Chin, Wing Fong

Tung Pok Chin (1915-1988) was born in Tai-shan County in Guangdong, China and immigrated to the U.S. in 1934 as a "paper son" to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion Acts. He worked in laundries during brief periods of residence in Boston and Rhode Island, and later established his own laundry business in Brooklyn, New York, with the assistance of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance (CHLA). In his spare time, he studied English, read Chinese literature, and wrote prose and poetry. In 1937, he contacted Dr. Ralph E. Pickett, then Associate Dean of New York University's School of Education, about admission to NYU. Although he was not eligible for admission, Dr. Pickett strongly supported his efforts at self-education, and, over the years, sent him many books and references to further his literary and other interests. As their correspondence attests, the two men shared a friendship and correspondence that would last a lifetime.

On the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Tung Pok Chin enlisted in the U. S. Navy. He was the first Chinese person in New York City to enlist, and photos of his swearing-in ceremony were published in major newspapers in the northeast U.S. to encourage minority enlistment. After his honorable discharge from the Navy, he began to write columns and poems for the China Daily News under the pen name Lai Bing Chan. The paper was sympathetic to the Chinese revolution, and its then editor, T'ang Ming Chao, was an avowed Communist who returned to the mainland soon after the Communist victory. In the 1950s, amidst FBI accusations that he was writing for and subscribing to a pro-Communist newspaper, and fearing that his irregular immigration status might render him vulnerable, Tung Pok Chin burned more than 200 of his own poems and may have destroyed some of his other papers as well.

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