In this book, Grandmaster Allen Joe tells an extraordinary personal story of his family, true love, triumph, heartbreaks, and his best friends. Here is the true story told with enormous honesty, keen insight, passion, and essence of the human life. Allen takes us inside his family in Oakland's Chinatown before World War II and shares his experience of war and meeting his best friend, Bruce Lee. When Bruce and Linda were married in 1964, they moved to Oakland and lived with James Lee, his wife, and two children. As you read the story of Allen's life, you will learn how Allen's long-time friendship with James led to a meeting with Bruce in Seattle. As a reader, you will enter Bruce Lee's world and get to know James, Bruce, Allen, and George, the Four Musketeers. Linda, Bruce Lee's widow, says, "I know Allen's story will help people better understand Bruce Lee's story-the story of achieving excellence against all odds. That is what this book is about." "There are certain friends of my father I have gotten to know throughout my life that hold their friendship with my father in such a place of pure love. Their radiance blesses me every time I see them. Uncle Allen is one such friend. Thank you, Allen, for being such a bright light in my life." - Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter and chairman of the Bruce Lee Foundation "Allen Joe's story reveals how, when faced with long odds of success, persistently cultivating physical strength and mental strength enables us to overcome enormous odds. The bonds of friendship between Allen Joe and Bruce Lee offer every reader a powerful philosophy of living, innovating, and thriving." - Sarah Miller Caldicott, great-grandniece of Thomas Edison; author of Midnight Lunch and Innovate Like Edison The Last of the Four Musketeers Allen Joe's Life and Friendship With Bruce Lee By Allen Joe, Svetlana Kim, Dmitri Bobkov Balboa Press Copyright © 2015 Svetlana Kim and Dmitri Bob All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-5043-4296-4 Contents Foreword, ix, Acknowledgments, xiii, Prologue, xv, Chapter 1 Childhood and Youth: Shaping of the Character, 1, Chapter 2 War in the Pacific: My Jade Ring, 12, Chapter 3 Back Home: Beginning of a New Journey, 26, Chapter 4 Bodybuilding: Who Was the First, 35, Chapter 5 Friendship: "All for One, One for All", 59, Epilogue, 85, Appendix, 87, Bibliography, 89, About the Authors, 91, CHAPTER 1 Childhood and Youth: Shaping of the Character A man's character is his fate. — Heraclitus "He hanged himself!" I ran to the window and with one quick move pulled the shades. I had done it so many times that I didn't even need to think about it. The room became dark and filled with anticipation and uncertainty. My mom always made me pull the shades when something happened in our neighborhood and the town crier brought the latest horrifying news. Because of her fears of Tong, Chinese gang men, and not wanting to provoke them in any way, my mom would not permit us to look outside. "He hanged himself because of an unpaid gambling debt! He chose to hang himself instead of waiting to be killed!" the town crier continued to scream. His voice was as striking as the sound of a church bell that echoed through the empty street and resonated inside my house. My mom, younger brother, and I were quietly standing on a cold wooden floor far away from the windows, hiding, as if someone could still see us through the curtains. I felt a small stream of sweat from my temple run like a snake slowly down over my face under the collar of my shirt, making me shiver as it continued its way down my back. It seemed that time had stopped moving. Footsteps of our neighbors broke the silence — we shared a house with two other families, as well as a small communal bathroom that had a large wash tub that we used as a bathtub, though it was hard to understand what it was made of. That was pretty much how everyone lived in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood: Oakland, California, Chinatown of the 1920s and 1930s, with poor sanitation and habitations. It had well-organized tribunals of its own to punish offenders when it was in their interest to punish. Indeed, our neighborhood was very isolated with its complex society. It was a time when arranged marriages were still in practice. In the early twentieth century, the advent of photography modernized traditional arranged marriages in Asia. Photographs and letters replaced face-to-face meetings between families and matchmakers. It became the "picture bride" system. For the first time, prospective couples living in different parts of the world could be introduced. Pressured to get married by his own father, my dad, who lived in California, decided to take advantage of that new technology, since there were not many options due to the very low number of Chinese females in America. That was how my mother, Florence, came here as a bride of U.S. citizen Henry Quong Joe. My father had been a Navy man in World War I and serve