History:  1914 – 1958, Thomas W. Chinn, Director Troop Three Alumni Association

The Boy Scouts of America had been around for just four years when 13 year old Chingwah Lee and his friends came across a Scout manual in the Chinese Methodist Church play yard at 920 Washington Street in San Francisco. 

The year was 1914, three years before the San Francisco Scout Council would be officially organized. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, a group of eight young boys thumbed though the pages of a worn Boy Scout Handbook in the play yard of the Chinese Methodist Church.  The boys were thoroughly intrigued and inspired by what they saw in this new youth movement, something that was non-existent in Chinatown at the time. Eagerly, they studied the sketches, the diagrams, and read the printed words. From that moment, they knew they wanted to be Boy Scouts. 

These eight young boys, the charter members of Troop 3, were Nelson Wong, Tim Wong, Ching Lum, Bing Moy his brother Stephen Moy, Chingwah Lee and his younger brothers King Lee and Edward Lee. It was Chingwah Lee’s interest in Scouting that had prompted him to obtain the handbook and it was he who sparked the interest of Scouting in the other boys. They invited Lim  Kwong, an engineering student attending the Mt. Tamalpais Military Academy to be Scoutmaster and B.Y. Chu, a progressive Secretary of the Chinese YMCA, was nominated as the Troop Advisor. Troop 3 was the first all Chinese troop in the World and Chingwah Lee would later serve as Scoutmaster for over thirty years. 

The year 1958 is the 44th Anniversary of the founding of Troop 3, Boy Scouts of America, San Francisco.  Officially founded in May, 1914, when it received its first charter from the Oakland Boy Scout Council, the Troop was in existence for about a couple of years before the San Francisco Boy Scout Council came into being.  Troop 3 is the oldest active Boy Scout troop in San Francisco (and as of 2022 the second oldest in the United States)

To our founders, we owe a debt of gratitude. The first few formative years of the troop were times of hardship, indeed. One must remember that these were young sons of parents born in China, in whom the idea of camping, outdoor life, and time consumed for meetings were for the idle rich, not for boys of hard working families! And money, it was unheard of to seek that from parents for Scouting purposes.  There were no playgrounds, swimming facilities, or the meeting places such as are available for present day troops.  Then came troubled times when Europe was in a turmoil, eventually plunging us into World War I.  Even as the Scouts grew to work and play together, they also found time to enter into community service together.  They made themselves useful in dozens of different ways, doing their good turns and deeds with the cheerful aplomb of all good Scouts.  

During 1917 -18, when the influenza epidemic threatened and when even hardy adults shrank from the task, Troop 3 Scouts were to be found hard at work distributing flu masks in the community, and running errands for those afflicted or in need of help.  In the early ’20’s, the Scouts were to be found in constant demand, to serve as guides and messengers during big conventions in the city.  Several times they were the recipients of loving cups bestowed upon them by grateful convention leaders.  They were active in distributing literature and assisting in every way possible during National Safety Week, founded in the late ’20’s.  From 1926 and for the next dozen years, the troop included athletics in their program.  They were acknowledged champions in basketball and track for both lightweights and unlimited.  What they lacked in weight, they more than made up in agility and teamwork. But the troop was not just an ordinary one of thirty-two boys.