WWII vet Earl Jung, 84, in front of his paintings in his Chinatown apartment.

This week, as soldiers march in parades and as flag-waving crowds cheer, some will celebrate Veterans Day a little more quietly.

Ageing veterans with fading memories of the wars they fought in, old soldiers with a lifetime worth of stories.

Veterans like 84-year-old Earl Jung.

Drafted to serve in the U.S. Air Force in 1943, he was part of the 14^th Air Services Group and the 987^th Signal Operations Company.

Some Chinese Americans served in integrated units during World War II, but these two all-Chinese American units serviced airplanes and supported radio operations in ally military operations in China, Burma and India.

Jung is one of a few dozen vets still alive from the original 300-member group. Today, he lives in Manhattan’s Chinatown where he grew up as a child.

Born in St. Louis, Mo., Jung moved to New York City when he was four years old. His father, an immigrant from China’s Guangdong province, was an herbalist. His mother – who was of white, black and Native American ancestry – worked at a laundromat on Grand Street. Together with his parents, two sisters and three brothers, Jung lived in an apartment on Mott Street. He went to P.S. 33 on Bayard Street and later Seward Park High School. In the evenings, he attended Cantonese language classes and hung out in Columbus Park.

“Like any other kid growing up in Chinatown,” Jung said.

And, like any other Chinese kid in the neighborhood, he fought with the Italians.

“Italians owned Mulberry Street at the time,” he said. “They didn’t like it when we were on their turf.”

But he fought with the Chinese kids, too. He and his brothers spoke perfect English and Cantonese, but they were darker skinned and had rounder eyes.

Jung doesn’t like talking about the discrimination he faced. “There’s no point being nasty about it,” he said quietly.

He is more talkative about the war. An estimated 20,000 Chinese Americans served in the armed forces during World War II, approximately 20 percent of the Chinese population in the U.S. at the time.

“I didn’t want to be left behind, so I accepted it very nicely,” he said. “I was excited. I wanted to help the country.” But he later admitted being disappointed when he was put in the all-Chinese brigade. He had wanted to be on the frontline flying airplanes. The servicemen traveled across China landing in cities like Kunming, Xi’an and Shanghai while avoiding frequent shelling by Japanese bombers.

After the war ended, Jung came back to New York where he studied at Hunter College and then got his Masters in Education at Columbia University. He worked as a teacher, and then principal at an alternative school before spearheading a school board program designed to help troubled youth in city schools. He met his love, Gloria, in 1976. The two were married in 1988 when Jung was 50 years old.

His other great love in life was Chinese calligraphy. Jung first experimented with black ink and a brush as a child in Chinese school. He continued to paint after the war and produced more than 50 pieces of art until he suffered a stroke in 2005.

His wife describes his artwork as “a brilliant blending of east and west cultures”, re-interpreting an age-old Chinese tradition in a bold, modern form.

These days, Jung is in a wheelchair and has limited use of his arms and hands. Still, he and his wife were able to visit Washington, D.C. this year for the 14^th Air Services Group reunion.

“We don’t get many members showing up anymore,” said Mack Pong, an 87-year-old who served in the brigade with Jung. “You see Earl, a man in a wheelchair. If he can come, anyone can come. He’s a very loyal member.” 

By: Mirjam Donath and Suzanne Ma

On election day, 9/11 responder Keith Lebow is going to the polls. 

He will take the ballot and instead of putting an ‘X’ beside one senator’s name, he will write down who he thinks deserves to win the presidency: Mickey Mouse.

“You think I’m kidding, right? I am literally gonna write Mickey Mouse,” he said. “It’s a waste of a vote by a politically aware person but by the same token, I just do not trust the government. I am sick of the lies and the half-truths.”

Lebow, a 44-year-old ironworker from Manhattan, describes himself as a patriotic American who once believed in the electoral system. But today, he’s angry, cynical and in constant pain.

He suffers from a range of lung and skin diseases; a constant reminder of the 100 hours he spent at ground zero helping to move debris and search for survivors. His sickness is an even bigger reminder, Lebow said, of how the government failed him.

Numerous studies have documented the detrimental health effects of the World Trade Center attacks, including respiratory, gastrointestinal, and mental health conditions. These illnesses have caused financial strains on many of those exposed to the ground zero site. Lebow was working at the top of the Brooklyn Bridge when he saw the airplanes hit, and he rushed to help out at ground zero. Today, he is no longer able to work and must bear the high price of health care without a federally-funded national program to help him. 

