Moses Lee

Moses Lee was an extraordinary patriot who fought under three flags: the Korean, Chinese, and American. He was born in the United States to Korean parents who had immigrated to Hawai'i in the early 1900s. His father knew Kim Ku, the premier of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai, and promised Kim that he would send one of his seven sons to fight for the government. To fulfill that promise, Lee volunteered in 1933 and traveled to China at the age of twenty-one. There, he trained under Kim and served as an officer in General Chiang Kai Shek's army. After contracting malaria in 1938 he was sent back to Hawai'i to recover. Afterwards, he joined the U.S.army, becoming a paratrooper and fighting in World War II. During the Korean War, he fought on the front line under the American flag.