Book details early Chinese life in isles

Sitting in the United Chinese Society Hall in Chinatown with several flower lei draped around her neck and a big smile on her face, 100-year-old Kee Fun Wong Lee signed a copy of a book she penned 30 years ago, but that made it to print only this year.

"She wrote it a long time ago to record what the Chinese experience was so others could understand what they went through," Merleen Lee, Lee’s youngest daughter, said Saturday. "It wasn’t written for print, just as a personal record, but she’s actually very proud it’s been published."

The book, "Chinese Community Leaders of Early Hawaii," is just about 20 pages long and contains a succinct history of the founding of the United Chinese Society in 1882 and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in 1911. Lee’s father, Wong Chee, was one of 13 founders of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

"I said, ‘This is what I want to print. This is what we need,’" Douglas Chong, cultural historian and president of the Hawaii Chinese History Center, said of his reaction after reading Lee’s manuscript decades after it was written. "(Lee) represents that part of history so far away, but she’s bringing it closer to us with this."

The book is the fourth in a series on the history of Chinese in Hawaii published by the center.

Clutching two copies of the book, Barbara Chun Chong, whose grandfather, Chun Quon Yee Hop, was also a founder of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, said, "This is wonderful. I don’t know everything about my grandfather and family, and it’s great for educating the next generation.

"The younger generation really needs to know its roots. This is how we can do that."

A retired Farrington English teacher who grew up in Palama with a strong love of music, Lee flipped through the crisp pages of her copy of the book, stopping at a black-and-white photo with more than a dozen people in it.

"My family," she said, smiling, a finger resting on her parents.

Then she pointed to a girl no older than 12 in the top left corner of the photo and said, "That’s me."