Born American, brought up Chinese & coming bacxk to the US scaping from war

Extraordinary Reunion NYC 1938, originally uploaded by stevechasmar.

New York Times, Jan 20, 1938
American, 19, Here, Speaks Only Chinese
Reared in Oriental Village, He Returns to Homeland to Work for Foster Race

Fung Kwok Keung, who is also Joseph Rinehart, a 19-year-old American-born Oriental, looked on his native New York yesterday after many years' absence and found it good, but very, very bewildering.

Fung is a Rockaway foundling who was adopted in infancy by a benevolent Chinese restaurant proprietor here. He has passed virtually his entire life in a little village in South China called Nam Hoi, where he was brought up like any one of a hundred thousand Chinese boys.

He does not know a word of English. He not only speaks Chinese
exclusively, but he even walks like a Chinese. Otherwise he looks exactly like any healthy American youth. He came back to his native city yesterday to begin a new life which he intends to dedicate to the stricken country where he lived his early life. He knows what a bomb does when it hits a Chinese village. He talked about it yesterday, very politely, through a Chinese interpreter, in a little Chinese importing shop at 18 Doyers Street, in Chinatown.

"Say," he instructed the interpreter, "that when I saw those bombs falling, they were my people who were being killed, even though I am not one of them."

Fung, the white youth, was adopted by Fung Fong after the boy's mother left him as an infant in the elder Fung's restaurant. Later, she sought his return, but the elderly Chinese, who had grown to love the boy, fought the case in the courts and won permanent custody. He took him to China and the boy remained there with Fung's family. He grew to love them, and he went to mission school. When the Japanese came Fung sent for the boy.

The youth seemed frightened yesterday as he looked on the wonders of New York.

"First he must study, study, study," said the foster-father to a score of interviewers. "Then maybe he will help China."