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Connie Young Yu - Part 1 of 2

Date: January 24, 2023
 Interviewer: Yvonne Kwan, Ellina Yin, Victoria Taketa
 Interviewee: Connie Young Yu (1941 - )

Connie Young Yu, a direct descendant of the Chinese Railroad workers, discusses her and her family's contributions to the history as well as social and cultural fabric of San Jose and San Francisco Chinatowns. In particular, Yu has leveraged her skills as a writer and everyday activist to bring attention to her work in preserving oral histories and giving a platform for silenced narratives around the proliferation of anti-Asian sentiment/acts.

Transcript of Connie Young Yu

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Systems & Power Timeframe 00:00 >> 04:04

My name is Connie Young Yu. Young is my maiden name. I was born Connie Young in Los Angeles, June 19th, 1941. And my parents were John and Mary Young. My mother's maiden name was Lee. They always ask at the bank, "What's your mother's maiden name?" Lee. I'm the surviving member of the Young family, of the John Young family. My brother Allen, who's the well-known racing car champion of the world, drag racer. He passed away December 11th, 2022, and his celebration of life was at MOHI, the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Washington. So he was the baby of the family and so I gave a talk about him. So I know he was born, I could say he was born April 28th, 1946, and he passed away, you know, December 2022. And I said he was a baby boomer, born after our dad came home from World War Two, came home from China, Burma, India. And it's like we're so thrilled. He was a baby of the family, a boy, much anticipated my--my older sister, three years older than I, born in 1938 during the Depression, born in Los Angeles, also to my parents. And we lived in a three-generation house. My, my grandparents who were from San Jose, Chinatown. Young So Long and his wife, we call her "Yan Yan" [paternal grandmother in Cantonese]. Anyway, they left, Sixth Street, Chinatown, or Sixth Street, Japantown in 1938, when my sister was born to help take care of her. And also there's that area was so depressed, and there was no really future for the Chinese community there.

So they moved to Whittier, California, where my father, John C. Young; this is before the war. He graduated from Stanford with a master's or engineering degree in 1937, and it was so hard for him to get a job. They didn't hire Chinese in those days. So. So, the whole background of this history has to do with, with the Chinese struggle in America. So. And so. He was commuting from San Jose to Stanford at the time, and they had a Chinese clubhouse at Stanford because the Chinese were not allowed to live in dorms. Can you imagine? So he married my mother in 1937. The following year, they had my sister. Oh, he got a job. He got a job with the California Oil Conservation Committee in Los Angeles. So he and my mother moved to a small town where they could rent a place, and they said it was really hard for Chinese to rent. And they rented in Whittier. Was a very nice small town in those days, a Quaker town where the Nixon family ran a grocery store. So, so when my sister was, I guess, a toddler, there, they sent for my grandparents from San Jose, that's how hey all lived together, and then I was born three years later, and it was six months before Pearl Harbor. And my father, who had taken ROTC at Stanford, you know, was called to active duty. He was commissioned. He already had a commission of second lieutenant, and he was commissioned as a first lieutenant. And joined and went overseas.

Joy & Cultural Resistence Timeframe 04:05 >> 06:28

So I grew up my early years, just memories of my mother reading letters from my father. You know, he was overseas for three and a half years, you know, so. And then when he came home, and my sister and I had a great childhood, we just loved being in Whittier. We had a yard garden and the group Bok Choy, had a victory garden. My grandparents raised vegetables, and and my first language was Chinese, just like all of us, you know, because we grew up with our grandparents. And my mother, my father was overseas, did something very adventurous and brave. She started a gift store called Young's Chinese Gift Shop. We were the only Chinese family in Whittier. She started a gift shop on Greenleaf Avenue and, I guess, the small downtown of Whittier.

And during the war, when she couldn't get Chinese things shipped over, she sold charm bracelets, you know, charms. That was a big collectible item in the, in the forties. You know, girls, young girls, and women, would buy a bracelet and add charms to it. And a lot of them were like victory or, you know, I had one of a bomb, you know, And the most expensive one was a bicycle. That's 2.50, but they start at $0.50. But and my grandfather, who had a store in Heinlenville, he had told my mother, he said, "No store, the store is not going to be profitable," because he was thinking of of how things were in Heinlenville, when you're all your clients for the the people, the workers in the fields and the people would come to the home base. But in Whittier, California, the the Young store did very well and she had some Chinese antiques as well, that from she had gotten earlier before the war. And, um, and, I have a newspaper clipping saying, Mrs., they never gave the first name of the woman, Mrs. John C. Young gives a talk on Chinese culture at her store. So she so I grew up with that feeling of a lot of pride in being Chinese.

Systems & Power Timeframe 06:30 >> 11:37

And also it was during the war, you know, when the U.S. and China were allies and well, I was born when the exclusion law still existed. So I would have been an alien if I were born in Hong Kong. But I was born in luckily in L.A, but I was always aware. My grandfather always talked about being Chinese, and that was our country. Because he remembered, and this is this is part of the history that I always tell people, you know, there's that there's a plaque at the Fairmont Hotel [now Hilton Signia] which says, you know, this is--On this site, May 4th, 1887, a mysterious fire burned one of the largest Chinatowns in California, home to merchants and their families and workers in the valley. And it was just commemorative, "mysterious fire." And I remember talking to somebody, even a Chinese American, when I said it was and I was writing it in a memo, you know, for an exhibit. I said it was an act of anti-Chinese arson. And he goes, "You don't have proof of that. You don't--" So my thing is, what is the proof? Who would prove it except for the Chinese themselves? Who, who knew that this was coming? Who saw, who had rocks thrown on them before that that, you know, my grandfather, when he left the parimeters of—as a boy, he had come to Chinatown, San Jose, in 1881, one year before the exclusion law, as he an 11 year old. And in my family history, I mean, in my family oral history, ever since I can remember, my, my parents would say "so lucky you're here, so lucky we're here, if your grandfather waited till he was 12 years old, he wouldn't have been able to come because he was a laborer." You know. And so I was always aware of this. And my grandfather, who was never he was never a bitter person. The gentlest person I loved. My grandfather was just the kindest, kindest person. And he looked like Robert Frost, you know, you know, with white hair and just he would just tell us, "You know, the American people are very good. He would always say they're nice people. They were really smart." My grandmother said very, very smart. Look at what they've done. But, but he said, he described how when he was a boy, it was really he'd have to get "Good Joe's" to protect him. You know, there's always be good people saying, "don't throw rocks at him," you know, or stop or somebody protect him or or somebody who give him a job.

So he he told us as kids that he at the age of 11, he came and he already was working. You know, you know how parents always say, "You know, when I was your age, you know, I really worked hard." He would say that he he was a, he worked in the store like every kid, you know, when they first come in, the store is home base. And it was his he came with his uncle from a village called Long Tan Dragons Platform in southern China and in-- a province, I would say a district. See, the province is is they always call it Canton. Canton is the capital. The provinces, Guangdong or Guangzhou, is Canton. So it's Guangdong province. And inside the province are many districts. And the district we were always told we came from was Huengsan, which was later named Zhongsan after Sun Yat Sen, their hero. My grandfather joined his, his party. Well, that's another story. I made videos and with this background for the Chinese Historical Society, so we'll go into that. But back to to my childhood. So my grandfather would tell me, you know, wonderful things about San Jose. It was so beautiful. He said, "Oh, San Jose, you could just plant anything." He said, when he was a teenager after they were driven out-- Oh no, he was during the fire, he was in the strawberry fields. But he said you couldn't grow strawberries since the soil was so rich and the strawberries were so huge, you know. And he said the peaches and he would talk about the fruit. So when I was a kid, I couldn't. And I learned this from my father, too. I pick up a peach. He goes, "Well, you know who who grew that? That's a white meat peach grown by the Vale, by the Chinese origin in Guangdong Province," you know. So anyway, I got this history, and it's inescapable, even though on my mother's side, I guess I'd be fourth generation.

