Overlooked is a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

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Lau Sing Kee was an American war hero, but he was also mocked as a “Chinese boy.” He was a civic leader, but he also became a convicted criminal for skirting discriminatory immigration laws.

His path, from decorated soldier to prison inmate, was emblematic of how Chinese immigrants and their descendants struggled to find their footing in early 20th-century America.

In 1917, after he moved to New York City from California and settled in Chinatown, Kee enlisted in the Army in the midst of World War I. His unit, the 77th Infantry Division, became known as the Cosmopolitan Division because of its high concentration of first-generation immigrants. It soon shipped out to the Western Front.

In August, Kee, by then a sergeant, was stationed at the village of Mont-Notre-Dame in northern France when German guns began to bombard and gas his post at a rate of 30 shells a minute. Kee was one of 20 runners who were a crucial communication lifeline between units and from command posts to the front lines. In the face of a German offensive to take the village, the runners navigated through machine-gun fire and gas and flamethrower attacks until all were wounded, unconscious or dead. Kee was the only one who managed to keep going.