Tom Young Chan was born in the village of Yakou in
Zhongshan,
Guangdong Province,
China. He was the second of seven children. His
surname is actually "Tom", but his Anglicized name failed to recognize that
Chinese give their surnames first. A journalist for the Chicago Daily News described him as a "handsome, smiling Chinese with leaping eyebrows" who spoke "halting English."[1]
Political activities
1898: he immigrated to
Honolulu, Hawaii, at the age of 17 and worked as a typesetter for the Lung Chi Pao, a weekly newspaper that reported for
Sun Yat-sen. He became a
United States citizen as a result of the annexation of
Hawaii on July 6, 1898. The Lung Chi Pao reorganized into the Minsheng Daily in 1906, and later into the Hawaiian Chinese News.[2] In 1907, he helped raise funds to establish the Tzu Yu Hsin Pao (Freedom News).
1908: Chan moved to the mainland, traveling first to
New York City, where he learned how to make noodles, and then to
Chicago. He believed that industry and commerce were essential to financing the revolutionary cause.
1909: he joined the
Tongmenghui (Revolutionary Alliance), which
Dr. Sun established during his visit to
Chicago that December.
1911: he founded the Chinese Noodle Company, Chinese Trading Company, and Min Sun Company. During this year, he gave financial support to
Dr. Sun's revolutionary movement, which experienced a setback with the Canton uprising in April. After the
Wuchang Uprising on October 10, he helped raise money so that Dr. Sun could return to
China from the United States through Europe.
1926: he represented the main party branch in
San Francisco, California at the Second National Congress of the
Kuomintang in
Guangzhou (January 4–19). At that time, he saw his father for the first time in almost 30 years.
1928: he was appointed director of the main party branch by the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee. On October 21, he was elected inspection officer at the second congress of the main party branch, which adopted his proposal to establish a Chinese newspaper in
Chicago.
1929: he revisited China as a delegate to the Third National Congress of the Kuomintang in Nanking (March 18–27).
1930: he became general manager of the San Min Morning Paper, which was first published on March 18. For many years, this was the only Chinese newspaper in the Midwest, with circulation in the southern U.S., central Canada, and Mexico.
1934: he served as vice chairman of the China Relief Association in Chicago, one of the earliest such organizations in the U.S.
1941: Chan raised $1 million for an orphanage founded by
Madame Chiang, the wife of
Chiang Kai-shek that cared for 30,000 children.[4] At that time, he was the only one in
Chinatown to have seen her before, and he dined with the General and his wife five times during a visit to
Chongqing.
1942: he was appointed to China's People's Political council, the closest thing to a parliament in China's political structure, along with seven other overseas Chinese.[5] He went to China to attend the Second People's Political Council in November and the Ninth Session of the Kuomintang National Congress. That year, he took an eight-month tour of the U.S. and Canada to give encouragement to
overseas Chinese by order of the Party.
1943: he served on the five-man presidium of the All-America Chinese Congress of Resistance and Relief Organization in New York (September 5–11).
Death
Chan died on September 3, 1944, at the age of 62, 22 days before his 63rd birthday. Thousands turned out for a man who had helped to raise more than $4 million during the last war bond drive for his adopted country.[6] As prominent as he was, however, he was not allowed to be buried next to his late wife, Mary Goo, in Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois, for what some believe to be racist reasons.[7] He is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery,
Stickney, Illinois.[8]