Liberated
from a Japanese POW camp by American GI’s, Dr. Paul Loong appreciated having
the chance to help them in return as a VA doctor. However, the road from point A to point B was
hardly straight or direct. A respected
family man, Dr. Loong was not inclined to revisit those often painful events,
even with his grown children. When
filmmaker Theresa Loong finally broke through her father’s reticence, she documented
his remembrances in Every Day is aHoliday (trailer
here), which
airs on PBS World tomorrow and will be seen later this month on New York’s
Thirteen.
If
you are wondering how an ethnic Chinese teenager born in British Malaya and
serving under the Union Jack would fare in a Japanese camp, the answer is not
well. Frankly, it is something of a
miracle the young Loong survived. In his
furtive diary, he vowed every day following his release would be a “holiday,”
thereby inspiring the title of his documentary-profile decades later. The collective American media conscience tends
to overlook the Pacific theater, so Dr. Loong’s description of the Imperial
treatment of POW’s will be eye-opening for many. He makes it vividly clear these were more
death camps than POW facilities.
Thankfully
Dr. Loong survived to eventually tell the tale.
Almost immediately upon release, Loong had his eyes set on America, but
his road to citizenship would be a circuitous one, involving stints as a
merchant seaman and service in the Korean War.
Regardless of one’s position on any particular piece of immigration
legislation, Dr. Loong is clearly the sort of immigrant we would to welcome
into the country. He demonstrated an
indisputable commitment to democratic pluralistic freedoms that we would want
all prospective citizens to share.
Indeed,
Dr. Loong clearly comes across as an intelligent, patriotic veteran, with a
good sense of humor, making Every Day quite
an appropriate Memorial Day weekend programming choice. The uncharitable might see it as simply
family history, but Dr. Loong witnessed more than enough of war, from a
perspective not often documented, to lend the film a far wider historical relevance.
