Sun On Jos

The Sun On Jos are a community in the novels, associated with a reservation near Yuma, Arizona. In the later family story, their hereditary protector is Sunny Joe Roam, Remo Williams’s father. The books connect the community to both Sunny Joe’s family tradition and a later narrator’s account of an ancestor from Sinanju.

Sunny Joe tells Remo that Ko Jong Oh came from a land remembered as Sun On Jo, settled among a small Indigenous community, and married into it. He guesses that the ancestor crossed the Bering Strait from China, then describes Ko Jong Oh as a protector who taught a peaceful way of life. In this account, only the founder and his eldest descendants may fight, and only to defend the community. These are Sunny Joe’s inherited story and interpretation.

A later narrator gives a different and more specific origin: the tribe was founded by Kojong, an exiled Korean Master of Sinanju whose name became Ko Jong Oh. That narration identifies him as Remo’s ancestor. Sunny Joe’s own story includes a contrasting uncertainty: he remembers visiting Sinanju during the Korean War and hearing no recognition of Ko Jong Oh or Sun On Jo. The novels leave these accounts side by side rather than having Sunny Joe’s earlier uncertainty establish the genealogy.

Sunny Joe says the Sun On Jos are not warriors and that fighting is not their way. The stories also show the reservation welcoming outsiders: Winston Smith accepts Sunny Joe’s invitation to settle there. When Remo brings Freya to the reservation, he calls her his little sister, though the narration elsewhere identifies her as his daughter; Sunny Joe welcomes her as his granddaughter. These scenes show hospitality without suggesting that the community never faces danger.