Goodbye to My Uncle --at his cemetery in San Francisco

Goodbye to My Uncle

--at his cemetery in San Francisco

You have been a romanticist, never getting old even in the last moment of your life.

You have overcome a language barrier, racial and ethnic discrimination in Japan and the USA as a young boy and a mature adult.

You have been courageous in overcoming all the difficulties of life set in a poverty-stricken farm village in Korea and post-War Japan, and an affluent society in San Francisco.

In the midst of a difficult life, you always saw the beauty of life, using oil and Oriental watercolor to draw your childhood farm house, and later to draw the Bay area landscape or photographing beautiful moments.

You failed to treat your diabetes and instead drank hard liquor over the years. You travelled to Korea, Japan and the world with a never fading youth and romanticism. You had a young heart throughout your life. “How many speeding tickets did you receive, my uncle?” “Many,” you answered.

You were damn proud of the Choi family from North Choongchung Province in Korea.

In May 1968, you forced me to get off the cruise ship, American President, anchored in Yokohama, Japan which was heading to San Francisco via Honolulu and come to your house in Chiba, Japan by a taxicab. Then, you bought me a Northwest Airline ticket from Tokyo to Seattle. “You are the first Choi studying in the United States, I cannot let you sail to San Francisco. You must take a flight.”

That was the way I landed in Seattle, the USA. You then followed me. You finally established Edoya, the jewelry store that took up one entire block of downtown San Francisco. You built a fortune and took me to Reno, Nevada one weekend to find and enjoy another world of the USA. You were brave to lose big and win big in Reno. That was you.

Your wife, my aunt, answered my question, “Why did you marry my uncle?” Her answer was simple, “He is the manliest man I have ever met.”

My wife whispered to me when you entered my Virginia home for the first time,” Your uncle looks like a prominent university president.” You smiled at my wife.

You have been ambitious and hopeful. You have been a tearful man with compassion and loving care.

I will miss you forever.

San Francisco has been you, and will be so forever,

As Chiba, Japan has been you and will be so forever to me.

God bless you.

You have been my one and only uncle in the USA and will be so forever.

My uncle, Choi Hyoo Hyoung or Edward Kawana