Chinatown parade for Chinese American Soldier

One hundred years ago today … A funeral parade through Chinatown honored the life and death of US Army Private Richard Bue, a Chinese American victim of World War I. The coffin was carried by six surviving Chinese American doughboys. 

Bue had been a member of the 306th Infantry of the 77th Division of the US Army. According to Philip Chin, 

The division was mainly made up of New York City draftees, thus their official unit name of the "Statue of Liberty Division" and patch insignia of the famous icon. Unofficially they were known as the "Cosmopolitans" because they were a polyglot of nationalities and languages with many first generation immigrants from Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe mixed in with Irish and German Americans of several American generations and every other nationality that had immigrated to New York City. 

(Philip Chin, “Sing Kau Lee, Forgotten Hero of World War I.” 17 November, 2014. Chineseamericanheroes.org)

The Tribune  reported a parade route that is either incomplete or wrong, but if we can assume that the paper got the gist, then the procession started from 33 Mott Street and traversed the Bowery, Pell, Doyers, and the Manhattan Bridge, ending at Evergreen Cemetery, Brooklyn.

The Tribune report, unsurprisingly, mixes racist stereotypes and language in with its depiction of the event: “the rival Tongs laid down their quarrels” for the parade, which winded past the “gaudy buildings of Chinatown” while “weird Chinese musical instruments sounded a dirge.”  

Chin’s article, about another Chinese American World War I soldier in the 77th Division, Sing Kau Lee, includes Lee’s service card, which lists him as residing at 16 Bayard Street. In the section where “white” or “colored,” is supposed to be circled, the latter is crossed out and the word “yellow” written in.

– Jonathan Goldman, August 20, 2021

TAGS: Chinese American history, Asian American, war, military, neighborhood, ethnic, race, parade