Celebrating Heroes
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very May, our country celebrates Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month. America would not be America, Texas would not be Texas and Fort Bend would not be Fort Bend without the contributions and heroism of our Asian American neighbors. They are the fastest growing ethnic group in the most ethnically diverse county in the U.S.A. Fort Bend Strong!
The Honorable Pete Olson at his Sugar Land office presenting Staff Sergeant Lewis Yee a Congressional Recognition with daughter Sue Chiang watching.
While I have received many ideas for this month’s column, I’m focusing on Asian and Pacific American Heritage. I’m going to start with the story of a friend, Lewis Yee. If you haven’t met Lewis, maybe you’ve met his daughter, Sue Chiang? Or, maybe you’ve met Sue’s daughter and Lewis’ granddaughter, Jennifer Chiang Meyer? Lewis is 98 years-old. He grew up in Houston. His family came from China. As young boy, Lewis worried about family members living in China because of the raging war with the Empire of Imperial Japan after Manchuria was invaded on September 18, 1831. There were reports that enraged Lewis. Did the Imperial Japanese occupiers commit mass murders and rapes of 200,000 innocent Chinese citizens when they occupied China’s capital city, Nanjing, in December 1937? Lewis wanted to fight for his family in China, but how could an American get into a war that America was not yet involved? He found his answer with a group of American military pilots who resigned from our military to fight Imperial Japan, one year before Imperial Japan brought America into World War II with
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the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This group was officially known as the American Volunteer Group or AVG. You may know them as the Flying Tigers. After training for most of 1938 and scraping together weapons, fuel and spare parts, the Flying Tigers flew their first combat mission against Imperial Japan 12 days after Pearl Harbor was devastated. On their own for seven months, without any consistent support from the U.S., the Flying Tigers whipped the Japanese air force – 300 planes destroyed with only 69 Flying Tigers shot down. At age 18, Staff Sergeant Lewis Yee joined legends like Pappy Boyington and Tex Hill – all members of the Flying Tigers. Fort Bend Strong! Before the end of World War II, Lewis had one more battle to fight. This battle was with his own government in Washington, D.C. In 1882, for the first time in American history, our nation levied severe immigration restrictions on one specific ethnic group – the Chinese. It was accurately called The Exclusion Act. Having proudly fought with the Flying Tigers in China,
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