REVIEW 'Victory in Shanghai' chronicles unsung epic of Korean American family

An image of the Kim family published in "Victory in Shanghai: A Korean American Family’s Journey to the CIA and the Army Special Forces" by Robert S. Kim / Courtesy of Potomac Books/Kim Family Collection

No more than a month after Japan’s defeat in World War II, a team of 10 men representing every U.S. intelligence organization in China arrived in Japanese-occupied Shanghai to evacuate "the last living remnants of colonialism…and return the city to an independent and free China.

The cover of "Victory in Shanghai: A Korean American Family’s Journey to the CIA and the Army Special Forces" by Robert S. Kim shows, from left to right front row, Peter, Betty and James, and, back row left to right, David, Richard and Arthur reunited in Shanghai after the war, October 1945. Courtesy of Potomac Books

"One man stood out from the others for an obvious reason: he was the only Asian among them. His name was Peter Kim," reads a newly published book, "Victory in Shanghai: A Korean American Family’s Journey to the CIA and the Army Special Forces."

"No one could have imagined then that eventually Peter Kim’s name would be acclaimed in the halls of the U.S. Congress," the passage continues, "and that his actions in Shanghai in August 1945 would help win his entire family’s admission to the United States [and] that the Kims would become a founding family of modern U.S. intelligence and special operations…”

Thus begins one of the most fascinating life stories in Korean American history that has come to my attention, a story recounted in "Victory in Shanghai," for which author Robert S. Kim (no relation to the family he describes) mined the personal papers, published and unpublished, of members of the Kim family as well as government and military archives and accounts by residents of Shanghai’s expatriate community during the Japanese occupation.

How was it possible for Peter Kim to achieve so much when almost all of his formative years were spent outside the U.S.?

Pvt. Peter Kim holds an M1 carbine during an overland journey by jeep from Chongqing to Kunming, December 1944. Courtesy of Potomac Books/George C. Marshall Foundation

Consider these details from those years: Born in Pyongyang in 1912 to Korean Christian parents, he moved with his parents and younger brother to Shanghai in 1917. The family obtained documents declaring them to be Chinese, and moved with his parents and two younger brothers to Los Angeles in 1924. The family returned to Korea in 1926 because of the Asian Exclusion Act, part of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, which said they could remain no longer in the U.S. even though two of the children had been born there and thus were U.S. citizens. He returned with his family to Shanghai in 1928, where his father had become the director of an American organization disseminating knowledge of modern medicine throughout China. He grew up linguistically and culturally American among the expatriate community in Shanghai, and became family head at age 24 when his father died prematurely in the U.S.

Multiply these details and the remainder of Peter’s life story by a factor of seven, representing his parents and five siblings (a seventh child was struck and killed at the age of 4 by a motor vehicle in Los Angeles), and you have a family history that rivals any of the sagas famous among Korean and Korean American fictional narratives past and present.

Perhaps ironically, the several uprootings provided Peter and his brothers James, Richard and Arthur with proficiency in Korean, English and French, as well as the cross-cultural experience that proved so valuable to the U.S. military intelligence community during World War II, the 1950-53 Korean War and the Cold War. Peter ultimately attained the rank of major and served as second-in-command of U.S. Forces in Korea after the Korean War. James was assigned to the CIA during the Korean War and spent a quarter-century with that organization, earning the Intelligence Medal of Merit, one of the CIA’s most distinguished honors. He is interred in Arlington National Cemetery. Richard, like Peter a member of the U.S. Army in Shanghai, became a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Special Forces shortly after its creation in 1952. Arthur became a CIA operations officer and was involved in harrowing missions in Vietnam and Laos during the Vietnam War.

PFC Peter Kim (middle row right) and Pvt. Richard Kim (middle row second from left) pose with U.S. Army Services of Supply staff in Kunming, January 1945. Courtesy of Potomac Books/George C. Marshall Foundation

Prominent in the evolution of the Kim brothers was the kindness and constant support of others. Peter’s service with the Swiss Consulate in Shanghai enabled him to arrange for the evacuation of 639 American citizens from Shanghai in 1942, after Japan’s December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into World War II. Marshall Carter, a U.S. Army colonel in Shanghai when Peter joined that unit who later served as deputy director of the CIA and director of the National Security Agency, recognized the discriminatory policies of the U.S. immigration structure that had prevented the Kim family from obtaining American citizenship. Carter would personally spearhead the efforts within the U.S. military and well as in Congress that finally enabled the Kims to attain this long-deserved status. Especially riveting is the author’s recounting of this struggle, documented in congressional records.

Not to be overlooked in the story of the Kim family is the emotional toll resulting from decades of separation and uncertainty. Family patriarch Kim Chang Sei was the first doctor of public health in Korea, and his experiences in Shanghai and then the U.S. proved crucial to the formation of his six surviving children’s American identities. But just as he seemed to have arranged for the family to join him in America in 1934, he died by suicide, perhaps disappointed that those arrangements ultimately proved fruitless. Peter, who at age 65 lost his wife, and then Carter — his closest friend — 16 years later, was not in regular contact with his siblings scattered in distant parts of the country and likewise took his own life at age 82.

Family matriarch Lee Chung Sil, for her part, anchored the family during her husband’s absence from them. Especially valuable were her years with her children in Los Angeles in the early 1920s, where they were initially welcomed by her sister and husband Ahn Chang-ho, a Korean independence activist and pioneer among the early Korean American community. The photo of her progeny that graces the cover of "Victory in Shanghai" is arresting.

A wedding photo of Kim Chang Sei, left, and Lee Chung Sil / Courtesy of Potomac Books/Kim Family Collection

As one with an abiding interest in the literature of the Korean diaspora, and especially the memoirs and autobiographical fiction that document the lives of those who have made the transition to a new linguistic and cultural environment, often during a formative period of their lives, I was intrigued by the arrival of "Victory in Shanghai" on my doorstep. Little did I imagine, though, that the story of the Kim family would become so consuming. At a time when the U.S. immigration establishment seems to be reverting to the exclusionary policies of the past, "Victory in Shanghai" reminds us of the mostly anonymous millions who made that country great in the first place.

Bruce Fulton is the co-translator, with Ju-Chan Fulton, of numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction, most recently the novels "One Left" by Kim Soom (2020) and "Togani" by Gong Ji-young (2023), and editor of "The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories" (2023), the first volume of modern Korean literature among Penguin’s 3,500-plus World Classics.