I saw my brother Barry the other night. It'd been a while since I'd seen him, except in my dreams. You see, Barry was killed almost 30 years ago. He was a probation officer and youth worker caught in the crossfire of a Chinatown gang war. On June 26, 1972, he was suddenly gone, and his family and his friends still miss him; still think of him almost every day.

     But thinking about him, and remembering him as my wise and calming older brother, is not the same as seeing him - something I thought I'd never be able to do again. That is, until this videotape arrived in the mail.  

     I had helped to MC a tribute to Bay Area Chinese-American television pioneers, produced by the Chinese Historical Society, a few months ago. One of those pioneers, Christopher Chow, produced a video salute to his fellow broadcasters. Stationed backstage, I couldn't see the video, so I called Chris and asked for a copy. He sent it - but, to my shock, added some other material. He had done a report on Chinatown on KPIX in 1972, he told me, and, among others, he had interviewed Barry. Chris thought I might like to have the report.

     Videotape in machine, I forgot all about those broadcasters. I fast-forwarded to Chris' news reports, and, soon enough, found Barry.

     It was a simple, minute-or-so interview. He was straightforward, talking about youths' frustrations in Chinatown. There was nothing personal about it. He was just another talking head, edited down to what the report needed, then eclipsed by the next talking head.

     But it was Barry. I'd only had photographs and memories since that night in '72. Here, now, was a moving image. I hit rewind and watched him again. His voice, I'd always remembered, was lower than mine, and tinged with an accent. On video, it still was.

     Although he was 29 when he was murdered, he'd always remained my older brother. Now, watching him in the year 2000, it was harder for me to think of him that way. But that's only imagery at work. The fact is, he will always be my big brother.   

     I said as much in an article I wrote in 1984 for the San Francisco Chronicle. At that point, it had been a dozen years since his death, and I had never written about it. I found the process difficult and exhausting, but freeing. The resulting story led to an invitation from Parade magazine to write a similar piece.

     [In AsianConnections.com, I re-ran the Chronicle article. In doing that piece, and the one for Parade, and in receiving responses to them, from people in all parts of the country, of all ages, of all ethnic backgrounds - people who'd suffered a wide range of personal losses, I was given vivid reminders of the universality of loss.

     But the readers, I'd like to think, realized that in the sharing of the pain felt by this one Chinese-American family in California, they, and we, were part of a community indefiniable by labels, but bound by humanity.]

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