cultural mainstream of postwar America.
We will never know what Kenny could have accomplished had he lived. He probably would have married his fiancee Alice, the love of his short life, raised a family and grown old. We would have met and seen him as just another 80-year-old senior citizen, serving up decades' worth of easy banter along with the stacks of pancakes at the Wa Sung Club’s annual Easter breakfast. As a member of one of Chinese America’s greatest generations, he would have made his own contribution to community after his years serving the country.
Instead, we are left only with the perplexing example of the wrenching deaths of Kenny and the thousands of other young men who never made it back home. Such selflessness demands that we ponder the meaning of his brief life and how in our time, beyond the words and through our own deeds, we as Americans can make his death meaningful and us worthy of such a sacrifice.
If each generation must renew the task of reclaiming Chinese American history, then the stories of both gallantry and sacrifice should be told again and again. With each retelling, a new generation — both native-born and immigrant — is called to an act of faith in the future, reaffirming the hope that the mere utterance of the names will preserve the memories of their lives, valor, and sacrifices of the Chinese Americans who marched, sailed or flew in harm’s way. This solemn duty falls to ethnic historians and storytellers to remember the community’s forgotten heroes in unforgettable ways.
[2024-9-25]