Systems & Power Timeframe 11:38 >> 17:39

So on my mother's side, my mother was born in San Francisco, in the Chinatown, and her... and I knew her mother, "Po Po" [maternal grandmother in Cantonese]. She had bound feet. So I had another version of what a Chinese woman, you know, experienced. You know, in the old days, my, my grandmother, whom I love, my Yan Yan, in Whittier, she would, you know, work in the garden. She could lift things. She had, you know, normal size feet. But, you know, going to San Francisco and meeting my grandmother-- actually, she came to visit us, and I just I just knew she had bound feet and all my Caucasian friends, they would, you know, like even in San Francisco, when I take a walk with her, you know, and they look at her feet like, "Why are her feet like that?"And, you know, I was I was very embarrassed. We were ashamed. And all my cousins. Well, I have so many cousins on my left side because my mother had brothers and sisters. Gosh, there are seven of them in San Francisco. And lots of I loved my cousins and I still, unfortunately, I only have a few left, you know, but they have children.

We carry on this history. We have the cousins' reunion. And then recently I showed a picture that was from a newspaper showing the cousins, you know, as kids toasting our our grandmother at Kan's Restaurant for Mother's Day. And we, the reverence for our grandparents was it was deeply ingrained with us, since she was the only one left on the Lee side and you know, my grandfather had long died, we just respect her and we knew that she had a terrible, terrible time. You know, with immigration authorities. She's the one that was detained on Angel Island for 15 and a half months. And I didn't know the details of it. I just knew my mother would always sight whenever we were, you know, could see the view of the bay, she goes, That's Angel Island. Oh, I look at and I feel like crying because, you know, I would visit your grandmother on Angel Island.

And and I thought of my grandmother. How could she even walk around there, you know? Well, I guess in the barracks there wasn't a lot of room to walk, but she had tiny little bound feet. It was just horrible. And she was married at the age of probably 16. They always say 18. But I think she was very young, cuz I saw that picture of her and she was married to somebody who was 24, my grandfather. But my grandfather was was born in San Francisco in 1878. And I have his birth certificate, and it's one of our treasured documents. My grandfather risked his life to save his birth certificate. So all of these stories didn't-- imprinted on me the suffering the Chinese went through because they were always... even with citizenship, they were considered perpetual immigrants, perpetual aliens.

So okay. But the dramatic story is, and I, I get to tell these stories because there's always an event or a centennial. So for the centennial of the earthquake in 2006, you know, people wanted stories of, and the Chinese Historical society, you know, the city recognized well, you guys you know, you were here, too, you know, and I remember there was an office of the the mayor who asked the Historical Society, "Can you have you know, we'd like to honor or recognize some of the first families."And Sue Lee, the executive director, said, "We do not have first families. What do you mean first families? We were here early, but we do have, you know, one of our members, a trustee who whose grandfather survived, was a refugee of the earthquake, including her grandmother and her aunt, the little baby. And she has a story to tell." So I was invited to some grand reception. I got to tell you the story of go to the reception and there's just me and Phil Choy and, you know, and these were the only Chinese. And this was, you know, for all the people who had the "first families". And this was held at the top floor on Montgomery Street of Wells Fargo, Warren Hellman was the host, you know. And so I go there and I and they have a reception area with a bar. And I see one of my neighbors from Los Altos Hills, who is a very, very super wealthy real estate developer. I'm not going to say his name. And he's of European origin and his, okay, I won't even say the country. You'll know who it is, you know, of of European origin. And he he just he's sitting there, you know, looking very suave and he's having a drink and he looks at me. He goes, "Connie, what are you doing here?" Just like that. And I said, "Blank, what are you doing here?" Because his his grandparents, his parents came from from this country. So they were they were immigrants or refugees. And he's telling me, asking me because I'm Asian person, that I must be an alien. What am I doing here? What? I had no roots here during the earthquake. Not only that, that the roots go back to 1860s, you know. So anyway, I had my moment. So.

(Interviewer): Did you have a response about what he was saying?

Oh, I, "Have a drink," you know. I don't know. I don't know. We kind of laughed it off, but. And, you know, I have to see him right. But that was really kind of Well, it just shows you then the immediate reaction.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 17:58 >> 27:19

Okay. That, and you asked about my siblings and I, it's and I am, you know, still grieving of my the loss of my brother because he was such a dynamic person. And it was such a shock. He had just played a few days earlier before he was in the hospital with the heart attack. Santa Claus at the Wing Luke Museum. And this goes back to our thing. Everyone goes, "Are Chinese Santa Claus?" "Well, why not?" And it was very cute. So he had somebody even joke. He goes, "We can tell you're Chinese from the eyes, you know, looking over the beard," you know. So anyway, my... he was a Renaissance man, and he was a world champion drag racer. He was a gung fu master. This is in Seattle. That's why, you know, he's most he's known very well. And so he was also a trustee of MOHI, the Museum of Industry and History. He was the first nonwhite person to be on the board of trustees. And this is his activism. He just said, "I'm going to bring change. The diverse, the makeup of this board." He got a Latino on the board, a Native American, an African American or two, because he said this is you know, this is the northwest and the northwest even has more of a struggle with their driving out of Chinese than California, because they're you know, it's, it was quite brutal. Some of the very dramatic cases.

So so that's how he and I talked about how we felt we could be activists because, you know, I'm a writer. You know, I write and I sit. And writing is a very antisocial act. You have to research, you know. But I started becoming active during the peace movement, like out there. And then I had to do something. I grew up wanting to be a novelist, a fiction writer. And I knew that that the only way I could write it would not be about Chinese culture, but what people would want to read. Because you don't have a critical mass, you don't have an audience. And and everything I read everything I read was was about white society, a very elite white society. And it's only very recently or maybe, it's starting in the late, late, late sixties. I say late because it's still-- so I want to write stories. I want write plays. And they were all about, I think, white men, you know, because... and I went to Mills College and there are very few Chinese-- there's only one black woman there, and she left. Can you imagine during the time in our dorm? I graduated in '63. So but, it was still a very, it was a wonderful liberal arts college. And it was it taught me a lot of skills and it had a lot of idealism. It's just that the books, when you read great books like greats... you know, Stanford used to have a course called a Western Civ. You had to take Western Civ. Can you imagine this? You have to take it. So that's your identity. You're never going to succeed unless you embrace Western Civ. So luckily at Mills, who are ours is called Great Books and it had a little bit more diversity and, and I was involved with Model United Nations so I, I it was very I had a great background and it was there. I sort of realized I'm not going to I'm not going to be a novelist about, you know, the subjects that, you know, I'm reading. I'll have to it has to come from my roots. But there was no audience for that. However, the biggest influence in my life besides my and it is my, my parents. It's a it's a culture of of San Francisco, Chinatown or all Chinatowns. The culture of a struggle to keep your culture, a struggle to make your culture of a part of American sensibility are appreciated.

