Chinese-American WWII vet nears age 99

Next month, Elsie Seetoo, one of the 20,000 Chinese Americans who served in the US Army during World War II, will turn 99. And despite her age, some events from more than 70 years ago remain fresh to her.

"I was just finishing my final exams at the time when Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong were attacked on the morning of Dec 8, 1941," said Seetoo from a retirement home in Bowie, Maryland, where she moved to in the late 1990s.

The final exams were for Seetoo's nurse training in Hong Kong at a British hospital.

She was born on Sept 14, 1918, in Stockton, California. Seetoo had to move back to Guangdong, China, when she was 12, because her father's business was not doing well because of the Depression.

While in Hong Kong, Seetoo took care of Agnes Smedley, an American journalist. It was Smedley who told Seetoo about the Chinese Red Cross Medical Relief Corps.

After Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in 1941, Seetoo went to the Chinese mainland and joined the Chinese Red Cross, despite her mother's initial objections.

Seetoo, then 23, walked about 700 miles with friendsto Guiyang, where she met Robert Lim, the director of the Red Cross, who offered her a position.

Lim, a Chinese doctor, helped organize the Chinese Red Cross during World War I. He became a lieutenant general in the US Army and later surgeon general of the Republic of China.

After serving in the Chinese Red Cross for several months, Seeto joined a medical service training unit in India. She and her colleagues left for India on Christmas Day, 1942.

She returned to the Chinese mainland from her training in India, where she met Ernest King, a Chinese-American medical officer, who encouraged her to join the US Army Nurse Corps. Her first application was rejected.

"Because of my Chinese name, they told me that I should join the Chinese army," Seetoo said.

But a friend, angered by the rejection, wrote a letter to argue for her, and the commission was approved. Seetoo was commissioned Second Lieutenant Elsie Chin, her maiden name, in the US Army Nurse Corps on June 17, 1944.

Later on, Seetoo was assigned to Chengdu, where she was the only Chinese-American nurse.

When the war was over, Seetoo returned to the US in 1946. She used the GI Bill, which provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans, to go to the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, where she received a bachelor's degree in nursing.

It was there that she also met Joseph Yuen, and the couple married. They raised four children in Washington. She retired in the mid-1980s after a career as a translator, medical writer and editor.

As she looks back at her life, Seeto said, "I'm fortunate that I have met many nice people who have been helpful to me."

leshuodong@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 08/21/2017 page7)