The Adventures of Eddie Fung

Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of War

Judy Yung

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780295987545
• eBook ISBN: 9780295802053
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Asian American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Eddie Fung has the distinction of being the only Chinese American soldier to be captured by the Japanese during World War II. He was then put to work on the Burma-Siam railroad, made famous by the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. In this moving and unforgettable memoir, Eddie recalls how he, a second-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco's Chinatown, reinvented himself as a Texas cowboy before going overseas with the U.S. Army. On the way to the Philippines, his battalion was captured by the Japanese in Java and sent to Burma to undertake the impossible task of building a railroad through 262 miles of tropical jungle. Working under brutal slave labor conditions, the men completed the railroad in fourteen months, at the cost of 12, 500 POW and 70, 000 Asian lives. Eddie lived to tell how his background helped him endure forty-two months of humiliation and cruelty and how his experiences as the sole Chinese American member of the most decorated Texan unit of any war shaped his later life.

INDEX

African Americans, xx–xxii, 47–48

Ah So (Aunt), 11, 85, 168

Angel Island, 85–86

Bakersfield, CA, 174–77

Bicycle Camp, Java, 101–7

Black, Lieutenant Colonel C. M, 112, 121, 136, 159

Blackburn, Brigadier A. S, 101–2

Boulder Dam, 66

Brain, Donald, 109–10, 134

Bridge on the River Kwai, x, xxiii, 159–60, 198–99

Brimhall boys, 125

Brisbane, Australia, 88

Brownwood, TX, 79

Burma-Siam railroad, xxii, 110–21, 139–40, 149–50

Calcutta, India, 165–66

Camp Bowie, 74–83

Carey, Vince, 122–23

Cates, Captain Charles, 105, 175

Cellum, Corporal Jack, 103, 132

China: foot binding in, 9; marriage customs of, 3–4; village life in, 7, 9–11, 199–200

Chinatown, San Francisco, xvii–xix, 23; and Depression, 19–20; employment, 15–16, 169; housing, 13, 17; library, 28–29, 32–33; recreational activities, 26–28; schools, 24–26; shopping, 12, 14–15, 21; theaters, 13

Chinese Americans: birthdays of, 21, 153; and Chinese New Year, 15, 142, 191–92; and Chinese school, 25–27; and cultural conflicts, xviii–xix, 26; ethnic identity of, 156, 162, 191–92, 200; family life of, 13–16, 21–23; and food, 12, 14–15, 20–21, 166, 191–92; and funerals, 73, 204–5; immigration history of, xviii, 3–4, 6, 41, 85

Chinese Exclusion Act, xviii, 85

Clavell, James, 138

Clinton, President Bill, 207

Connelly, John, 75

Costello, Sergeant Major John, 173–74

Craddock, Harvey “Red,” 53–66, 69

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One · Growing up in Chinatown
• Two · A Chinese Cowboy in Texas
• Three · A Good Soldier
• Four · A Prisoner of the Japanese
• Five · A POW Survivor
• Six · Learning to Live With Myself
• Chronology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index