The Hawaiian-born New York journalist William Yukon Chang died on September 4, 2019, and his obituary appeared in the New York Times yesterday morning. (The online version is here. The World Journal also published its own obituary here.)

I was fortunate to meet Bill for the first time about seven years ago, when I had dim sum with him, his daughter Dallas, and my friend and fellow historian Ellen Wu at Nom Wah in Manhattan’s Chinatown. That meal inspired my 2013 blog post about the first office of Bill’s Chinese-American Times, the newspaper he founded in his family’s home in Forest Hills. The Changs, and the CAT, later moved to Manhattan’s Chinatown.

Over the past few years, I not only got to know Bill better but also had the chance to help Dallas organize his papers for donation to Columbia University. Bill lived an amazing life, and I’m grateful to have known him for some of that time.