And so I guess one of my first article, published articles, was this is really funny. It's a blend of both my Mills background and and my my grandfather's. It's called "Mark Twain in Chinatown." That was my first article, and it was about when Mark Twain was a cub reporter and in, in 1860s he saw a Chinese being beaten up in in San Francisco. Well, an Irish cop, and he even said it, an Irish cop sat there and just watched and smiled. You know, and he wrote up the story in hot indignation and his editor just tore it up because you can't print this, you know, you're going to offend our readers. So he the rest of his life, he was he he had that grudge against, that...There were, you know, that whole institution of of journalism where, you know, the censorship. And he felt very guilty. He had this big guilt complex that he didn't quit his job. He he stayed on because the you know, he wanted the job. So, but he wrote some satire after that about, and it's very relevant to to, to my grandparents, my grandfather's story. So he wrote something called "A Gross Injustice: The Persecution of a Young Boy." And it's a satire and it's a case of a boy that was, you know, I guess, arrested for throwing rocks at a Chinese and arrested a stop because it was on Sunday. He threw rocks, and and it was a defense. And and so that is sort of a mockery saying, of course, the boy should be be excused from this this act because he was doing what everybody was doing. Politicians the the law officers, the the Congress of the U.S., you know, they persecuted the Chinese. So what would a, a good hearted American boy, you know, do if he saw a Chinaman, he'd say, on a Sunday, he said, "Oh, I have to pick up this rock. God will not love you. Not-- God will not love me unless I stone a Chinaman." And so I thought about my grandfather, you know, when he he told me he had to. He was out, he had a job. He had a job with a white family as a young boy washing dishes. And he was a houseboy. And he said he was so short he had to stand on a candle box. A box to to reach, to reach the sink. But the woman taught him English. He said that that's why he had a very good feeling about-- It's just that they moved away. So he lost his job. He had to work in other things. But so on one of his jobs when he went out of when his coming back from work. So he was set upon by a group of white boys and they started throwing rocks at him. And here's how he describe it. I had to run so fast and I lost my hat. My hat. He felt more grief over losing his hat than the act. So he made a joke, sort of a lighthearted thing of it. But then reading about Mark Twain. Okay, back to this article that I wrote. I wrote about Mark Twain and the great things that he did and the fact that he was a friend of Anson Burlingame, who negotiated the Burlingame Treaty for, you know, recognizing the right of of Chinese to immigrate, and that was later, you know, violated, of 1868. And you know that the good quotes of the Chinese, about the Chinese and Mark Twain read, saying that they are peaceable, hardworking, good people and it's only the government that's persecuting them. You know, that that kind of argument. But in this article, see, my father was a revival of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, ended up being in the only-- see...We're talking about how you get published. It's published in the Miss Chinatown booklet. And I should show you, it's a very glamorous looking thing. There's you know, it's the Chinese zodiac. It's it's a Chinese New Year souvenir book of I guess is 18, I think 1966, one of 'em. But anyway, so I got published was my first story. I was so happy to see my name in print.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 27:20 >> 31:51

And then the next thing I got published in, which was a big deal, was for the 100th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, May 10th, 1869. So my father, you know, because of his position, being, you know, involved with the one of the leaders of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, he was a partner and the leading restaurant, Kan's restaurant, he was just so head of the soy sauce manufacturing company. And and they knew the PR people. So and there was a a very well known I mean, there were Chinese journalists too. And they they knew that I was writing and one of them was a friend of my father's and he just said, "oh, Connie writes, maybe she'll write something for again for our, you know, our publication." But there wasn't anything coming up. But he said, I'm going to submit it to somebody I know with this San Francisco Examiner who writes about restaurants. This guy, Tom-- was it Tom? I think it was. Tom Nolan was the... Well, anyway, Tom Easterbrook, I have to remember his name. It's very he he just was one of the editor who goes, oh, I think we can use it for our feature on May 10th. So my full page article and I should show it to you later of of the Chinese is called it's called the the "Unsung Heroes of the Golden Spike" and had my picture on a full page. I'd done so much research on Chinese on the railroad. So that was my first published article for that was outside of Chinatown. So I was on my way. I thought, you know, but that was it. So that was really...

(Interviewer) How young were you at that point?

I was 27 and I had three children, three children and five. And I wrote that article. But I worked very hard and I was researching using the I got a pass to the Stanford Graduate Library because I was living inside, said we were living in Santa Clara at the time. I went at night. John babysat. Well, I did a lot of research. I was I found a lot of newspaper articles that were really early and some the earlier ones they just talked about the Chinese kind of factually. And as the laws changed, they were talking about them as "Chinaman", you know, reporting Chinese as strikebreakers in more negative terms. But I use them as references through everything I used was in English. And, and I just but luckily it was about the work of the Chinese. And there was so much written by the Chinese, the bosses, like let's say the foreman of the, who were white. Like Strobridge and Montague and Charles Crocker testifying, and also Leland Stanford they testified of before the house congressional, the two houses of Congress representatives that were sent to San Francisco to study the Chinese question. They had testimony. It was held at the Palace Hotel, and I have the whole book of the testimony. So reading the testimony, I got a lot more, you know, facts, you know, because these were eyewitnesses, but also attitudes and the arguments for and against Chinese immigration. But anyway, the article that I wrote was it was all about the amazing accomplishment, the amazing tasks, impossible task the Chinese did building the railroad, ten miles of track. And they were they were hanging from baskets from on the cliffs. There was a lot of controversy about that. And recently, with the research at Stanford, they found an account showing that may not have been at Cape Horn. The Chinese, well, they had to be hanging from something. You know, there they said they were hanging from baskets and using blasting, using a black powder, you know, hanging from the cliff, you know, carving the ledges.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 31:51 >> 40:15

So this is I'm just, you know, rambling on about the building of the railroad. So I got to write that article and it changed me. It changed me, and what I would write about that, it's, it's what is it? It's my, it's about the unsung heroes, but it's also about the Chinese community that survived in America. How do they survive? How do they survive this time? And I have all the documentation. I have the oral history that would not go, go on record or go into the American narrative unless, that, I tell the story, my brother tells the story, our fellow activists, you know, oh, and descendants like yourselves of Asian immigrants who had gone through all of this hardship. And even though they're new immigrants, they inherit that mantle. They inherit that mantle of... of the American, the burden of how they are regarded in American history. So that's why people will when I write these things or when I give these talks and of course, nobody from my generation usually or or they're, there are new immigrants or children of of new immigrants, you know, they're interested. But other people say, well, "How do they connect?" I said, "Well, when you move here, we're like, if you move just to this lovely area, an elegant areas of of that is now around Japantown, wouldn't you want to know what happened here once you want to know about the stories? And some of them are incredible stories. Don't want you want to know about a hero? A German American named John Heinlen? "Wouldn't you want to know what it's like to stand up to people who are persecuting other people who who are disenfranchized? Wouldn't you want to be be like that person?" So, you know, you have to have examples.

And that's why I feel that San Jose's, the city of San Jose's apology, you know, which was in 2021, September to Chinese, to the Chinese community for past injustices... It wasn't just an apology for the burning, the arson fire of the Market Street Chinatown. I helped, you know, I was invited, which I really was very happy and very pleased to be involved, to help write this, to actually write this, that the whereas clauses and what I want you to to work with the city and they would, you know, find the documents is that the the the the injustices started very, very early. It was it was institutionalized and that's why the city government is responsible and that's why even though someone like Raul Perales, you know, he's a son of immigrants and he didn't have any thing to blame and they didn't. But he said, "I feel this is important. I'm going, you know, I will take this on." He's the one who sponsored the initiated the resolution because he said, you know, we are responsible because we take the mantle, we take the responsibility. We are the ones who carry on as officials. So the whereas clauses. What were, the there are 14 whereas clauses, beginning with the first ordinance the city have against Chinese laundries. And it goes on and on and on into injunctions. And before the fire the Chinese, of the... before the fire of the Chinatown, the City Council already condemned Chinatown as a unsafe, unsanitary, you know, place because they wanted to take over the property and build a new city hall.

