Koon Hung Sunn
also known as Kon Hung Sun, as recorded on the 1911 Mongolia manifest
b. ~1897, Honolulu
The earlier estimate was about right: Koon Hung Sunn was 27 when his daughter Stella was born in 1925, putting him around 1898. The 1911 Honolulu passenger manifest tightens that to ~1897 and adds two facts the parish records can’t reach:
- He was born in Honolulu, not in China — a Hawaii-native, with the family already established there before his own generation. The “immigration” line on the 1911 manifest is really a re-arrival; he had been somewhere else and came home aboard the SS Mongolia at age 14. Source: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Honolulu, Hawaii, 1900–1953, Affiliate Publication A3422, Film 31.
- The surname is rendered Kon Hung Sun on the 1911 manifest and Koon Hung Sunn on later records — typical period transliteration drift.
He married Mabel Lee Sunn, Hawaii-born and similarly American. Both of Stella’s parents were therefore second-generation-or-later Chinese-Hawaiian — which (alongside the new clarity that Stella herself was not Japanese by descent) is part of why Aunt Jeanne’s wartime account, while accurate on the act, mis-remembers the mechanism.
His parents and his earlier life are not yet recorded here.