“The Memoir, 1947” (San Francisco, Chick Char Musical Club [1947]) Yearbook-style publication in original decorative green and gilt cloth. Approximately 114 unnumbered pages, with English and Chinese text, accompanying about 2000 portraits of Chinese-American servicemen from San Francisco, both officers and enlisted, of the Army and Navy.
While there are many imprints heralding the wartime service of the heroic Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment, this is one of the few tributes to Chinese-American soldiers and sailors. Rare. WorldCat shows holdings by only three American libraries, all in California.
Preface in Chinese by prominent San Francisco journalist Gilbert Woo, founder of the Chinese Pacific Weekly; another in English by Lim P. Lee, wartime Counterintelligence agent, social worker, juvenile probation officer, and, 20 years later, the first Chinese-American Postmaster of San Francisco. Compiled and published by the Chinatown Musical Club, founded in 1937, which protested American shipments of scrap iron to militarist Japan before Pearl Harbor and, during the War, held fund-raising benefits to send Christmas remembrances to Chinese-Americans in the military.