A native of Oakland, California’s Chinatown, William received his B.A. at the University of California at Berkeley and M.S. at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His print journalism career was spent at The Wall Street Journal and The Oakland Tribune. He also worked for The San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco News Call Bulletin, and has written for the San Francisco Examiner, East/West Chinese American Journal, and Asian Week, among other publications.
In the mid-1960s, Wong served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. From 1995-1996, he was a regional commentator for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.
Wong is also the author of “Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America, Images of America: Oakland’s Chinatown”, and co-author of “Images of America: Angel Island”.