California Story Fund
Reclaimed Stories: Oakland Chinatown
Oakland Public Library
Oakland
Project Director: William Wong
Capturing the pre-World War II stories of Chinese Americans in Oakland
In 1936 Alfred Wong played baseball at Oakland Technical High School. He was so good that one summer he was invited to attend a major league baseball camp.
Wong died several years ago, but his widow kept a scrapbook about her husband’s life as a star athlete and was one of the dozen or so storytellers featured in this project about Oakland Chinatown before World War II. The project was an outgrowth of a photo history book project on Chinese Americans in Oakland developed by the Project Director William Wong.
Wong said, “My search for old photographs led me to realize that the stories of those who grew up in the first three decades of the 20 century were important to an understanding of the Chinese community’s survival skills and as a link to generations that have assimilated into mainstream American culture.”
The stories along with personal photographs were archived at the Oakland Public Library.