And then and then following the fire, when John Heinlen wanted to met with Chinese merchants to build a new Chinatown and he had to file for permits, the city council denied him permits. And this is the City council, they still have the records. The idea that John Heinlen was, was ruled out of order, you know, and only because John Heinlen had a son who was a lawyer could he fight it. You know, you have to. The Chinese could not have fought that themselves. They needed to have a white lawyer who was happened to be the son of John, who was very committed, just like his the rest of the family, and was able to overturn these rulings. And they were able to build the Chinatown. But the Chinatown had to have a fence surrounding it to protect the Chinese. And first of all, they had to when they were building it, they built that fence. My father told me that during his lifetime, the gates were never locked, you know? And so my father was born in 1912. So I tell this fact to this writer, Jeannie Schmelzer, who wrote "Driven Out," you know, the sort of the major most famous book on the Chinese persecution of Chinese and driving out of Chinese Lake in Tacoma, Seattle. Jeannie said...So she writes..she goes, "After 1912, the gates were never closed." That's not a fact. You know, that's anyway and so I but I was able to correct her when she talked about the Chinese, the Chinatown being burned over and over again. It wasn't it wasn't it was that key fire that burned the large, a huge Chinatown with the hottest fire that San Jose ever had at that time. The earlier fire, a small fire was a was an accident. And then afterwards, Heinlenville had a that was suffered from the earthquake also. And it had to be rebuilt. But they had a fire also and they rebuilt. But it was not an arson fire.

So anyway, getting the facts right is so important, but it's own. I feel that oral history is the most-- the oral history of people who experiences is the most truthful as far as telling the feelings and the injuries that people endured. You know, it is not it may not have the exact year or the date, you know, or the names, but it has the truth of the experience. And so if if people are if the earlier writers and I have to say they were Caucasian writers who wrote about these the history of people that were not their own, the people of Indigenous people, of Asian Americans, they would use what they consider "facts", but they are the facts of a document which is a racist document that is a fact, but also facts from newspapers, from testimonies of of witnesses that are not Chinese. And and they use those as true documentation. It is documentation, but it has to be it has to be assessed and it has to be much of it has to be refuted as as prejudicial. So anyways, so that's what I, I feel when people are saying, "Well, I got it from a textbook," you know.

Transformation & Change Timeframe 40:15 >> 48:18

There's my picture. [Interviewers: Wow. Connie] And you'll see the Miss Chinatown one. That's the one. You know, in my art, there's all these queens. And then there's my article and Mark Twain. Yeah. So this was so thrilling. And the reason why it was it meant so much is my parents, at the same-- on that day were in Utah and they were told, this is the irony and I've written about it. Phil Choi was going to present the plaque and he was so, "Sorry. Mr. Choi, There's no time for you." [Interviewers: Oh, that's right.] Yeah. And if you see the documentary, the Phil Choi story, that Barry Fong and I did, you know, you'll see the meaning of. So that's this is not mentioned in that because but this is people think that I was that Promontory, I was not, I was at home with the three kids and my husband. But my parents in those days, they had no... they didn't have an Internet. And you know how you could-- they didn't have cell phones. So the word didn't get to Chinatown for a couple of days that the Phil Choi didn't succeed. And he, I mean, he couldn't just call up somebody and say, "Guess what?" They, they they it came about because one reporter named Dale Champion said wrote an article in The Chronicle, The Examiner saying "The Forgotten Men of the Golden Spike."

The whole story is in this, is in this. So yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. About this. Okay, so this this story, everything I was able I felt I was able to, "This is it. This is it." Is going being able to tell the story. So the last one is called Lee Wong Zhang, that's my grandfather, my mother's grandfather, "Laying Tracks to Follow." This book was published for the 150th [anniversary of Promontory Point]. And we when we wrote this book, we didn't know if the Chinese were going to be recognized at all. But that was the mission of the Chinese Historical Society for 50 years, because in 1969 Phil Choi was told there's no time for him. He had a plaque in his hand, and he was, John Wayne had come and they said there's no time for him to introduce John Wayne. And then that's when Secretary of Transportation John Volpi said, his keynote speech was, "Who But Americans could have..."

Even so I’ve got to tell the whole story. Here's my grandfather, born in the United States, and he risked his life to even tell the story… after the fire and earthquake he was fleeing with. My grandmother with her bound feet and carrying a baby. And, and my, the railroad father, you know, his... his father was was with them. And he said, "You take care of my family. I have to run back to the store and get the birth certificate." He runs back. A soldier, you know, was patrolling, bayoneted him and thought he was a he thought he was a looter. My grandfather just fell over, luckily had one of those patted “meen naap” [wool in Cantonese] jackets. And he played dead. And when the soldier just walked away, he he got up and he had his papers stuffed in there. So that's one of the papers. And he made it back. But he didn't wasn't reunited with his family for a while because, you know, they'd probably taken the ferry to Oakland. But it was that important. And still when he traveled, he was stopped because he was Chinese.

Okay. So this is all part of the I get to tell everything because it's all connected. Here's a picture of my San Francisco. There's a picture of that whole family. This is after the earthquake, 1909. And so my mother was a baby. So she's the third daughter. Third daughter, they thought. And that so that that this, is all of the men were born in San Francisco and they had so much trouble. And when, because my grandfather actually was very prominent because the people came early in, went back to Chinatown, became merchants in San Francisco, San Francisco was an important port. They they really couldn't move Chinatown because Chinese were so important for the importing, exporting business. And the fact that it was there was trade. I mean, people wanted Chinese things, so. So he was importer/exporter. He was is, the railroad guy. Here's how they get their start. They go to a store; they work really hard. They become a partner. And when you become a partner; you're a merchant. You have you're able to travel. And so and then so he was he was able to bring his wife over pretty early. And then my grandfather was born. But on DuPont Guy, that's as Grand Avenue. And so these are all the men. And then my grandma, my mother is the tiniest. She's the baby, in the, she's the little one. So back to, here's the picture of Phil Choi.

He's dedicating, this is '69, he dedicates the plaque in Sacramento. That's the beginning. That's it. And he said, "The next plaque, he's going to flying to Utah to dedicate it to people at Promontory," the terminus, you know, where the meeting of the rails. So these are pictures of my my parents at the centennial, the centennial. They were really happy. And my father was so happy standing in front of the the Stanford locomotive, you know, And my mother was by herself. She's the only Chinese railroad descendant at the, the centennial. And so in my speech, I was able to say, "Look, look at these are the descendants at the 150th." And so I was able to reclaim this history. And even up to the last minute, I was so paranoid, I thought, "I'm going to... What if they say, sorry, Ms. Yu, there's no time for you," you know? But it didn't happen. It my my brother, Al Young, he met John [Connie’s husband] and me at the he said, "I'm going to drive you there. I'm going to drive. You're not going to take the bus."

"I'm going to drive you to Promontory." So we get in the car and he drove and got me. We got a VIP pass to the parking lot and then I jump out and run to the tent, you know, where they were convening. And there were-- 20,000 people showed up. It was just, the same in number that was at the first one.

