Asian American Officers: A tribute to Asian American servicemen and women

By: Peter J. Swing, May 25, 2008

Tags: National |

There’s a powerful legacy that surrounds Asian Americans in the U.S. armed forces. Historically, the nonpareil experience was a rite of passage to becoming “American,” and in times of war, uniforms served as badges of loyalty and commitment to the U.S. In many cases, Asian Americans in military service acted as evidence that, when questioned, they too can be patriotic.

Today Asian American servicemen and women continue to be compelled to serve the nation. They should be honored for their important commitment and lauded as heirs of a long legacy of courage that lies deep within Asian American history. Beginning this Memorial Day week, AsianWeek will profile Asian American military servicemen and women, and highlight their contributions.

Sitting in a classroom full of upperclassman at the U.S. Air Force Academy, then-sophomore Seung Paik was asked some questions that would change his life forever. “How many of you know what you’re willing to die for?” his professor of war, ethics and morality asked. Paik, slow to raise his hand in deep consideration of the question, saw his fellow classmates shoot their hands up in the air with strong conviction. The professor continued: “How many of you know what you’re willing to kill for?” Paik, now not alone, saw his classmates struggle with the question.

“It made me think about why I was serving in the military,” Paik said of that day. After that semester, he decided to take a yearlong break granted by the Academy to reaffirm his reasons for serving.

Almost 20 years later, Paik has reached the rank of major and currently serves as commander of the 437th Comptroller Squadron at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina.

Paik was born in Seoul, South Korea, and traveled with his parents and two older sisters to Chicago at the age of 1 in 1972. He grew up in a small, quiet suburb that was predominantly a middle-income, blue-collar white community. Surrounded by a city fascinated with sports, Paik’s athletic interests as a child developed into a strong passion, and in high school, Paik excelled at gymnastics.

“To tell you the truth, it was gymnastics that brought me to the Air Force,” Paik laughingly recalled. His coach contacted the Air Force Academy scouts about Paik’s talent, and later when he was invited to tour the picturesque campus surrounded by snowy mountains in Colorado Springs, Colo., he fell in love with it. “It was almost like a dream,” Paik said.

Attending the Academy on a scholarship, he majored in economics and electrical engineering. Paik graduated in 1993 and was then awarded another scholarship to Pennsylvania State University for a master of sciences program in economics.

Today Maj. Paik oversees the financial operations at the Charleston Air Force Base, which includes housing, acquisition, budget, financial services and payroll. He has experience working in the Pentagon and as a professor in the department of economics at the Air Force Academy.

He admits that he may have joined the military for all the wrong reasons but definitely stayed for all the right ones, especially after his break following his sophomore year. “After that year off, it was clear to me what it means to serve my country — preserving the liberties, freedoms and democracy we oftentimes take for granted,” Paik said.