In late September, Congress shelved a $10.9 billion bill to provide health care and compensation for ground zero workers, at least in part due to opposition from New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. The bill would also have reopened the 9/11 victim compensation fund with an estimated $6 billion for those who became sick after working amid the debris. But time and support ran out in Congress as attention turned to a $700 billion bailout plan intended to rescue the American financial industry.

“I haven’t seen a penny from the government.” said Lebow, who is $84,000 in debt. “My faith in the government has truly been tested.”

Approximately 410,000 people were heavily exposed to the WTC disaster nearly 16,000 of them are responders. Most likely, Lebow said, there are angry, cynical and anguished voters among them.

John Feal, a 9/11 responder who lost half of his right foot after 8,000 pounds of steel landed on him at ground zero, said he will be voting for Sen. Barack Obama. For a long time Feal said he was angry and cynical too. Immediately after the accident, Feal recalled pulling off his boot to see the bones of his feet sticking out.

“Blood squirted out of my foot. It was like a human sprinkler. The guy next to me fainted,” he said. He was rushed to the hospital where for 10 weeks he fought off gangrene as his body went into septic shock. 

In 2005, Feal founded the Fealgood Foundation, a non-profit group to help 9/11 responders. He continues to suffer pain in the nerves and tendons of his legs and from post traumatic stress syndrome. He fought to receive $50,000 in workman’s compensation and a monthly amount from social security. Feal said he has already spent more than $250,000 on more than two dozen surgeries.

The foundation, however, has given him hope that the lives of 9/11 responders can change with the right politician in power.

Obama publicly stated in September that he supports funding for 9/11 health monitoring and treatment and re-opening the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. He is the “best to lead this country now. I’m a big supporter of universal health care,” said Feal. “Sen. McCain wants to cut social security and medicare. Most 9/11 responders live on that.” McCain’s campaign has not officially stated whether they endorse the bill or not. 

The bill, known as H.R. 7174, was introduced in September 2008 by Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Vito Fossella (R-NY) and Peter King (R-NY). The bill sharpened the scope of a previous bill, H.R. 6594, presented in July 2008.

The new 9/11 Health Bill would have:

• Provide ongoing medical care to at least 55,000 World Trade Center responders and at least 17,500 community members for 9/11 health conditions,

• Reopen the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund for 30 years to ensure that those with economic losses because of their WTC-related illnesses are compensated in a fair and timely manner,

• Provide liability protections for the City of New York and the World Trade Center contractors, who were called in to help in the nation’s time of need,

• Require a matching contribution by New York City of 10 percent for the health program, a contribution of approximately $50 million/year. Workers’ compensation payments made by the City for 9/11 conditions would be credited against this amount. 

After the bill was shelved, the New York lawmakers vowed to reintroduce another bipartisan bill next year. Congressman King said in an e-mail statement Monday: “I remain committed to ensuring that we fulfill our responsibilities to those who acted so heroically on 9/11. I will continue to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure that this legislation is passed in the 111th Congress.”

Bloomberg had objected to a provision in the bill that would have required the city to pay 10 percent – $500 million – of the cost.

“It is very insulting when you have a billionaire mayor to the city of New York not provide for the men and women who helped the city. Now we find ourselves on our knees begging for health support which should be a priority for those who are sick,” said Alex Sanchez, who spent six months cleaning the air-conditioning systems in the buildings surrounding ground zero.

He was earning $9,000 a week doing this job, but was forced to retire a year later when he began to suffer from severe respiratory ailments. He was 35 years old. Today, he cannot climb up stairways because of the pain in his legs that doctors diagnosed as musculo-skeletal syndrome.

Sanchez, who supports Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now sees Obama as her closest equivalent who could make the first step toward universal health care. 

“We must support Barack now. There is no other way,” he said. “We cannot afford four, eight more years of failed policies. If Obama becomes the president we have an ally in the White House.”

He carries a picture of his 7-year-old son, Jack Anthony, born in 2001. “My son is going to come to the voting booths with me on November 4 because I want him to truly understand that we have been part of history when we needed true leadership,” Sanchez said.

But to 9/11 responder and retired NYPD officer, Glen Klein said strong leadership lies with the McCain campaign.

