Kam Fong Chun

Actor Kam Fong is best known for his role as police detective Chin Ho Kelly on the long-running television series "Hawaii Five-O." Fong did not begin acting until late in life. He worked at a Pearl Harbor shipyard as a boiler-maker, and witnessed the infamous Japanese bombing on December 7, 1941. Three years later, Fong was beset by tragedy, when his wife and two young children were killed in a freak accident: two B-24 bombers collided and the wreckage crashed down on Fong's house. Fong would remarry by the end of the 1940s, and by the late 1950s, had begun landing acting roles, including one in the 1958 adventure tale "Ghost of the China Sea." After acting (often uncredited) in several other films during the early 1960s, Fong made the jump to television with the hit "Hawaii Five-O," appearing in over 200 episodes from 1968 through 1978. Fong would sporadically act elsewhere post-"Hawaii Five-O," including two appearances on another Hawaii-set crime drama, "Magnum, P.I.," before reprising his Chin Ho Kelly role in a 1997 "Hawaii Five-O" TV movie despite the fact that his character had been killed off earlier in the series.