After midnight on June 6, 1944, over 13,000 American paratroopers prepared to head into battle spearheading the attack for the Normandy invasion.

One of them was my uncle, PFC Leon Yee from San Francisco’s Chinatown.

As a young kid, I heard about the wartime exploits of my uncle. He was my “superman,” a guy who jumped out of airplanes to fight a war.

He’s also the reason why I began to study the role of Chinese American soldiers during the war. Thousands of Chinese Americans, mostly from California, enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II.

Their service allowed many of them to earn their citizenship, prove their patriotism, and fight the Japanese while the Sino-Japanese War was still raging in China.

The 1940 census shows fewer than 78,000 people of Chinese descent in the United States. Yet between 15,000 and 20,000 enlisted in the armed forces during World War II. The largest number of Chinese Americans who enlisted — more than 5,000 — came from the Bay Area.

Why did so many of them fight?

There were two reasons. The first was that they had a great desire to join the service and help fight the Japanese. Since the Sino-Japanese War began raging in 1937, it was quite personal for this community. Many of their family and relatives in China were greatly affected by the war.

In San Francisco, Chinese Americans were fighting a private war prior to Pearl Harbor. San Francisco harbored a little known group of volunteer Chinese American fighter pilots who were financed by the Chinatown community and trained out of the Bay Airdrome in Alameda from 1935-39. These volunteer fighter pilots flew in combat against the Japanese in the late 1930s.

After Pearl Harbor, many Chinese Americans saw the opportunity to fight the Japanese on a different front.

They also had a strong sense of deep patriotism as Americans, even though this country hadn’t always loved them back. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which limited their immigration to the U.S., many Chinese Americans felt that they had to prove themselves.

For the first time during World War II, Chinese Americans could enlist and be on par with their white counterparts.

Many of them, like my uncle, decided to take advantage.

Chinese Americans used their military service to attain citizenship (39% of the total number of Chinese American soldiers were foreign born) and to bring back brides from China (under the War Brides Act, which allowed for the entry of the immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens).

They were able to further their education under the G.I. Bill, and they were able to get loans to start businesses and to buy their first homes outside of Chinatown.

These were truly the first modern Chinese Americans who made extraordinary strides in the post-war era as we know it today.

But first they had to survive the war.

After jump school at Fort Benning, my uncle Yee won his wings in mid-1942, became a demolition expert and was assigned to the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment. By the spring of 1944, the regiment was in place for the invasion of Europe.

The airborne elements headed toward the coast of France. Suddenly, German anti-aircraft fire from the ground was lighting up the night sky. Tracer rounds zipped by, some hitting the aircraft.

Yee thought to himself, “I need to get out of here, fast!” He had over 100 pounds of equipment on his slim frame. Sometime after 2 a.m., he went out the door, at about 1,000 feet.

While floating down on his parachute, he could see sporadic gunfire and plots of little flames all around the ground. He landed in a cow pasture, northwest of the Merderet river. He had no idea where he was and it was pitch-black. His orders were to engage the enemy with grenades and knives only.

After he landed, Yee made his way to a ditch nearby. He banded together with other paratroopers as small fighting groups, helping to rig explosives along enemy communication lines. There were firefights along the way, and they took some casualties.

The mission was to seize causeways and bridges over the Merderet river at La Fière and Chef-du-Post, and destroy the highway bridge over the Douve river. Enemy resistance was fierce and the paratroopers were to expect German tanks. Yee was worried, as he only had a carbine and a few grenades. There were no anti-tank weapons among his group.

Yee suffered a near fatal blow while attacking a German machine gun position. A burst hit right in front of him, striking some rocks and ricocheting into his right temple. The impact caused him to fall backward.

After five days of combat in Normandy, Yee woke up seeing blue skies. He was lying on a cot in a landing craft, heading back to England.

My uncle lived to tell me his story. In grade school, I searched every book I could find on D-Day, hoping to find a picture of him.

As time went on, I began to meet other Chinese American veterans who had served in World War II. These veterans made it a tradition to meet every weekend at Uncle’s Cafe in Chinatown.

Their war stories were plentiful, and I decided that a much larger story needed to be told.

After 10 years of research, I produced a 1999 PBS documentary film: “We Served with Pride, the Chinese American experience in WWII.” Nominated for an Emmy Award, the film, I’m thrilled to say, will be re-released for its 20th anniversary later this year.

A new generation will have the chance to learn what service meant to the Bay Area’s Chinese Americans. My uncle is not the only hero — and no longer should these soldiers remain hidden.

Montgomery Hom is an independent film producer and a film production and historical specialist. He is a San Francisco native whose family has been in Chinatown since 1860.