The city of Alhambra is joining a national campaign to recognize Chinese-American veterans who fought in World War II.
Almost 5,000 Chinese Americans who served in World War II were from California, the largest number in the country, according to E. Samantha Cheng, who serves as director of the Chinese American WWII Veterans Recognition Project, a national campaign organized by the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. The project is spearheading the push for two federal bills that would award a collective Congressional Gold Medal to Chinese-American WWII veterans.
“It’s an important bill because people don’t realize that Chinese Americans served in World War II, and the unique thing about it is that we didn’t even have the opportunity to become citizens at that time,” Cheng, who comes from a family with four World War II veterans, said in a phone interview.
“That speaks a lot to the spirit of the Chinese people in America,” she said.
The Alhambra City Council passed a resolution last week in support of the proposed legislation. According to 2010 Census numbers, 37 percent of the city’s population is of Chinese heritage.
The resolution states that the council supports “the intent of these bills to recognize the contributions of Chinese American veterans in World War II, where approximately 20,000 Chinese Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces during the war, despite having fewer than 120,000 Chinese Americans living in the United States.”
Resolutions are designed to be advisory. They have no legal effect on the city itself. Supporting the effort to honor Chinese-American WWII veterans was a “no-brainer” for Mayor Jeff Maloney, he said.
“When we talk about Chinese Americans at that time, they faced so much exclusion through informal and formal policies that resulted in extreme mistreatment and punishments,” Maloney said in a phone interview. “But even despite all this unfair treatment at home, they still fought for our country and risked themselves in battle because they believed in classic American values.
“I think that is such a valuable story that we need to recognize and remember,” he added.
The bills are part of the Chinese-American World War II Veteran Congressional Gold Medal Act that was introduced in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives on May 4, 2017.
The legislation must be co-sponsored by at least two-thirds of the House of Representatives and at least two-thirds of the Senate before it can be passed onto President Trump to sign into law. The act currently has 53 co-sponsors out of the needed 67 supporters in the Senate and 153 co-sponsors out of the needed 290 supporters in the House.
Cheng said she reached out to the alliance about starting the project after learning that every other ethnic group who fought in World War II has already been honored with a Congressional Gold Medal.
Beyond advocacy work, Cheng and her team are also creating the first public database to carry the names of Chinese Americans who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II.
Cheng said Alhambra’s resolution joins a list of cities, such as Boston, New York, San Francisco and San Gabriel, who have also urged Congress to pass the Congressional Gold Medal bills.
“When we get resolutions, we pass them up the food chain and show Congress, ‘Hey, look at this, people support this! How could the government not support this?’” Cheng said. “We have not received any outright noes in Congress yet, but they’ve been asking us for more statistical data, so that’s what we’ve been doing.”
The last time World War II veterans were collectively recognized with a Congressional Gold Medal was in December 2016, when President Barack Obama signed the Filipino Veterans of World War II Congressional Gold Medal Act into law. The act honored more than 260,000 recognized Filipino veterans who served the United States in World War II.