My parents had the... okay, well, anyway, and then they were passing out the program, and the program was a facsimile of this. And on the back it had the listing of the speakers and the first speaker commencement, Connie Young Yu, Chinese Historical Society. When I saw it, I go, "They're not going to take me off the program! 20,000 people are going to get a copy of this." So I, I spoke and I it was just quite an experience because I have always lived with this picture.

Joy & Cultural Resistence Timeframe 48:19 >>56:11

Well, not since I was a teenager. This was in this a painting, a copy, a print of a painting [Jake Lee’s paintings of Chinese railroad workers] that was at Kan's restaurant, one of 12 to show. And this was my father was one of the owners. He, Johnny Kan, my Uncle George, all that they all decided we're we always have Chinese art. We're going to have paintings where when people are dining, and they're mostly it had a very popular clientele, you know, I mean, these were celebrities that come they will know what Chinese did in America, that there was a Chinese community. So anyway, so it's kind of jumped to this. why San Francisco is so important. We're able to show our culture. This restaurant, Kan’s was the probably the first super, you know, if they had any stars, it won the holiday award. They used to have Hollywood like a four-star Chinese restaurant in America. It was so famous. And I mentioned in my speech about my brother when he was a kid, he would cook, he would go to the restaurant for family dinners.

It was the family dinners within the Gum San [Gold Mountain in Cantonese] room with all these paintings. But when he'd walk through the the the dining room were they had the smaller tables, you know, for celebrities, he would see, you know, famous people. Every movie that was filmed in San Francisco, they had the wrap party at Kan’s. I saw Jimmy Stewart. I saw Glennis Jones, I saw Fabian, my brother, when he was oh, he's just maybe 11 years old. He walked in and there was Kim Novak and Frank Sinatra. And he goes up and he he got her autograph. He goes, I can't read your writing or something. You know, it was really funny. And I remember Frank, I was in the back when Frank Sinatra came in, and so he waved to us, you know, our members. And he just he went upstairs to the wrap party. But this kind of thing gave us an immense pride as kids, you know, because, you know, these were white celebrities. And also people loved Chinese food. Chinese food was in! So popular. So I'm able to get all this history.

And because my parents were involved with a lot of things and like how Hakone Gardens and I get to tell the story of the people. So here's a picture of my father with Mayor Shelley lighting firecrackers. So, you know, with the mayor, Chinese are so in! And then my father with the you know, one of the Beverly Hillbillies, she's Donna Douglas lighting firecrackers and there's Kan’s restaurant in the back. And then this is the key. And there's my my Uncle George Hall. He invented the lazy Susan. And if you look up, there's a Smithsonian magazine online. If you look up, Kan’s the lazy Susan. You'll see a picture of the paintings and in the background and the lazy Susan, I know you can't see all of this, but I do have to. This is the picture. You have somebody who wants to be a Chinese chef. Now, have we made it or have we made it? You know, so Chinese food and art, it's activism that you would not expect.

So my my parents were activists, but by being... is displaying their culture, you know, creating excellence, you know, in whatever they did with the, like, my father was interviewed on television. I remember being so excited. It was on the noon news and it was about the Chinese New Year parade. This was like in 19, I think, `59. And they were saying, "Oh, my father was a colonel, a retired reserve officer." They go, "Oh, Colonel Young, you know, what do you think? Was the Chinese parade being authentic? Will it be really authentic?" He goes, "Yes, it will be." Is it going to be authentic as possible? What's authentic? You know, he didn't say that. "It's authentically Chinese American," because you have I mean, the the Saint Mary's drum corps. You have the kids, you know, in their outfits. But it comes from being in this insular community because they weren't allowed to integrate, creating this wonderful culture. They had Chinese schools marching, but very proud.

And my father, being in the reserves, got the sixth Army marching band and to show, you know, Asian Americans are veterans and not that that they were Chinese marching, but the fact that that we we participated we paid in blood, you know, so all of the parades, there were some you know, he'd have a you know, the different veterans marching and and the the band, the Army band. And he spearheaded the creation of the War Memorial. The Chinese American War Memorial at St. Mary's Square. My my father was. And I put this in the book, too. He was a commander of the American Legion at the time and then called back to active duty during the Korean War. And he said, "You know, this is really a key moment because right now it's a Cold War and Chinese are considered the enemy again." Before it was the Japanese Americans, and he had friends, Japanese American friends growing up in Heinlenville, and he said, "Look what happened to the Japanese children, you know, and look what happened," that he thought of them as children. But Japanese families, Japanese American. And during the war, they were considered the enemy. And they you know, they fought for this country. They they lived here. And look, "This could happen to the Chinese. It can happen unless we show that we have to show this. We we have to show that we were patriotic." So he spearheaded this campaign and it was a big deal. It was a on the Veterans, on war on Memorial Day in 1951, there was a grand parade through Chinatown and the dedication of the war memorial to Chinese Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice, who were killed in World War One, World War Two. So that I remember that moment being so proud, my dad giving the speech. And then the General Whitmire, who is the commander, you know, and they're they're saluting that. They're saluting this, you know, And so that that's the activism they did in those days. You know, people do not may not think of it, but that was what they could do, what they had to do. And it was a real challenge to do. You know, you just have to, you're... you're doing the unexpected. You're breaking the mold. You're saying, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. We're making our mark. We're putting this down. We're, this going to be written in stone."

Systems & Power Timeframe 56:12 >> 59:19

And and the same with, I'm sure you know, the Japanese American community. It was not easy. It was not easy for redress. It was not easy to ever get recognition for the for 442 [all Japanese American WWII infantry battalion]. It's a struggle. It breaks the mold. People, the thinking, the rigidity of the the American consciousness, the mind, about keeping America white. It's an establishment. So and every everything important, everything brave, everything courageous, everything noble was done by white men. Yes. If you pick up any textbook from the thirties and forties and fifties, sixties, you know, you look at the presidents, what is it, Louisiana Purchase, you know.

Anyway, so why I came to San Francisco. I think that this is really... we were in Whittier. My father came back from the war and was came back to civilian life. He found, he had a year working for Standard Oil and the company because he was a petroleum engineer. The company told him, they just said very frankly, he said, "You're Chinese and you're not going to get very far. We're going to be very frank with you. People do not want to see Chinese engineers." They just told him. He said "There's a glass ceiling," and they, and he felt, well, he's not going to just keep as a draftsman on this salary that he has you know, his grandpa are his parents and three children. And and then and our store was still doing nicely, but it's not enough to take care of the whole family, you know. So my uncle, who's married to Marie Lee, my mother's sister, this is George Hall, and he's one of the people on Hakone. He had a formula for making natural soy sauce longevity brand, and he had this idea of of starting a soy sauce company in San Francisco.

And he invited my my father to come work with him. And he was an engineer also. He was a civil engineer. So you have these a lot of these this is a period where there are a lot of very professional. You know, Chinese, Asian American men who could not get a job as a professional in their profession. So they can get well, you know, part time work or something. And I've talked to Jimmy Yamaichi, you know, about trying to join a union, all the difficulties and challenges. So anyway, so my father and he was a decorated veteran. You know, there's a major but, you know, reserve officer, he wanted to be as he wanted to be. He was a citizen soldier. He just wanted to be a citizen.

Systems & Power Timeframe 59:20 >> 1:05:55

So he really-- of course, he, you know, really loved his brother in law and the whole Lee family, you know, that he married into. It would be a family company. So moved us all to San Francisco, Chinatown. Oh, my God. It was such a shock for me. And he would become a partner in the soy sauce business. He would be vice president, my uncle, President, and he would be the one who goes out and does a lot of the marketing.

