Victory in Shanghai - by Robert S Kim (Hardcover)

About the Book

Victory in Shanghai tells two intertwined and long-untold American origin stories: a Korean American family's struggle to come to the United States during the Second World War era and the role of Asian Americans in the creation of modern U.S. intelligence and special operations.

Book Synopsis

Victory in Shanghai tells the long-hidden story of a family from Korea that struggled for three decades to become Americans and ultimately fought their way to the United States through heroic actions with the U.S. Army during World War II. Among the first families from Korea to migrate to the United States in the early twentieth century, the Kim family was forced into exile in Shanghai in the mid-1920s after a new U.S. immigration law in 1924 excluded Asians. Two decades later, the family's four sons--raised as Americans in the expatriate community of Shanghai--voluntarily stepped forward during World War II to defend the nation they considered theirs.

From both sides of the Pacific, the Kim brothers served in uniform with the U.S. Army and in the underground U.S. intelligence network in Shanghai. At the end of the war the eldest son led the liberation of seven thousand American and Allied civilians held in Japanese internment camps in Shanghai. His actions and the support of the leading generals of the U.S. Army in China led to three special acts of Congress that granted him U.S. citizenship and admitted the entire Kim family into the United States. Four Kim brothers became some of the earliest intelligence officers of the nascent U.S. intelligence community, and three of them ascended to leadership positions in the CIA and the Army Special Forces.

Victory in Shanghai tells two intertwined American origin stories: a Korean family's struggle to become Americans during the World War II era and the contributions of Korean Americans to the creation of modern U.S. intelligence and special operations. Withheld from the public until recently due to the secrecy surrounding their actions during World War II and the Cold War, the history of the Kim family is one of the great stories of coming to America and defending and strengthening it in the process.

Review Quotes

"Victory in Shanghai reveals the long-hidden story of an entire family of Korean American heroes of the Second World War who went on to become pioneers in the intelligence community and special operations forces of the United States. It tells the public for the first time about people and events that will change perceptions of those who fought the Second World War in the Pacific and served in U.S. intelligence and special operations in the Cold War."--Ambassador Greta Holtz (Ret.), former U.S. ambassador to Oman and senior foreign policy advisor to U.S. Special Operations Command

"Robert Kim's fascinating Victory in Shanghai breaks new ground, shedding much-needed light on the story of a remarkable family in extraordinary times."--Charlotte Brooks, author of American Exodus: Second-Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901-1949

About the Author

Robert S. Kim (unrelated to the Kim family in this book) is a lawyer and author who has served in the war in Iraq as the deputy treasury attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and worked for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Victory in Shanghai is his third book related to World War II.