Wednesday, December 2, 1998

When he gave up a Pomona cauliflower farm and moved back to his native China for family reasons in 1925, Gin Gee Tong figured he would return to Southern California one day.
      But U.S. restrictions against Chinese immigration blocked an escape from war and revolution. Tortured by the new Communist regime, he died a broken man in 1952, buried at first without even a coffin in an unmarked grave near Guangzhou.
      Tong's recently cremated remains and those of five other relatives were delivered from China in marble urns by air cargo and truck to a son's hillside home in the El Sereno section of Los Angeles. The urns were buried next to one another at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, an easy drive from the beloved Pomona farmland, which is now a suburban tract.
      Tong's son, Yook Chew, takes pride in how his family fared in Los Angeles. He and his late wife juggled businesses in the garment and produce markets to support eight children, who now include a lawyer, a teacher, a dentist, a sheriff's deputy. Daughters videotaped Tong as he recently recounted his family's sufferings in China and his efforts to reunite the survivors in America.