And but they also he also knew how to make the soy sauce. He had a good process. I remember my father coming back and he'd smell like soybean sauce. And my mother, I said, "Ooh, what's”…My mother said, "Don't say a word!" You know, like, "Dad is working so hard. He's a producer. He's sacrificing for us, you know."

So anyway, but my first home in San Francisco, this was, I guess, what must've been 1947. Oh, my God. I was six years old, was in Chinatown, an apartment tenement in San Francisco. Chinatown. We were, I guess, on the third floor. Maybe there was a second floor. I remember. It was so dark and damp. I could not believe all of this. And I guess so. Maybe there are, two rooms and a bathroom. And I just remember. And then my brother was in a crib and we were all sharing a bedroom. And then my parents, I guess a two bedroom. At night, I could hear the roar of sewing machines and the chatter of Cantonese. There were women working all night. So I live right next to we live less than a year, but I remember being almost I was so distraught. I missed my grandparents. Yeah, and I missed the garden. I miss sunny San Francisco. I mean, sunny LA. When you come to San Francisco after Southern California, "What's what's the thing? This fog. I can't see the sun." It wouldn't come out in Chinatown until the afternoon. But when you're in the Richmond, it's just most of the day.

But it took me so my father, I remember my father being very serious at the time. He'd always come home in a suit and he'd be very serious. And we had our landlord was white. I remember he coming up asking for the rent. My father would be so angry. So I paid the rent. I just brought in the check. You know, I just remember my father being, just being... It was just a terrible time. And my parents would try to make the best for, they were very loving every week and my father would take us out. We'd go out somewhere where it was sunny. You know, I remember driving one, one place, really far where there was snow.

I was just like a miracle. Couldn't believe it. But Sunny Marin, you know, and then my father had this great announcement. My parents said, "We're moving. We're moving to a house and it's far away. It's going to be in a neighborhood." And we were so excited and actually was exciting. We we drove our old Ford. My father always bought a used car. Never. He was he just never... they were never showy about even when they started making it about their wealth, they you know, he never wanted to buy a fancy car. So and and we've all inherited that the feeling, even my, my children. So it drove us out to the Richmond district. And there's this this row of houses. If you've seen what it looks like, just rows and rows of the same looking small houses. And we thought it was wonderful because it looks so clean and it was not in Chinatown where he is so noisy. Chinatown was very, very dirty. And my father was, initiated the first anti-litter campaign in the sixties.

It was, the only fun thing, I tell you, was during Chinese New Year, we could fire firecrackers. And as little kids, we were giving these little ones where you can actually hold them. We call them Bibox, you know, and just fire them. And my my aunts and uncles were just showered us with lai-see [Cantonese for red envelopes with “lucky” money]. We had all the red. And then I remember walking to the Commodore Stockton School. I hated it as a Chinese. It was all Chinese, but the teachers were all white and they were not nice. The one I had was horrible. She made fun of us. I just remember that not made fun of us. She just, you know, just singles us out like "You did this. You did this," and and, oh, this is terrible, you know, scolding. And then no Chinese teachers. This is in Commodore often. So I remember the happy thing walking to school. It was littered with red paper, some firecrackers. And I love the smell. Firecrackers. So anyway, that's that's the only happy thing. And also the the mui [Cantonese for salted or preserved prune], the shops that you can buy snacks that I love the food. Okay. Food kind of saved us. You know, we always had great food.

Everybody in Chinatown, rich or poor, there's always got it, you know, And and family associations helped one another, helped the single men. You know, there's always the self-help. And then, okay, moving to the Richmond district... it was really nice, even though it was a very, very small house, one bathroom. And I talked to other people. I said we only had one bathroom, but we had a gas station two doors down. We can run down to gas, the-- in those days they that they were nice to us. They let us use the bathroom. I mean five people, you know, that had to go to work and he was shaving and we had to go, you know, anyway. So the, the school we were the only Chinese kids, my brother, maybe by the time he went to school, he was five years younger. There were a couple of more Chinese, but I was the only Chinese girl in my second, third grade class up to sixth grade. My sister was the only one, she was a great student. My sister Janie was brilliant. She was, when I went to the school, when I, they'd always say that when I went to the class, you know that my sister, they remember my sister three years that they go, "Are you as smart as your sister Janie?" And I wasn't. I was terrible in math. I just was not, you know, I could do I was considered good because I was, I could be quiet, but not normally quiet. But, you know, so.

Joy & Cultural Resistence Timeframe 1:05:56 >> 1:13:34

But I had encouraging teachers and my brother told me that what saved him was Miss Steinberg in the third grade. And as I said, he's five years younger. She singled him out as somebody who really was good with mechanical things, and with science, and there was a special after school program called Lux Lab just for grammar school kids. And and at that point, he knew that he had some skills just because of one teacher after school. And then later he made, model airplanes and his life story. And I think he should see it as it's called, "Race," double meaning, "The Al Young story." And he talks about being a teenager and nearly in Washington high and nearly flunking out because he said he couldn't read. He just he had a A.D.D. and he took, he majored in shop, but that didn't count, you know. But so it's a success story.

He became, this is the biggest irony. He had so much trouble in school, in high school, not in grammar school, because kind of comes up when you're a teenager, you know, a real-- he was rebellious. He knew how to hotwire a car, you know, and and growing up with my brother, I mean, I loved him. He was so much fun and always so active. But he gave my parents a lot of grief. They were, he was in trouble a lot. But my parents had he never, ever spanked my parents that my father, everybody my cousins were saying, your father, you know that you know, he was colonel by that. And he goes, you know, he seems he looks so serious. But I said, Not like my dad. He he thought we were wonderful. I never I you know, they talked about Asian parents. You know, when you get a a C or a B, if you get a B or and A-minus. Oh, why not an A? I had some C’s and B's. And he was just saying, well, I said "A C is average." He goes, "Well, I would like you to be above average." You know, he'd see it in a nice way. He would never be scolded. The most encouraging thing, I think they also had this feeling, you know, that I had this, you know, heritage, that I would be the culture carrier. And and and they they also, you know, knew what the standards were like, you know, for a and that I would make some changes. They just felt that. My father always, my mother always felt as soon as I started writing and in middle school I knew I wanted to be a writer. When I was 14, my parents were so excited. You know, they're it's just so different. And when my my brother and I, I'm just saying they look like they'd be just the the typical Chinese American parents. You know, it's about success and and about material success, which they did have, I must say, but that we would carry on to become moguls or something, you know.

But when my brother realized, you know, he he went to City College, but then he went to Junior, he transferred to the U of W, and he became a great student. And the most incredible thing, he's the only one that got to a graduate degree. Oh, my sister got a Ph.D. in science teaching, but he got a master's in English. And I never, I never had an advanced degree. And then he got a teaching credential and he wanted to be a teacher. And his first job was teaching in an alternative school where he taught Gung Fu, Chinese cooking, auto mechanics, creative writing, everything. And then later he taught at a, you know, a regular public, in a high school.

The other one was a public also. But my parents were so proud that he wanted to be a teacher, that he would be a teacher because it would benefit society. So and I know that a lot of parents, they see the the only son, "you're not going to be a teacher. You're not going to make enough money. You know, you're going to you're going to make soy sauce and run the and be a restaurateur," you know, because my father at that time was president of the soy sauce company. My uncle passed away. So my father took over the business and it was doing it was expanding to a property development. It was doing very well. You know, they bought other buildings. And so soy sauce became sort of, you know, the main company. But they had a parent company that invested in another restaurant. They created another restaurant called Ming's of Palo Alto. They were partners. So. So but my brother did not want to do any of that. He just said, "I want to I'm, I'm going to move to go to Seattle, become a teacher, to do gung fu. And I'm going to race cars. I'm going to fix cars, race cars." So he did all of those things and became a championship drag racer, world champion.

