The onset of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. shortly after the end of the World War II, the 1949 Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, and the Korean conflict between 1950 and 1953 all worked together to fuel a renewed domestic anticommunism movement in the U.S. during the 1950s. In 1951, after noticing that recent letters from abroad had been tampered with, Tung Pok Chin ceased all correspondence with Dean Pickett, fearing that his association with Pickett would cause the latter harm.

In the spring of 1955, two FBI agents visited Chin at his laundry. The agents questioned him about whether he supported Communism and wrote for the pro-Communist China Daily News under the name of Lai Bing Chan. The agents advised Chin that they had film footage of him entering and leaving the China Daily News office and that people had identified him by the names of Tung Pok Chin and Lai Bing Chan. Although Chin used Lai Bing Chan as a pen name in his writings for the China Daily News, he did not admit this information to the FBI because Tung Pok Chin was the only name that he used on official papers and government forms. The agents departed but indicated that they would return.

Later that evening, Chin and his wife decided to burn the more than 200 poems that he had written between 1945 and 1955 out of concern that the FBI might search their home for evidence that would link Tung Pok Chin and Lai Bing Chan. The Chins also began wrapping their Chinese newspapers inside old issues of the New York Times and discarding them on a daily basis. FBI agents returned to Chin's laundry and home several times thereafter. The FBI tapped the family's telephone line and opened packages and letters addressed to the Chins.

"I could not hold back the tears as I watched my life's work literally go up in flames. I once had visions of binding my poetry into a book for publication. Perhaps some Chinese American scholar would come across it and translate it into English, I thought. With such a detailed record of immigrant life, the old home town, the history and emotions of the paper son, I would really gain recognition as a poet! But now, all was lost." -- Tung Pok Chin, excerpted from "Paper Son, One Man's Story" (Temple University Press, 2000), p. 75.

Another aspect of the anticommunism movement was the Chinese Confession Program conducted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to identify Chinese immigrants who had illegally entered the U.S. Between World War II and 1970, Chinese paper sons' had the option of "confessing" that they had used fraudulent papers to gain entry into the U.S. Confession allowed paper sons to assume their real names, but also required them to relinquish their American citizenship rights, thereby subjecting them to the possibility of legal prosecution and deportation.

After five years, however, paper sons became eligible to apply for naturalization as U.S. citizens. Once paper sons regained their U.S. citizenship, they could serve as sponsors for the immigration of relatives to America. Having been abducted at the age of three, Tung Pok Chin did not confess because he did not know his real name or blood relatives. Chin also did not want to relinquish the rights of citizenship for five years given the repressive political climate and the FBI's harassment of the family.