Many were drafted into the U.S. armed services while still in high school, during a time when their families were suffering job and housing discrimination in the United States.

But Chinese-American veterans of World War II, who held a reunion here last month, say they are not bitter.

The 90 veterans, ages 75 and up, filled musty green rooms within the USS Hornet with chatter as they toured the ship and shared war stories. It was the first time many had been aboard the decommissioned 894-foot Navy aircraft carrier.

The ship, now a museum docked at Alameda Point, has one thing in common with the veterans. It too is a World War II survivor.

More than 13,000 Chinese-American men served with U.S. forces during World War II, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Of those, 75 percent were in the U.S. Army, and 25 percent in the Army Air Force.

"I'm alive, that's the most important thing," said Piedmont resident Albert Fong, 80, with a smile. "And I made lifetime friends."

During the 61st reunion event, Bay Area veterans met with buddies now living as far away as Malaysia. Others came from New York, Boston and Florida.

"They always make it, if health permits," said Oakland resident Rose Luey, wife of an Army air squadron veteran. "They're so happy to see each other."

Most of the Chinese-American veterans said they were drafted. Several enlisted voluntarily. The youngest veteran at the reunion was 75. He had forged draft papers to enlist.

Fong was drafted to serve in the 407th Air Service Squadron while a senior at Oakland High School.

"The draft paper pretty much said your country needs you, you can get your diploma after," he said. "Back then, the country was united. Everyone was fighting for the same cause. It wasn't like Vietnam, it wasn't like Afghanistan or Iraq."

American intervention in China did not begin until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, several years after Japan's occupation of China began. Until that point, many Chinese Americans had been vilified in the United States for decades, the veterans said.

But after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, sentiment towards Chinese Americans began to change, the veterans said. They were viewed as a vital war ally. Because many spoke fluent Cantonese and English, they were sent to fight Japan alongside Chinese nationalist forces.

"It was the natural thing to do," said Oakland resident Wilfred Eng, 79. "Everyone else was drafted, all our friends. It was just normal."

The veterans said racism was an outgrowth of the 1848 Gold Rush when tens of thousands of Chinese immigrated to California. By the 1870s, more than 63,000 Chinese lived in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. The veterans said hard economic times during the Depression also led to a racist backlash, felt by many who lived in the Bay Area.

"People couldn't live where they wanted," said Fong, who was raised in Oakland. "We were turned down so many times when trying to buy a house. We would ask, 'Why?' The replies we got meant, 'Look in the mirror, that's why.'"

After the 1882 passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which ended further immigration, federal law allowed cities to dictate where Chinese people could live, said Oakland History Room Librarian Steven Lavoie.

People of Chinese ancestry were only allowed to purchase property below 9th Street in Oakland, from Broadway to Lake Merritt, he said.

In 1940, there were 3,201 people of Chinese ancestry living in Oakland, according to U.S. Census data. Eng and Fong both attended Oakland High and were inducted into the Army Air Force on the same day. Eng's family lived in a mostly white East Oakland neighborhood.

"It took quite awhile to get friendly with the neighbors," Eng said. "When we were able to show we could keep our surroundings clean and neat, we were accepted more."

Eng served as an airplane mechanic for two years and seven months. "We all got to know each other so well," he said of his buddies in the armed services. "We went through a lot of hardships together."

Bright sides of service

Despite tough times, San Francisco resident Woodrow Chan, 85, said he tried to think of his World War II experience as a holiday. Drafted at age 26, he said he "felt not too good" at the time.

"But I felt lucky to be sent to China," Chan said. "I had never been to the mainland. Although there were many hardships, I kind of thought of it as a vacation."

Like many veterans, Chan used money from the GI Bill to attend college upon his return from the war. Signed in 1944 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the bill granted World War II veterans $500 a year for college. Chan studied business and opened a restaurant.

War stories

While some of the reunion attendees climbed flights of stairs during the USS Hornet tour to view the "Island," home to the wheel and navigation charts, others stayed behind to chat on the flight deck. Fong recalled being bombed his first night in China.

"There were no gun placements because we had just flown in from India," he said. "It was cold. There were icicles 20 feet tall (in the) mountains, near the Mongolian border." At a roadside restaurant, they shoveled snow and dumped it into pots to boil. They had no running water, he said.

An estimated 30 million Chinese died during Japan's 14-year occupation of their country, which ended with Japan's defeat in 1945.

Lingering discrimination

After World War II, a second wave of anti-Chinese sentiment rolled through the Bay Area. Developers were allowed to designate neighborhoods "white only" throughout California until the 1960s, Lavoie said.

In 1943, Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. But during the two decades that followed, immigration law allowed only 105 Chinese people per year to enter the United States.

The veterans said memories of the discrimination Chinese Americans experienced in the United States have not been forgotten.

Fong told veterans he still recalls when he was 13 and delivered freshly cleaned clothes from his father's laundry to a house in Piedmont. The woman who answered the door told him "take it around to the back" of the house, he said.

"That stayed with me all my life," Fong said. "I said to myself, one of these days I'm going to come see how they live."

Fong now lives in Piedmont. Although many Chinese Americans endured unfair treatment, they remained loyal to the United States, he said.

"We were very patriotic," Fong said. "In those days, you had those feelings even though there was discrimination. You wanted to help win the war."