Klein was a member of the Emergency Service Unit and was on duty when the World Trade Center was attacked. He spent over 700 hours at ground zero searching for 16 fellow officers trapped in the buildings. The 50-year-old put a lot of value on McCain’s military experience.

“I think he has a little more to his portfolio than Obama does as far as being a true American hero,” he said.

When Klein learned that his 16 fellow officers died in the towers, he admitted that the experience left him with a strong prejudice against Muslims, and felt that McCain’s policies on terrorism would protect Americans from further attacks.

“Muslims attacked us,” he said. “I know not all Muslims are bad, but it’s hard for me to forgive the people who did this to us.”

Klein voted for President George W. Bush twice and considers himself a life long Republican, but recently switched to become an Independent so he “could go both ways.”

He became disenchanted with the Bush administration in recent years with the government’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, the “war on terror”, and the recent Wall Street crisis.

Feal agreed.

“Change starts at the bottom and works its way up. It starts with the people,” he said. “We’re going to force Washington to change itself and live by the words of oversight.”

Baba Diallo, imam at the Bronx Futa Islamic Center, stands with worshippers on About 50 worshippers protested the sale of the property housing their mosque. Credit: Suzanne Ma

By: Suzanne Ma

Frigid winds blew as hail pelted down on a crowd of about 50 people gathered on the steps of the Bronx Supreme Court Wednesday to protest the sale of a Bronx property housing their mosque.

“I notice that the weather is getting worse but we don’t care because we’re here for a righteous cause,” said William Martin, a lawyer representing the worshippers of the Futa Islamic Center. “We think that justice need be done and there’s no reason why justice can’t be done.”

The worshippers were shivering in puffy jackets and snug winter hats, but they stood outside for nearly an hour as community leaders and the mosque’s imam took turns speaking about the real estate mess they’ve been trying to make sense of since March.

“We have no place to go,” Imam Baba Diallo said. “For over 10 years we’re trying to put money together to get this one building so we can worship together. And now they want to take it away from us.”

The Futa Islamic Center, located at 3400 Third Ave. in the Bronx, has been sold to real estate firm BX Third Avenue Associates. Members of the mosque took the firm to court in September and lost. Justice Howard Silver ruled that the sale of the land was fair. But worshippers, mostly immigrants from the West African country of Guinea, charge that the ruling was culturally insensitive and judicially incompetent. BX Third Avenue Associates could not be reached for comment.

The two-storey building on the corner of Third Ave. and E 166 St. was purchased in 2002 for $345,000 by the Futa Islamic Center, then known as Masjid (meaning mosque) Al Faysal, and listed in tax return records and credit line mortgage certificates as a non-profit religious organization.

Diallo said the community raised $1 million for renovations and the mosque officially opened for worship in 2006. But in March of this year, Diallo said he was blind-sided when a member of the mosque came across an ad in a local newspaper auctioning off the property.

The Bank of New York – the entity holding the mortgage – put the land up for sale because the mosque had failed to pay city property tax. The bank had also mistaken “Masjid Al Faysal” for a person. Unable to track “Masjid Al Faysal” down, the mortgage was foreclosed.

Diallo said a quick look at the mosque’s public records would have enabled the bank to contact him directly. And, while he knew religious organizations were exempt from paying federal taxes, he said he wasn’t aware he owed tax dollars to the city. When he saw the ad in the paper, Diallo said he immediately paid $7,500 in taxes for the 2007 fiscal year. What he didn’t know was that he owed nearly $20,000 more for the years since the property was purchased. The sale went ahead. BX Third Avenue Associates purchased the building for $500,000, Diallo said.

Mamadou Sadio Bah, a 40-year-old real estate broker from Queens, was at the rally yesterday. He travels to the Bronx mosque every Friday with his wife and four children.

“They work really hard, the entire Guinea community with $1, $10, $100, $500 a month to get this building,” he said.

Before the mosque opened in 2006, Bah said the community had nowhere to hold important religious ceremonies, like a funeral.

When “someone passes away in the community we have to go sit down in a two-bedroom apartment,” he said.

“The bottom line is we need help from anybody, whether you are Christian, you are Jew, you are Buddha, whatever. We need your help to get this property back. We can’t afford to lose it.”

Mu Zijian, 20, and Yang Xi, 20, point to their hometowns of Beichuan and Wenchuan on a map of the province of Sichuan, China. These two counties were hardest hit by the devastating earthquake on May 12, 2008 that has left nearly 70,000 dead.

