Tuesday, January 29, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Rooms 225/229, 2nd Floor
The Adventures of Eddie Fung - Slide Show & Talk, Edited by his wife Judy Yung
"The Adventures of Eddie Fung" tells the story of how a Chinatown kid reinvented himself as a Texas cowboy before going overseas with the U.S. Army. On the way to the Philippines, his battalion is captured by the Japanese in Java and sent to Burma to undertake the impossible task of building a railroad through 262 miles of tropical jungle - a project made famous by the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. Working under brutal slave labor conditions, the men completed the railroad in fourteen months at the cost of 12,500 POW and 70,000 Asian civilian lives. Eddie lived to tell how his background helped him to survive captivity as a Japanese POW and how his experiences as the sole Chinese-American member of the most decorated Texan unit of any war all shaped his later life. Ruthanne Lum McCunn, author of God of Luck, describes this book as "a vibrant, compelling portrait of what it means to be a Chinese American, a survivor, a mensch." Hosted by General Collections. Co-sponsored by Friends of the King Library. Book signing follows the program. For more information, call (408) 808-2397.
