Chinese-American WWII Veterans

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On Thursday, December 20, 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law:

S. 1050, the “Chinese-American World War II Veteran Congressional Gold Medal Act,” which provides for the award of a Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the Chinese-American Veterans of World War II, in recognition of their dedicated service during World War II; and

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S. 2101, the “USS Indianapolis Congressional Gold Medal Act,” which provides for the award of a Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the crew of the USS Indianapolis, in recognition of their perseverance, bravery, and service to the United States.


The White House identified the signing on its website as a simple "Bill Announcement" and there appears to have been little or no White House ceremony. Neither bill was mentioned on the White House Facebook or Twitter. Both Gold Medals generated very little press.

The Chinese-American World War II Veteran Congressional Gold Medal Act orders the creation of the medal to recognize the 20,000 Chinese Americans who volunteered or were drafted in WWII when the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in place.

The bill to award the medal was introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2017, the result of a campaign by the Chinese American Citizens Alliance (C.A.C.A.) called the Chinese American WWII Veterans Recognition Project. It passed unanimously in the Senate this past September and in the House on Dec. 12.

There were a number of Chinese or Chinese Americans who became POWs of Japan. Most were aboard US Naval ships as stewards and cooks. There were possibly as many as 37 Chinese aboard the USS Houston (CA-30) when it was sunk in the Sunda Strait on March 1, 1942. The survivors were sent to be slave laborers on the Thai-Burma Death Railway. Pvt. Eddie Fung who was surrendered on Java with the Texas National Guard was also there.

The Portland-class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was commissioned in 1932. It operated from Pearl Harbor and throughout the Pacific while participating in major battles during World War II, escorting convoys and attacking enemy submarines. The ship, unescorted, was returning from Tinian to the Philippines after its top secret mission delivering the uranium core for the atomic bomb.

After midnight on July 30, 1945, a Japanese submarine attacked the USS Indianapolis, sinking the ship within minutes. Approximately 1,200 U.S. servicemembers were on board. After five days afloat in the shark filled Pacific Ocean, just over 300 sailors survived. It was the worst sea disaster in U.S. Navy history. This recognition honors all the men who served, including the fewer than 20 living survivors, as well as those who died on board the Indianapolis.

Lost Battalion

Seventy years ago today, March 8th, Texas’ famous “Lost Battalion” became “lost.” The 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment, 36th Infantry Division of the US Army from Fort Richardson, Jacksboro, Texas was captured by Japanese forces on Java. They were considered “lost” because no one knew what happened to them until the war was nearly over. To the War Department they had simply disappeared.

Originally National Guardsmen from Wichita Falls, Abilene, Lubbock, and other towns throughout northwest Texas, the unit was activated into federal service in November 1940. They left the United States on 21 November 1941 and were on their way to the Philippines when Pearl Harbor was bombed. The unit was diverted to Australia and put under Dutch command, then sent to Java Island of the Dutch East Indies. They arrived at Soerabaja, Java on 11 January 1942.

The Japanese started bombing Java on 3 February 1942. After a series of brief, fierce battles, the Island fell to the Japanese on 8 March 1942. The Texans were the first Americans to fight alongside Australian troops. Of the 558 men and officers of the 131st who fought on Java, 534 became prisoners of war of the Japanese. These soldiers were transferred to prison camps throughout the Empire, including Singapore, Burma, Manchuria, Burma, and Japan. Most were sent to slave on the Thai-Burma Death Railroad popularized by the film The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Eighty-nine men, one out of six, perished during the Battalion’s 42-month “invisible” captivity. Those that endured the ordeal emerged from the liberated POW camps sick and emaciated, little more than walking skeletons whose health was permanently impaired. The survivors held an enduring bond with the survivors of the USS Houston with whom they were imprisoned and many viewed themselves are one unit.

 Located at the other end
of the parking lot from the interpretive
center of Fort Richardson State Historical Park.

Illness and death were constants. What was the secret of their survival? When that question was put to an elderly veteran of the "Lost Battalion," he answered, "The thing that brought most of us through it was the comradeship we showed for each."

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One of the most distinctive features of the 131st was that it included both a Japanese-American and a Chinese- American soldier.  Frank Fujita was a farm boy from Abilene, Texas. His fellow soldiers called him “Foo” that his biography is entitled, Foo : A Japanese-American Prisoner of the Rising Sun : The Secret Prison Diary of Frank 'Foo' Fujita. It took his captors two years to recognize that he was Japanese. 

Eddie Fung had gone to Midland, Texas from San Francisco as a 16-year old to become an cowboy. At 17, he enlisted in the Texas National Guard. After the War, he used the GI Bill to study chemistry at Stanford University. He gives his account of his life in The Adventures of Eddie Fung: Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of War.

Both men were among those who returned home after the War.

The "Lost Battalion" remains the "Most Decorated Unit" in Texas of any War and USS Houston CA-30 remains the "Most Decorated" vessel of it's class in the U.S. Fleet.

Asian laborers or rǒmusha made up the majority of the deaths on the Thai–Burma Death Railway. Malay and Burmese workers had the largest number of dead. By comparison, Australians deaths totaled over 2,700 and American 25. [Data from Rod Beattie, The Death Railway: A Brief History of the Thailand–Burma Railway, TBRC Co., Kanchanaburi, 2009.]

The Wise County Heritage Museum in Decatur Texas has an entire room devoted to the Texas Lost Battalion. Two books are of special interest are: a first-person account of the horrors  a POW from a Battalion survivor, A Thousand Cups of Rice: Surviving the Death Railway, and a scholar's recent research, Hell under the Rising Sun: Texan POWs and the Building of the Burma-Thailand Death Railway. 

This video recounts one POW's experience: Missing In Action: The Story of Paul D. Stein and the Lost Battalion.


To the best of our knowledge, not one Texas Senator or Congressperson acknowledged the 70th anniversaries of either the sinking of the USS Houston or the capture of the Lost Battalion. Kay Granger (R-TX) represents Decatur and Mac Thornberry (R-TX) represents Jacksboro in Congress. Neither has yet to become co-sponsors of H. Res. 333 that asks Japan to do more to honor and remember these POWs from Texas. Thornberry's nonresponse is surprising as he owes his political career to a former American POW of Japan, Roland Towery who fought on Corregidor. Towery went on to be a prominent newspaperman in Texas and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

As an aside, in November 1944 as members of the "Lost Battalion" toiled in Burma as POWs of Japan, another Texas Battalion was "lost." This time in Europe, Vosges, France. The 141st Infantry Regiment from the 36th Texas Division was surrounded by the German army and cut off from supply lines. The Japanese American  442nd Regimental Combat Team (about 3,000 men) was ordered to rescue the this "Lost Battalion." After days of near constant fighting, the 442nd suffering roughly 1,000 casualties fulfilled their mission. Two hundres soldiers were killed in action (or missing) with over 800 seriously wounded. The 442nd for its heroic action in the Vosges received 5 Presidential Unit Citations and last year (2011) a Congressional Gold Medal. Texan Frank Fujita, it should be noted, was not included in the Nisei Congressional Gold Medal.

As an aside, Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe visited Burma on May 25, 2013 where he paid his respects to Japan's war dead by visiting the Yeway Cemetery. The is no mention if he visited the memorials to the other laborers for Emperor.

Updated 7/28/13