Accomplished Chinese American

Winston H. Sun 

Occupation: 	U.S. Army Colonel, Retired. 
Birth Date:	August 2, 1928 
Birth Place:	 Beijing, China 
Came to the U.S.:   1946 
U.S. Citizenship:	   May, 1955 

	When Col. Winston H. Sun was growing up in Beijing" during the 1930s and 1940s, China was still considered "the Sick Man" of Asia internationally.   Internally, an active power struggle was on between the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang") of [Chiang Kai-shek]", and the Communist Party of [Mao Tse-tung]".  However, in several regions individual warlords also operated, some with the help of what might today be called militias.  Winston's later interest in military service was partly a result of his admiration of the mirror opposite image presented by the military in the United States - professional, independent, and largely disinterested in the machinations of governing.   "I respected that," he says, "At that time, by comparison, China was an embarrassment." 
  
	Winston's father had graduated from the University of Wisconsin in the 1920s.  Winston had one younger brother, Fulton, and it was expected that both would come to the United States to receive college education.  He was the first and only one to come.  Fulton never followed because of the Chinese revolution and the upheaval that came after it; they did not see each other again for over forty years.  Winston found himself alone, in Sioux City, Iowa, attending Morningside College.  While there he developed a fondness for what he calls "coffee shop" cooking, not like today's chains, but the food served in small-town restaurants.  He found his middle American hosts gracious, but he also got a hint of their hostility to other races when he brought an African exchange student to his boarding house.  His landlady was polite to the visitor while he was there, but afterward she asked Winston not to bring him there again.  "I didn't understand it at the time, but later I realized, it was because he was black," he says now. 

	After the Communist Party won its fight with the Kuomintang, there was no returning to the mainland for Winston and many other students who, like him, came from wealthy families and faced hardship under the new regime.  He met and married Pei-Lan", his wife of over forty years.  Without looking back, he responded to the military draft and went through the Army's basic training.  "Miserable," he describes the experience; his wife jokes that he wrote all the time about how much he wanted to come home.  He renounced his Chinese citizenship for United States citizenship, taking the oath after being flown to Tokyo.  The officiant asked, "Son, do you want to be a United States citizen?"  "Yes, sir," Winston answered, and began a new life.   

	Winston served as an interpreter at the peace talks in Panmunjon, during the Korean war.  After the cease-fire, he returned to the United States and his young wife and son.  He worked at Yale University as a teaching assistant in Chinese, did research for a Chinese-American dictionary, and even studied to become a certified public accountant.  However, the lure of the military was too strong, Winston was undeterred by the fact that Asians in the military at that time were few and far between.  He liked being in the service; he liked the discipline, the professionalism, and the security of being part of an organization with what he felt was a clear mission.  His anti-communist views provided a unique motivation for his service as a soldier in the Cold War.  Also, a career in the U.S. Army was a far cry from the images of corrupt military leaders he remembered from his youth in China.  Personally, as an officer, he felt he both earned and commanded respect. 
 
	Winston's military career was served against the backdrop of critical events in U.S. foreign policy and military history.  In the early 1960s, when he went back on active duty, he served in Georgia during the Cuban missile crisis.  He was an administrative officer handling a Food-for-Peace program in Okinawa.  Finally he went to Vietnam, where he commanded a prisoner-of-war ship on the Mekong.  Even today, he remembers both the tension and camaraderie of combat there.  "You could sit down at breakfast with someone," he recalls, "just chewing the fat.  And by the end of the day, he could be gone."  He won a Bronze Star for a wound suffered in combat, but he rarely talks of it to his family. 

	It never concerned Winston that he was one of so few Asians in the military.  He considers his background to have been a particularly important asset during his four-year assignment in Taiwan" in the early 1970s, after he left Vietnam.  As the public affairs officer for the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Taiwan, his language skills and his familiarity with the culture helped him to effectively bridge the gap between the governments of the Republic of China and the United States at a time when the Nixon Administration was making its first overtures to mainland China. 

	In 1974, Winston was downsized from a downsizing American military.  His last assignment was symbolic - "depressing," he describes it: to assist in the closing down of Ft. MacArthur in southern California.   His task done there, he again moved on without looking back.   He made a new career in the then-brave new world of computer analysis, working steadily for over 15 years in the field.  All the while, he continued his service in the Reserves, eventually retiring as a "full colonel".  Since the 1980s, he has visited his remaining family in China, including his brother, regularly.  Yet he is unquestionably an American; in the fall of 2000, he timed his return from a trip to Beijing to make sure that he would be able to vote in the U.S. presidential election.  Even now, at age 72, he strides easily between two cultures - without looking back. [Written by his daugther Myra J. Sun]