His dirt-poor childhood in the feudal countryside was shaped by the influences of the American missionaries in North Korea. At age 9, his Christian teacher would admonish him: “If you believe in God, God will guide you, and you will overcome all the difficulties.”

“I’ve never forgotten that,” Korean America’s revered historian Bong Youn Choy would reminisce decades later.

The aspiring scholar had met and followed in the footsteps of such early Christian nationalist leaders as Cho Man-Sik (referred to as the Korean Gandhi), the Rev. Hahn Kyung-Chik and Ahn Chang-Ho. “They were my heroes, and I was inspired by their Christian faith and patriotism.”

After Pearl Harbor, he not only taught Japanese language and started Korean-language classes at the University of California, Berkeley, but was also recruited by Uncle Sam to engage in the critical war efforts. He worked for the Office of War Information, instructing the Japanese in special Army training program classes and translating Japanese documents for the FBI.

After liberation, he returned home and played an important role as a key political adviser to the U.S. military government. He established the department of political science at Seoul National University, and as deputy director of the Department of Public Information, he spread democratic ideas among native politicians.

Choy (second from right) during his high school years in Korea.

For his service, he was commended by General William F. Dean, the last American military governor, who said: “You proved yourself to be (a) very capable leader and performed your duties in a superior manner.”

Just before Syngman Rhee came to power, however, Choy left South Korea “profoundly disappointed with the failure of unification of my native land.”

He said, “I could see nothing but the possibility of a tragic civil war. I felt that my services were no longer necessary or useful in Korea.”

After his return to America to resume his studies, he made a fatal move that would haunt his life for 14 years. He alludes to this protracted persecution in his seminal book Koreans in America, published in 1979 by Nelson-Hall Publishers: “I had trouble with the immigration service, primarily because of my strong stand against Rhee’s regime, which was an ironfisted one-man rule.”

Eminent scholars of Korean American history have praised the book, including Professor Wayne Patterson who said, “Koreans in America set a standard by which all subsequent works on Koreans in this country will be judged.” And Elaine H. Kim, a former ethnic studies department chair at and an associate dean of UC Berkeley, sums Choy up as “a model scholar for generations of Korean Americans.”

Choy’s 1938 passport photograph

One balmy November morning in 1989, I sat with my longtime mentor and colleague for a daylong interview at his Berkeley home. He was physically vigorous for his age of 75 years, and mentally alert and agile. The innately modest and genial host spoke with an unerring accuracy in dates, places and names for six hours with only a few tea breaks taken with the gentle but firm nudging of wife Yong Ja.