Chinese Americans also went to the front lines. Today, anyone envisioning men parading in World War II American military uniforms would see no Chinese faces, yet during the war, ethnic Chinese men gave their lives in numbers disproportionate to their presence in the country. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese served in the military, representing about 20 percent of the Chinese population in the continental United States; the comparable figure for the general population was 8.6 percent. Almost 40 percent of the Chinese population in New York City was drafted, the highest rate among any of the city’s ethnic groups. One reason for this high percentage, of course, was that most Chinese in the United States were male, single, and without dependents, the legacy of the Chinese exclusion laws, and the majority of the Chinese in New York were Chinese men living a bachelor existence in Chinatown. Nonetheless, it seems clear that if 40 percent were inducted, few tried to evade the draft when called. “New York’s Chinatown cheered itself hoarse when the first draft numbers drawn were for Chinese Americans,” the sociologist Rose Hum Lee wrote. “Some below-age boys tried to pass on their ‘Chinese age,’ which is often a year or two older than the American count. Since their birth certificates told a different tale, they had to be patient and wait.” (Chang 227-228)