Comments

Congratulations,
Peter J. Swing:
And I trust a decent “raise” came along with the byline.
Please offer my apologies to your colleagues, Ms. Pang and cohorts, for failing to recognize THEIR contribs herein.
That said, may I, longwindedly?, cherng-hai in the colloquial Cantonese dialect, posit some thoughts relative your piece here today?
Not answer, or answers, rare as they are vis-a-vis the question or questions asked, but musings one hopes may be “related” to the “issue(s).”
This edition of AsianWeek broaches the matter of the “perennial alien” insofar as his/her “patriotism” is questioned.
My aging and ancient response is, well, yes, and no, and even “maybe.”
This evening, I had the privilege of “dining,” as in “fine,
and much better than almost every restaurant or bistro you might name, with exemplary neighbors, who er, ah, “happen” to be “white,” and no doubt “Protestant” and/or “Catholic” as well.
They graciously ignore my lack of credentials herein, and even accept and acknowledge my less-than-creditable “patriotism.”
WHY must “non-white,” or even “black” or “brown” skintoners be short-armed, sorry, girls, as to his “loyalties”?
WHO, indeed, is above or beyond suspicion?
Not I, quoth the sparrow; with my bow and arrow.
The young and the susceptible are easily conned into the black-and-white, life-and-death perceptions of one’s commitment to one’s “homeland.”
On this score, have either Cheney OR Dubya demonstrated much more than lip=service?
I don’t think so.
Among the “guests” this eve, and by the bye, it really snowed in these boonie Sierra precincts, lucky us, was an absolutely adorable, no other word for it, infant of a mere eight months, and already 20 pounds I can scarce lift.
Her name, bless her, is Kailyn, and a fulltime job it will be to raise her in the manner to which she is absolutely entitled.
How many other little ones, like Kailyn, are winning hearts and minds, never mind the parental, all over this fractious and fabulous globe?
For infants like Kailyn abd neighbors like mine, YES, I would “fight,” and it has NOTHING to do with race, or creed, or color, OR “differences,” as in ideological.
And, NO, I wouldn’t even piss, literally, on the likes of Cheney and Bush and Perle and Feith and every single man and woman of that nefarious “neocon” gang of pirates and cutthroats who continue to divide and demean this republic of “equals,” moi aussi, that’s French=fried for “black-Irish” “gypsy” “Chinese” “Jews” like myself, and I speak for no one else.
Saluting “the Flag,” or placing one’s hand over where one’s heart is believed to reside, does NOT begin to equate an authentic “patriot.”
Patriot, paternalistic as it must be, must refer to the Vaterland and not to ther Mutterland, and why should THAT be?
In any event, one Ernest Hemingway, according to one quote in the Dictionary of Quotations, adjures the young that “dying” for one’s “country” is not all it’s cracked up to be. Ask that Tillman scion.
But, “living” for one’s country and compadres of either sex or predilection entails much more guts and moxie and commitment than aiming a rifle at someone else.
So, Peter, if I may address you so familiarly, continue your portraits of APA patriots, and don’t forget that Nisei regiment? of the Italian campaign in WWII.
And in the doing, make certain that you, AND AsianWeek, do NOT make the mistake of joining the thundering herd, in this case, those who would divide and conquer, who would pit you against me, neighbor against neighbor, “American” against “alien,” legal or otherwise, long-time Californ or fresh off the boat.
I, for one, find the “issue” tedious, tendentious, AND just a mite terrifying, as in, after all these years and “all my sons” AND daughters, “you” presume to question MY “loyalties”?
You don’t even deserve a response.
Frank Eng
P.S.: The ever-estimable Samuel Johnson said, and I quote, “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” even IF that quote is an “animadversion” to scoundrels and not to “patriots.” Personally, I find it more than applicable to the likes of ALL

–Frank Eng on May 25, 2008
. . . of ALL neocons, The theo variety as well.
And, nota bene: yesterday’s? MSNBC headlines, or was it Newsweek’s?, includes one that queries: Does racism exist in the Secret Service? Is the Pope Catholic? And, Alex Cockburn’s demurral notwithstanding, HOW could a Secret Service allow RFK to pass, amongst a literal mob, into the bowels of the infamous Ambassador Hotel in ‘68? And, according to his own account, if Sirhan Sirhan indeed inscribed “RFK must die” in his diary, who but the “Manchurian Candidate”?
No, assassinations are POLITICAL, whatever the issue or whomever the executioner.

–Frank Eng on May 25, 2008
When I was a teenager, I’ve wanted to go to Air Force Academy while I lived in Colorado Springs but I didn’t meet the GPA requirement….