And the the Rick Quan video will explain, you know, how his his he had incredible reaction time. He couldn't sit still; he was hyperactive you know and somehow that you know; and he couldn't read unless he could walk around with a book. And so so again, you know, he he wanted that story told. And he and I, we became.

When do we start becoming activists together? Oh, during the peace movement. And we always talked about how we were going to do, how effective we can do things. And my brother always talked about when he-- this is after, when he was teaching, the things that he could do that would inspire students. And he said, well, I said, "How are you going to," you know, I'm kind of I'm remembering what a semi delinquent he was. He goes, "Look, the young punks recognize the old punk in me." So, and it's identifying with the students. And then and then and everything that I did, I shared with him, you know, because like the Mark Twain stories and then certainly the railroad, we were on that for years. How to get these stories told, how to get. And he was very, very involved with the you know, the Heinlenville story has gone on for years. It's been 30 years. I wrote that the first book on San Jose's Chinatown. My goodness, in …33 years ago. That long. So anyway, my brother and I always shared these things. So. But what I spoke about him, you know, the celebration life. I talked about how that everything he every journey he took had to go somewhere. It had to have a purpose, but he wouldn't ever talk about it because, you know, it was not like something didactic or something. You know, we were we never we never wanted to be preaching because you could tell when I'm speaking, it's almost like a passion. It just comes out of us.

Systems & Power Timeframe 1:13:35 >> 1:30:31

And only in the past ten years did my brother and I talk about how we got it from our parents that like this room, I mean, our living room. We first lived in Santa Clara when just I'll tell talk about John later, but we had cushions on the floor because it's like the hippie time, you know, and I want modern things. But over the years, my living room looks just like my parents living room. You know, I have all their stuff [laughs]. Except for this. And then the that one that's a Ben on print with Gandhi, you know, with some of our… And then that's my sister in law's painting. It's Marlene Yu, married to John's brother, James Yu. She's a a great artist. And then. But all these these are framed prints of my mother's. And then in the dining room are my mother's paintings. Also, she became a painter. She taught me that you can learn, learn at any age and keep learning. She got her high school degree because she was, she had a Chinese education. Her she there was so much prejudice against a lot of, you know, Chinese in schools during the turn of the century.

My grandfather said, you know, "There's no future for educating my children, even though they're American born, I'm American born in America. I'm going to see that they get it, education in China." So my mother was educated and her Chinese was very, very good. And she instilled in me the stories of of the Chinese village and Chinese culture. And it's not Beijing culture because it's Southern China. But she did live in Shanghai, which was an international city. And she so a lot of her experiences... But anyway, so the paintings in the dining room are by her and a traditional Chinese painting. And then some of these are they were rolled up tissue paper, you know, the Chinese rice paper. And I had them framed the-- this is in the past maybe 15 years. I started to to, well after about five or maybe ten years, to frame some of the things that there were in the closet. And as I said, my my room looks like my parents, you know, just missing a few tapestries and rugs. And this, this painting. Well, it was part of my mother's collection. Very prized by she by sure. But on the outside is Chinese writing. It's about my parents. It's outside the painting because she bought it from an artist who was who knew the Chi By Shur. And who who would write down the story of my parents, you know. So it's and so what else?

Yeah could you see Chinese things and then so the here is a real turning point. There was a turning point for my my brother and me. As far as I always say, this is a turning point of activism, but this is really big. This is my parents collected Chinese robes. They they were doing quite well in that. And then before, my parents always wanted to do something about Chinese culture. And they did this with the Chinese paintings. At Chinese, they call them Chinese heritage, Chinese American heritage paintings in the Gum San room at Kan’s, you know, they always want. But my mother said I wanted also, the Chinese culture has to have some respect. You know, this is a Chinese culture that that we live with that is forever, you know, she said classical Chinese culture. So she always collected jade, lots of jade.

Yeah. And because Chinese prized jade, carved jade and then Chinese fans, Chinese painted fans with famous, you know, painters and then Chinese imperial robes, she bought the whole collection in San Francisco. There was owned by a famous collector and not Chinese. That was... and it was so many robes. And they were-- they had an apartment by now. They had moved out of the Richmond district to the Fontana apartment building. And then they were going to, they wanted... they couldn't keep all of the stuff, they said were collecting it to preserve this culture. And we're going to donate it to museums in America. So they donated... half the collection is at Stanford was donated in seventies, in the late seventies. They kept donating pieces, but the big collection was donated in '76, '77, oh, to Tacoma. They just split it almost simultaneously. Only half of it went to, is now the Cantor. And if there are different rotating exhibits that have tap, either, textiles or Asian Asian art, and has been shown over, you know, several times. So the other half went Tacoma Art Museum. Tacoma, Washington, that is where there was one of the most horrific driving out of the Chinese in 1886, 85. It was two years before the this was so it connects to our history. It connects to all the driving out of the Chinatowns, including the arson fire that in San Jose. But it's part of the whole anti-Chinese movement. So we were always aware of that. My brother and I, especially my father and mother, didn't talk about it. They donate it to Tacoma Art Museum because of friendship with a very wonderful family that was friends of my mom, when my sister was at Stanford.

Her roommate was Nancy Baskin, the daughter of this famous, wonderful Baskin family and who lived in Tacoma. And the mother, Pearl Baskin, was a patron of the arts, and she became very good friends with my mother. And she just said, you know, it would be if you were to donate to this museum, it would enhance the museum and also showcase, you know, Chinese art. And it's really the robes. And so they donated this collection. I remember when we went to the opening, my brother and I were standing there and there were all these I mean, as of Caucasian people, and they were all the leaders of the town, the, you know, patron of the arts and also civic leaders. And and my brother and I are standing there going, these are probably the descendants of the the people that drove out our people, you know, and that kind of thing.

So I... and we were just mumbling. And then my parents were so happy and they were just so proud because they wanted to do this and they felt they really succeeded. And it was on the walls and it made a big splash. It was all-- in the Stanford one too, that opening was I remember with the opening was catered by Ming's restaurant, was so fabulous. It's just-- and they kept their collection and you can imagine how beautifully they hung the robes on wires. And some of them were in cases and, and Tacoma Art, the Como was smaller but a still lovely was probably the most spectacular thing they had, you know, at the museum. And then... okay so decades later, my parents had passed away.

And then in 2000... 2012, I get a phone call and my brother got a phone call, but I got one because my sister wasn't well at the time. And that's why, you know, she had a degenerative illness. Supranuclear palzy and she passed away several years after. But during this time, we just you know, I got a call. It was from the new executive director saying, "Well, we you know, we just want to tell you about, I'd like to talk to you about your parents collection immediately." I just sat up and I said, "Do you plan..." and I'm on the phone. Later I met with her personally, but I just said, "Are you planning to deaccession my parents’ collection?"

