Ow Family

Artist: Ket Conway

Family Story: George Ow

“Our family is a mixture of American diversity.  Just like Watsonville.  In this situation, we focus on our Chinese and Ashkenazy Jewish family ancestry. 

Ashkenazy Jewish History includes tales of a people with no homeland for 2,000 years.  Tales of being the outsider, the other, the stranger, scapegoats, almost always outnumbered and outgunned.  But miraculously surviving.  Our family ancestors came from Russia, Poland, Germany and France.  This is year 2023 in most American calendars.  It is year 5783 in the Jewish calendar.

China has been a large and populous country for much of the last 3,000 years, oftentimes a leader in scholarship, culture, science and military might.  Chinese thought of themselves as the central country in the world.  They thought they were so far superior to other countries that they consciously chose not to change.  It is year 4721 in the Chinese calendar.

If you do not change, you backslide and the world catches up and surpasses you.  A reasonably prosperous China in 1750 turned into a China of 1850 where millions of people starved every year. There was civil war; foreign countries took land and revenues; crops failed for many reasons; there were bandits everywhere; and young men were sent all over the world to make money and send it back to buy food for their hungry mothers, fathers and siblings.  Our background is similar to other “Coming to America” and “Hard Times” stories from Ireland, Scandinavia, Italy, Russia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Mexico, Salvador, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria and many other countries.

The United States has a history of racist laws against the Chinese and other minority groups.  My father, George Ow, born circa 1920, only remembers hunger from his early childhood and the fact that he was separated from his poor and hungry birth family when he was about four.  His family was so hungry they had to sell their youngest son (my father) to an entrepreneurial Overseas Chinese family living in Santa Cruz, California, USA.  Despite the void in his heart from this separation, my father always regarded himself as very lucky.  He would never be hungry again and he would eventually become an American citizen.  Yes, he was supremely lucky.

My father was sent to the United States in 1937 to make money to sustain his adopted family f who remained in China.  He was illegal.  He could not become a citizen.  He could not testify in court.  He could not go to most restaurants, barber shops or hotels.  He could not own land.  He did not worry about this.  He did what he could.  He went into the United States Army, did the landing at Lingayen Gulf and helped repatriate Luzon.  He was very proud to do his part. 

He and mom were very entrepreneurial.  They started with 1/2 of a small corner grocery store and eventually had 7 children, 14 grandchildren and I’ve lost count from there.  He became legal under amnesty and happily became an American citizen.  He died in 2004 knowing that the United States of America was the best country in the world.” George Ow

Link to Sentinel Story about George Ow Jr. 

Sponsored by:  Ow Family