Kurt Chew-Een Lee, 1926–2014

When Lt. Kurt Chew-Een Lee was named commander of a machine-gun platoon at the outset of the Korean War, some of his men had never before seen a person—let alone an officer—of Chinese origin. The Marines’ first nonwhite officer ever, he was called “Chinese Laundry” and worse until his unit came under its first attack by a much larger Chinese force in November 1950. To pinpoint the enemy, Lee took off alone, firing sporadically and drawing fire. His shout of “Don’t shoot, I’m Chinese!” in Mandarin confused the enemy, allowing his Marines to launch a counterattack. “I never expected to survive the war,” Lee, who was wounded in the episode, later said. “So I was adamant that my death be honorable, be spectacular.”

Lee was born in San Francisco to an immigrant family that soon moved to Sacramento, said the Los Angeles Times. He started community college there but enlisted in the U.S. Marines at age 18. “I wanted to dispel the notion about the Chinese being meek, bland, and obsequious,” he said. But instead of the combat he sought, he was given duty as a language instructor in San Diego. “Then came the war in Korea, and Lee got his chance to fight.”

A month after that first battle, Lee was assigned to relieve a Marine division surrounded by overwhelming enemy forces in the bloody Battle of Chosin Reservoir. “Guided only by a compass in pitch-black darkness, he led 500 men through a nighttime blizzard over mountainous terrain at 20 degrees below zero,” said The Sacramento Bee. Still wearing a cast for his earlier wound, he was shot again as “the ferocity of the Marine attack broke the resistance of enemy troops,” who fled.

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Days later Lee sustained wounds from machine-gun fire that ended his Korean exploits, for which he received the Navy Cross and the Silver Star. He later trained Marine officers and was promoted to major before serving as a combat intelligence officer in Vietnam. The honorary grand marshal of this year’s Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco, he “was really proud to be a Marine,” said his niece. “He was a Marine to the very end.”