She goes, "Oh, we don't want to say that, really, Not deaccession. We want to find them a new home. So, urn, because, you know, they're not I just have to tell you, they're not worth that much. And the storage space, you know, we don't have that much storage space." And so and later I so I flew up to Tacoma. My brother had had the same story, and he lived very close by and he sat there. And of course, the trustees of this were very pleasant executive, very very pleasant saying, you know, well, "What we're going to do is we're going to we're going to buy with the sale of these items, we're going to buy Northwest art because we're changing our exhibit, we're changing our, you know, the image of our museum. It's going to feature Northwest art. And so we're deaccessioning all of our Asian art, Japanese stuff, too." But ours was a biggest collection, in other words. And so at the time it was a permanent. So at the time we believed it. I just thought, okay, you know, and my brother and I, we just sitting there we go, "Well, I, we thought they were more valuable." We thought, well, if it will go for for the community. Mm hmm. So we kind of accepted it and they just realized they had to they were going to do it anyway. But so. So my brother and I, I went back feeling rather sad, but I thought that's the way things are.

And then then we we found out we got a catalog. There are going to be two auctions. The first auction was okay in May and then there were going to be a one in the summer. But oh, I'm sorry. Well, forget the months, it was... the first auction was of a number of robes and some of the jade. And my brother and I look at and we go, "Oh my God, oh my God." There's some of my favorite my mother's favorite robes they were. And my brother, I said, "Well, I'll go. I'll go, and I'm going to try to buy them," you know. And of course, there's no way I could, you know, when I got to the auction, this is in San Francisco. Bonhams there were, there were people there. There were Asians there. They had Chinese passports. And I realize these were Chinese, you know, representatives or they bought, but they were able to buy back then. I didn't feel, I didn't feel so bad. First, Sue Lee was with me, executive director. She said, she said she, "I'm going to go up to this guy who's bidding against you. I was trying to buy back one of the roses."

There's no way I could afford it, you know? And then she goes up to one of the guys goes, "Who are you? You're bidding against my friend." He goes, "You know, I'm a private collector. My sister and I, you know, he had a he owned a company in China." He said, We’ve have never seen robes of this quality and exquisite beauty because we have lost so much during wars and revolution. And we were trying to bring buy back our culture, bring it back." And then I didn't feel so bad, but then I felt, hmm, you know, it's gone, you know? And then my brother called and he said, Connie, do you want to go for it? And I said, "What do you mean, go for it?" He goes, "We're going to go for it. We're going to sue Tacoma Art Museum." We're going to file a lawsuit. I have friends. I have a lawyer friend who's helped me in the past who would and they work pro-bono. And this is the most interesting thing-- that we sued Tacoma Art Museum. If you look online, I won't go into all of you. It's called Tacoma Deaccessioning.

Tacoma Art Museum and look up deaccessioning and then the whole story will come up. My brother was so... First, the, he he called the press, he got a press conference. He got people to write stories. They actually somebody actually wrote a story saying, "Chinese Driven Out Again." exactly what we wanted to do. They're driving out the culture. They drive out the people that are driving out the culture, that they're seeing and that that went for other Asian art pieces.

We were just fighting for this particular collection because we had documentation. They would donate it as a permanent collection. That was our our legal thing. So my brother's friend was, oh, and I saw her at the memorial. She's wonderful with a... Her name a Shirakatani. Oh, Laurie Laurie. She's wonderful. She's an attorney. And her colleagues were two African American guys. Len Howell, who's a civil rights attorney, African American, and the other one's, his last name was his last name was-- first Name Was Shakespeare something he was from from Kenya. Oh, it's just wonderful. They they all got together, and they drafted something so beautiful, went took it to court, and there was all this publicity in which we were also accused of, you know, fighting for it for ourselves, which is ridiculous.

You know, we wanted it for we wanted to sue it for the community. Okay. They find that the museum got such a black eye, and my brother, this was so wonderful. He got people to he got allies. So we have to get the community behind us. He said the Muckleshoots are behind us. And I said, Who are the Muckleshoots? He said, "You don't know about them? They're this is... the state of Washington. They're Indigenous people. It's an African, it's an A and a Native American tribe. And therefore us, they understand this." So we had, you know, people writing letters and petitions. And so settled out of court and here's the settlement that they would take out of sort of a compromise. But that's all right. It's symbolic. In the second auction, they would take out seven lots and that means that there were 11 beautiful robes. They would be donated to the Tacoma Reconciliation project, which is a Chinese American…You know, they started a park. You know, there's a beautiful park and there's a I, I guess is the organization that remembers the past.

And it builds unity. And they they you know, they have festivals and and then the money that that was that was made from the auction of our parents items would be used to buy Asian American art of North Western artists and this Asian American artists. And so there are quite a number of famous ones you can look at locally, and they've already been purchased. So we won, we won, we won. And then we had an exhibit of the robes, I guess a year afterwards, and it was at the Wing Luke Museum, and my brother and I gave a presentation of the slideshow of of our parents lives and this whole story that I'm telling you why it's important. And the robes were exhibited and it was just beautiful. They were imperial robes. I should've worn one now. I we kids got a some of them, you know, because and so that's the story.

Systems & Power Timeframe 1:30:32 >> 1:34:49

And then here's another story that my that I told at the that affected our lives as adults when I did not know that when we moved to the Richmond district, there was a petition against us and I did not know how my father was able to buy a house in an all-white district. We were the only family like for that whole area, like in the avenues because we were there so early. We're talking about [19]48, 49. Yes. Yeah. And then what happened was my father, who was a retired reserve, not retired, reserve officer, he was a major and he'd go to reserve meetings. His very close friend was Keith Bearing, also the same Frank German American who, you know, had a nice home and, you know, and so my father asked him and he agreed, would you buy the house first in your name and then sell it to me? And I think it might have been both of them had thought this was a great idea. It might have been even Keith's idea that this is a way to do it. He did it. And that's how we became block-busters. That's how I found out from my cousin, George Paulson. They did the same thing. They had some a white realtor who was willing to buy it and sell it to a Chinese family.

And they two to this is outside of Chinatown are areas really far away from Chinatown, all white and U.S. So that's how we became blockbusters. And I did not know about the petition even after we moved in a petition again until I was engaged to my husband. And we were, I guess, a couple of weeks before our wedding. And that's when in those days in your dining room table, you know, people bring gifts and you put them out and you display them. And so my neighbor, Mrs. Potter, who was the sweetest lady when I whenever I had moved in, I was my baby. I was there for a while. But Mrs. Potter was so sweet. She was always cutting roses in her garden right next door, you know, And I remember she I looked over the fence. I said, Hi, Mrs. Parker. I climbed on something. Today's my birthday. And Mrs. Potter said, Oh, that's wonderful. She went to the dime store and bought me a little doll, a little princess doll. And I remember thinking, she's the most wonderful person. And every time I was locked out of my house, I could she would let me and I can climb over the fence. So I found out when Mrs. Potter came over, I'm 21 years old. I must be 22 and about to be married. And I have all these wedding gifts. And she bought a gift from Gump's, which is a very nice store. The had salad servers with silver handles. So we displayed it. And then she was very nice. She's kind of a very heavyset woman. She was the head of her Rose Society. And then and then I just loved her. I said, And she's coming to the wedding, of course. And then when she left, my mother goes, you know, that petition that was there was a petition against us. And you know who started that petition? It was Mrs. Potter. So, you know, people just when I tell the story about how wonderful she was and how how I, you know, greeted her the first time saying it's my birthday. And my mother said, oh, you should never sell. So that thing, you make somebody go out and buy a present, you know, But it just shows you that it was the fear. It was a fear of a Chinese family coming in like they thought we were going to start a tong or something, you know. Then they see my father; he's a reserve. He was called to active shooting soon after, and he'd be out going out there with his lieutenant colonel insignia in his full uniform, going to the meetings, and then he was stationed at Oakland Army Base. Every morning he'd go out. So, you know, we're we're your people, you know, we're we're not going to move. So.