In 1924, when his mother was pregnant with him, Raymond Hong's father left China and came to Utah. He found work in a cafe.
When Raymond Hong was 11 years old, he too left their village in the Canton province. He emigrated to Idaho with a family of distant cousins and lived with Charlie Chow and the Chow sons. He went to school and learned English.How was it in school? He says, "You don't know any English. People in those days were not as good as now. They say things like, `Chin Chin Chinaman.' You know how kids are. These days it's a little different."
Several years later, when his father was about to open his own restaurant, Hong came to live with him in Salt Lake City, in a little hotel on Plum Alley. They were together for the first time, father and son. Hong went to school, and he worked hard. His father's restaurant was the Oriental Cafe on 400 South between State and Main.
He says, "In the summers I worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I got $5 a month. That's what he paid me. A regular guy got $40 or $50 a month."
Hong shakes his head about how underpaid he was. He smiles. He got by all right. You could get a haircut for a quarter in those days, he says. Most movies cost a dime. But remember the Empire on State Street? That was a nickel movie house.
In the midst of World War II, Hong turned 18 and was drafted into the infantry, headed for the Pacific. Was he scared? He doesn't remember being scared. But what difference would it have made? "You take it like it is," he says.
He was wounded the first time in training. He was hospitalized. His leg recovered in time for him to join his company on Okinawa. Two hundred of them went to the front. In the first week, 40 died. They were at the front for three weeks. By then there were only 50 of them left - everyone else was dead or wounded.
Then they were sent to the other side of the island, where there was also fighting, only not as heavy. That's where Hong lost part of his right hand to a land mine.
Sitting in the living room, leafing through some pictures of his Army days, Hong comes across one of himself, newly wounded, just before he was shipped out to Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City. In spite of the bandages, he is grinning. The war is ending and he is still alive and going home.
As soon as the war was over he started trying to find a way to China. His mother had arranged a marriage for him, and he could hardly wait to meet Heng. World transportation was in disarray. But the government did what it could for veterans, including changing the laws to make it easier to marry and bring a foreign-born wife to the United States.
Heng was 19 years old when she married a man she had just met and came to a new country where people spoke a language she didn't understand. If you tell her she was brave, she smiles and shrugs.
"She happened to be the best wife in the world," says Hong. He knows arranged marriages are old-fashioned, but they had their advantages, he says. "Nowdays I know a lot of children who can't find a wife or husband. For some people, it's kind of tough."
Those were different times. People married forever. His mother finally was allowed to immigrate in 1951, to join her husband after 27 years. Did they still know each other? Did they get along? "Oh sure," says Hong. "It's not like now."
Heng and Raymond Hong had nine children. Two grew up to be nurses. One is an accountant. Others own businesses.
Other Chinese-Americans who grew up with the Hong children in Salt Lake City remember the New Year's parties at Raymond Hong's Ding Ho Cafe. They remember him as a leader in the community, helping to start a Chinese language school, bringing in Chinese opera and Chinese movies.
No, no, he says. About the only thing he did, really, was get contributions and buy plots for a Cantonese section in the Salt Lake Cemetery. Nothing extraordinary about his life, he insists.
His daughter Lily, who is an author and illustrator of children's books, says she remembers new immigrants coming to him all the time. He gave them jobs in his cafe and helped them with their paperwork.
This is just what you do in life, as Raymond Hong sees it. You work hard and help others from your province, you pass on your values to your children and you don't have to give them a lot of lectures about how important their heritage is. He says, "I don't have to tell them very much. They know."