Hiram Leong Fong - Army Air Force
Hiram Leong Fong (Chinese: 鄺友良 Yau Leong Fong October 15, 1906 – August 18, 2004), was an American businessman and politician from Hawaii. The son of illiterate Cantonese immigrants, he overcame poverty to become the first Asian-American United States Senator, serving from 1959 to 1977. In 1964, Fong became the first Asian-American to run for his party's nomination for President of the United States. To date, he is the only Republican to ever hold a Senate seat from Hawaii and was the only Asian-American to seek the presidential nomination of the Republican Party until Bobby Jindal in the 2016 primaries.
Hiram Fong was born in the Honolulu neighborhood of Kalihi on the island of Oahu as the seventh of 12 children of father Fong Sau Howe and mother Fong Lum Shee. He was the son of Cantonese immigrants and attended local public schools and graduated from McKinley High School in 1924.
In 1930, Fong obtained a degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and in 1935 obtained a law degree from Harvard University. He returned to Honolulu and worked in the Office of the Prosecuting Attorney of Honolulu. In 1938, Fong went into private legal practice and founded the firm of Fong, Miho, Choy and Robinson. During World War II he served as a major in the United States Army Air Forces as a Judge Advocate, later retiring as a colonel from the United States Air Force Reserve.
Ernest K.W. Choy - Army Air Force
Ernest K.W. Choy, born in 1926 in Hawaii, was ninth of 12 children. His mother was second of 11 children of full Chinese descent. His father immigrated from Kwangtung, China in early 1900’s. They farmed taro and rice.
Ernest, 15, experienced the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941, many planes flew overhead, as they often did during the Kaneohe Marine Corp drills, but this time was different. When they looked up, they recognized red circles on the planes. He and his brothers rode their bikes to the top of a hill and saw smoke where bombs dropped on Kaneohe Marine base. Later, they learned their Uncle who worked at Pearl Harbor as a civilian, had called in sick on that infamous day to go fishing in Kaneohe Bay… a very lucky guy. After this experience, Ernest felt duty-bound to join the army in 1945. He was stationed in the Philippines where he was an airline mechanic until he was honorably discharged in 1947.
Ernest dedicated 34 years in the US. Army Corp of Engineers working as an Electrical Engineer in Tennessee, Honolulu and Pittsburgh. Most of those years, he worked on the locks and dams in the Tri- state area. He enjoyed spending time with his seven children, 17 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren with bi-annual visits back home to Kaneohe. He retired in 1982. He passed away in 2014 surrounded by Ohana with much Aloha.