By Suzanne Ma

Mu Zijian was preparing for his Chinese culture class at Sichuan University in western China when his desk began to shake, the floor beneath his feet rumbled, and the walls of his fifth-floor dormitory room swayed from side to side.

At first he thought it was an airplane taking off at nearby Chengdu airport. Or, maybe an airplane had crashed. Zijian stumbled into the hallway, where students, some in underwear and no shoes, were rushing down the stairwells.

“Everyone cried out, ‘It’s an earthquake! Just run, just run!’”

So he ran. At first, the adrenaline rush was exciting.

“But when I got to the fourth and third floor and saw the perspiration on people’s faces, it was awful,” he remembers. “I realized it was not exciting. Maybe something bad has happened.”

Something terrible did happen on that May 12 afternoon: A 7.9-magnitude earthquake shook mountainous Sichuan Province. The worst-hit areas were Wenchuan County and Zijian’s hometown in Beichuan County, but tremors were felt as far away as Beijing and Shanghai.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed. More than 18,000 are missing and almost 5 million people are homeless.

Zijian made it out safely and immediately called his parents. But, like hundreds of others, he could not reach home. Zijian said he must have tried to call 100 times.

“I just prayed and prayed that my parents were still alive. The whole night I could not sleep,” he says. He listened to radio news reports, but when the radio’s battery died in the middle of the night, “I just burst into tears.”

Hours later, news reached America, coming as a literal wake-up call for Kailin Zhu via her clock radio. Zhu, a Manhattan investment real estate broker, was devastated and felt something needed to be done. So, with her friends, investment real estate attorney Yao Fu Bailey and New York City employee John Seminerio, she launched into fund-raising mode.

Struggling with finding an appropriate channel to fund the earthquake victims, they first considered charities on the ground in China. But donations had to be routed through the Chinese counsel in New York, and many people were not happy with sending money to the Chinese government, Zhu explains. So they decided to give to an American nonprofit group instead.

Partnering with the Chinese-American Planning Council, Inc., their Sept. 18 benefit dinner in Queens is one way of funding the inaugural State University of New York (SUNY) China 150 program. The program’s goal: relocate 53 men and 97 women by plucking them from the quake’s epicenter and transporting them to 22 colleges around the state.

“I think everybody was terrifically affected by the scale of the earthquake,” says Nicholas Rostow, university counsel and vice chancellor for SUNY legal affairs. “One of the things we could help with was to offer the opportunity to help students to continue their education and to develop, in spite of a terrible tragedy.”

The program came together quickly, due to speedy cooperation between SUNY, the U.S. Department of State, China Scholarship Council (an international program providing U.S. educational funding to Chinese students) and the highest levels of the Chinese government: Premier Wen Jiabao personally endorsed the initiative.

Out of 2,000 applicants, 150 students were selected, based on English proficiency, leadership skills, ability to adapt to a foreign environment and commitment to volunteerism. The program also took into account students from the Zang (Tibetan) and Qiang ethnic minority groups who live in the epicenter region. The students, mostly sophomores and juniors, received passports, visas and plane tickets (paid for by the Chinese government), and by mid-August were on SUNY campuses.

The program will cost SUNY $3.7 million for tuition, dormitory fees, food and spending money. Private donations are needed to support the initiative.

When Zhu heard about the program, she knew where donations should go. She is hoping that awareness of the SUNY China 150 program will ignite the generosity of New Yorkers.

“Education is valued in Chinese civilization beyond all else,” she points out. “What better way than to devote the money to one cause-the students, the future leaders of Sichuan?”

The students have pledged to help rebuild Sichuan’s local economy and infrastructure, after completing the program in May/June of ’09.

Four weeks ago, Zijian and classmate Yang Xi, a 20-year-old Sichuan University finance student, arrived at Farmingdale State University, as SUNY China 150 participants; 17 other Chinese students are part of the program at Farmingdale. Zijian’s and Xi’s families survived, but in Xi’s hometown, Wenchuan, nearly 20,000 people-one-fifth of the population-died. His home was destroyed and his parents, farmers in the countryside, will be living in a tent for years before they have enough money to rebuild their house.

“We’ve come here both for us and for our country,” Yang says, “because we know this earthquake didn’t and could not knock us down.”

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