Minnesota's Immigrants | Browse Items

Interview with Margaret Woo Chinn

Chinn, Margaret Woo

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Margaret Woo Chinn's father and some of his brothers (including Woo Yee Sing, whose son Howard Woo was also interviewed for this oral history project) came to the United States in the late 1870s and 1880s and worked in laundries and on railroads. Chinn…

Interview with Qi-hui Zhai

Zhai, Qi-hui

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Qi-hui Zhai was born in Shanghai, China, on December 16, 1927. Her father was a biology professor at Central University in Nanjing and traveled between research institutions in Nanjing, Beijing, and Shanghai during most of her childhood. In 1945 Zhai…

Interview with Francis J. Tsai

Tsai, Francis J.

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Francis (Frank) Tsai was born in 1948 in South Bend, Indiana. His father, Hong-ji Tsai, had graduated from Purdue University in engineering in about 1937 and had stayed on to work for the Studebaker Corporation. During World War II the senior Tsai joined…

Interview with Wing Young Huie

Huie, wing Young

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Wing Young Huie was born May 3, 1955, in Duluth, Minnesota. He is the youngest son of Duluth restaurateur Joe Huie, who emigrated from China to Duluth in 1909 at age 17 and operated the widely known Joe Huie Cafe from 1951 to 1973. Because of restrictive…

Interview with Joe Huie

Huie, Joe

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Joe Huie was born in about 1892 in a rural village in the Taishan District of Guangdong Province in southern China. He immigrated to the United States at age 17, arriving in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1909. Through a friend from his village who had arrived…

Interview with Harold Kee

Kee, Harold

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Harold Kee was born April 6, 1899, in a rural village in the Taishan District of Guangdong Province, China. He arrived in St. Paul in 1911 to join his father, a partner in Quong, Gin, Lung & Co., importers of Chinese silks, porcelains, and other goods.…

Interview with Sinmin and Betty Wu

Wu, Sinmin

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Sinmin Wu was born June 1, 1931, in the city of Yixing in Jiangsu Province, China. Betty Wu (Yun Aur) was born December 15, 1938, in the city of Tianjin, in Hebei Province. Both left China for Taiwan during the Communist Revolution in the 1940s. They were…

Interview with Joo Ho Sung

Sung, Dr. Joo Ho

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Joo Ho Sung was born in 1927 in Taejon, Ch'ungchong Province, Korea. He was educated at Yonsei University and Medical College and arrived in the United States in July of 1954 to take residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Neward, New Jersey. After…

Interview with Isabel Suzanne J. Wong

Wong, Isabel Suzanne Joe

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Isabel Suzanne Joe was born in 1950 in north Minneapolis. Her father was born in China and came to the United States as a young man, returned to China to get married, and served in the U.S. military in Europe during World War II. After the war his wife…

Interview with Sung Won Son

Son, Sung Won

Asian Americans -- Minnesota.

Sung Won Son was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1944. He was the fifth in a family of six children. His father was a banker. Son arrived in the United States in 1962 to study at the University of Florida. After his graduation in 1966 he entered a graduate…