Like many Southerners of the period, many of the citizens
of Jenkinsville held racist views about the only Asian family in the community. Mr. and
Mrs. Lee owned The Chu Lee Grocery Co., and they were probably the hardest working
merchants in the town. He
... was the first merchant to open every morning
and the very last to
close.
The townspeople
referred to Mr. Lee as "The Chink," apparently because of his Chinese heritage. But one
day the Lees were gone. A large hole was visible in the store's plate-glass window.
Patty had never understood why the family had left in such haste until she remembered a
conversation Mr. J. G. Jackson had with her father.
"Our boys at Pearl Harbor would have got a lot of
laughs at the farewell party we gave the
Chink."
It's obvious from
this conversation that the people of Jenkinsville lumped all Asians together after the
bombing of Pearl Harbor, and even though the Lees were Chinese--and not Japanese--they
had been run out of town by the angry townspeople.
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