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Above: Photo supplied by Fort Huachuca historian 2008, following the visit to the Fort by Sandra, Eve, Marilyn, Zee and Alex. The caption for the photo states: "1943 Mar Kim receives a token of our affection"
Right: Mar Kim's obituary
Interview 19 December 1961 with
Major General John B. Brooks, USAF-Retired
(Supplied by Public Affairs of Fort Huachuca)
Chinese Restaurant Operator
Fort Huachuca, 1881-1919
MAR KIM, CHINESE RESTAURANT OWNER, WAS ONE OF
SEVERAL LEGENDARY FIGURES AT FORT
(Bisbee Daily Review, Wednesday, August 1, 1951)
When Fort Huachuca was reactivated in April 1951, it opened without one of its most famous characters, Mar Kim, the Chinese Restaurant operator.
Mar Kim, owner of a Tucson market, now is over 80 years old and a sick man, but he probably would jump at the opportunity to return to the fort.
Although most of the legends told about the Huachuca Chinese restaurants concern Mar Kim, he isn’t the man who first started the restaurant on the post.
According to Major John Healy (ret.) of Carr Canyon, Sam Kee, an uncle of Mar Kim, established the restaurant in 1881, just two years after the fort was founded.
Sam worked his way into the good graces of the men at the post and soon had a thriving business. He kept a good clean mess and he was pretty easy with putting meals on the cuff for the dashing Indian fighters.
SAM KEE PAID TROOPS
A few years after he started the restaurant, the soldiers’ pay was held up for some reason. One story has the paymaster arriving late and another has the money held up by Congress.
But whatever the reason, Sam Kee went to the commander at the time and offered to pay off the troops. For a few of the cavalrymen, it meant several months pay, but Sam paid it all.
Sam Kee was a personal friend of General Leonard Wood and General John Pershing when they were stationed at the post and stories have it that he used their influence freely later on to get favors on the post.
In 1919, Sam Kee left the restaurant, then located at the west end of the parade ground in the administration building, and returned to China. The restaurant was left with members of his family.
It wasn’t until 1934 that Mar Kim arrived to take over the restaurant. He had been running a similar restaurant for the 25th Infantry at Nogales, but when the unit was called to the fort, he came with it and took over his uncle’s place.
There is no end to the stories of Mar Kim. He operated the restaurant until 1947 when he moved to Tucson and although he has been gone from the fort for years, the stories still grow.
A FRIEND OF OFFICERS
He was known as a friend to the officers and never failed to make the trek along the Main Line each Christmas with gifts for them and their families.
But, the enlisted men and the civilians working on the post did not share in the gifts. If an EM had a particularly important position or a civilian had some authority, he too was a friend of Mar Kim’s.
Of the legends of Mar Kim and his uncle, there is one which seems to be in dispute. Legend has it that Sam Kee was given a life-long lease at the fort when he paid off the troops. And, when he left Mar Kim theoretically inherited the lease as his heir.
However, an army officer in the late thirties dug through some old fort records in Washington and claimed that there was no such agreement. Other say, that while an agreement was made with Sam Kee, it did not extend to Mar Kim.
Mar Kim’s wife, in a telephone conversation with a Review representative recently, said that Mar Him had given his last interview and refused to discuss any part of Fort Huachuca.
`In any case, Mar Kim and his Post Exchange restaurant are legendary in the history of the fort. As one old timer near the fort said recently, “Mar Kim made a lot of enemies. But he has made a lot more friends.”