–Kid on Jun 11, 2008
Dear Kid;
Some day, probably not all that far off, you may look back on your grade-point averages and be thankful.
Sure, this nation, and most if not ALL nations of this benighted globe, promote from kindergarten the image of the macho patriot.
But that image serves only the generals and the war-makers and profiteers.
Chances are, odds-on, that at least 99.99 hundredths of the percentile are ill-served, often butchered, civilians especially these days, in that flag-waving, boy-bullying parade of users and used, the former the privileged few who never, if they can help it, “serve,” and always, in the end, profit, every which way but moral and spiritual.
WAR, with almost no exception, perhaps even that “good” war to “end all wars” against an “axis” of evil, which, indeed, most of it was.
But the point here is that, had NOT the “allies” of heroics ALLOWED Hitler to rise to power, indeed, empowered him in some instances, said war may have been obviated.
Regardless, as has long and often been noted by others, the fact of the matter is that NOTHING is gained through war and wars. Not for EVERYman. Only for that minuscule, nanominotity of oligarchs who thrive in every nation, every community, and every “society.”
In today;s America, is this indeed a “republic”?
Is this nation run by “civilians”? Or, as obvious,by the Pentagon, the “generals,” today by a small “cell” of power-hungry and power-mad juveniles of hubris unimaginable? Or their oligarch sponsors?
Or are “we” governed and gulled by the likes of our shills and pimps from our “ivied” halls of “higher” learning that produce the boys from the playing fields of our 27 “intelligence” agencies?
Putin is a graduate of the KGB, FSB today? according to “Eastern Promises,” what a flick!, and our Bushies are dually debted to CIA and the war-investing likes of the founding father, Prescott.
I doubt not that Mossad is even MORE managing and manipulative in the IDF and Likud? And hope that the cadres on the Mainland still maintain enough ideology and dialectic to remain in control of THEIR arms and army, no Navy to speak of yet, albeit impressive space shots to date, not to mention cybergeeks.
But, Kid, this haranguing response to your sad plaint is intended to spark some thought on the matter.
Ask the Congress if it would even begin to consider a new “universal” draft in the cause of patriotism? And, today, of course, it would HAVE to be unisex.
The answer already exists, in our pusillanimous “privatization” of war itself by way of our nouveau domestic “legions” of private “contractors” who appear to be both cronies and Enron types.
It is instructive that Dubya, in Italy today?, contritely avows that he will “abide” by today’s Supreme Court decision anent the Gitmo horrors, the while averring he doesn’t “have to like it.”
Amusing, no?
To beat this dead horse, kid, today’s superpatriots, not the authentic ones who are, simply, “patriotic,” are, ax always, merely demagogues, like Lou Dobbs, and, more often than not, hypocrites, like Dubya and Cheney, who never served anyone or anything but themselves.
So, I hope you have matured, evolved?, to the point where you may begin to realize, at least ask questions, about the glories of that campus in Colorado Springs.
In my view, better you investigate other venues in which to contemplate and challenge your dreams.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Send ALL the superpatriots and war lovers to the front lines, wherever they are, especially those near the sites sighted by our “intelligence” as “safe houses” for “enemies,” never mind if there are children about.

–Frank Eng on Jun 12, 2008
i have always had this small urge to join the military. sometimes i think it was because i fell in love with all of the military campaigns of past military conquest like the battle of midway, the inchon landing, iwo jima, and even battles way before that like the battles in the three kingdoms era in china and the warring states era in japan. i have always had doubts about joining as well. i always felt it was the right thing to do, to fight for a cause bigger than myself…but i dont think i could ever bring myself to kill someone unless it was to protect my family and close friends. i dont even know if im patriotic enough. i dont know what else to say about this.

–yukimura on Jul 04, 2008
Ah, Yukimura:
To have such thoughts, and on the “for’da July” as well.
The only thing that bothers me are the “battles” you choose to commemorate.
They, or most of them, are less than impressive, the “Three kinddoms” and the “warring states.”
But, only because we know little or nothing of them.
However, your yearning for a “cause” bigger than yourself is a yearning that is worthy of ANY individual human being.
But, please, do NOT sacrifice yourself on any cause LESS than those you love and who are worthy.
I have, lately, very late at that, become privy to that pristine, and prescient at that, Home Box Office TV series, “Rome.”
I am less than halfway through the factitious rendering of history, but, and I believe I may well be correct, I DO believe that the creators — visionaries, producers, writers, directors, AND eanactors of same — have been blessed by the gods that govern.
Near the end of the first “season’s” reenactments of history by way of fiction, a “slave” mentor to Caesar himself, one “Posca”?, adjures his client procurator standing for “election” in a “prole” precinct, that what Romans desire, indeeed, need, was NOT “clean” elections, but, rather, “jobs,” anything that pays the freight and provides the daily necessities, with or without dignitas.
Does THAT ring a “bell”?
It does, with me, but, then, I’m not only old and decrepit, my bona fides ran out long years ago.
But you and yourx have long years to come, to question and to serve as well.
Question your “betters,” but serve them not.
Serve only your best and innermost intuitions.
Frank Eng
P.S.: And NEVER point a gun at ANYone, least of all those who deserve to “live” and contemplate their own infamies. AND impotencies.

–Frank Eng on Jul 05, 2008

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