Saturday, Nov. 06

JAN WONG

Saturday, November 6, 1999

These men made history. Their posture is no longer always erect, but the glint remains in their eyes. They are the Chinese-Canadian veterans of the Second World War. They fought two battles -- both for democracy. One was overseas, the other right here at home.

I first met some of them in 1991 when they visited Beijing and I was The Globe and Mail's China correspondent. Recently, we met again at Foo's Ho Ho Restaurant in Vancouver.

Alex Louie, Daniel Lee, John Ko Bong, Howe Lee, Bing Wong, Douglas Jung, Roy Mar and about 20 other veterans are now in their 70s and beyond. They were born in Canada, but Canada didn't want them.

Daniel Lee, 78, brought a copy of his alien certificate to dinner. Issued by the Department of Immigration and Colonization, it reads: "This certificate does not establish legal status in Canada."

That was a bloodlessly bureaucratic way to describe the 1940s for Canadians who looked like me. Seats in movie theatres were segregated. Restaurants posted "White lunch" signs, which didn't mean chicken and mayo on Wonderbread. Municipal pools barred Chinese, so boys like Alex and John and Douglas couldn't earn their Boy Scout swimming badges.

Chinese had to step in the gutter to make way for whites. But there were no stepping stones out of the ghetto called Chinatown. They couldn't vote. They couldn't run for public office. And they couldn't become pharmacists, accountants, lawyers or civil servants. They couldn't even work at Eaton's.

When Canada went to war and the Chinese tried to enlist, Ottawa rejected them. A secret memorandum warned that accepting Chinese Canadians into the army was the slippery slope to giving them the vote.

For years, I celebrated Canada Day without knowing its darker side: Chinese Humiliation Day. On July 1, 1923, Parliament passed the Chinese Immigration Act. Commonly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, it stripped an entire group of Canadians of their citizenship. It also slammed shut the door on Chinese immigration. (Except, of course, for Adrienne Clarkson. But I digress.)

Alex Louie's 45-year-old daughter, Jari Osborne, has made a deeply affecting documentary about this shameful era. Unwanted Soldiers describes an emotional meeting in Vancouver's Chinatown during the Second World War. Many argued against dying for a country that didn't want them. But even more insisted that they should serve.

Alex Louie was one who wanted to fight, even though Canada had barred his mother from coming home. She had made the mistake of going to China for a visit. He hadn't seen her since he was 13. In vain, Alex and his friends went down to the recruitment office.

As white boys died in Europe and Chinese boys stayed home, public opinion turned ugly. The politicians did nothing to enlighten anyone.

Then Singapore fell. Japan took 120,000 British soldiers prisoner. Suddenly, Britain needed Chinese-looking, Chinese-speaking secret agents to send behind enemy lines. Hong Kong had fallen. Where else in the British Empire could they find loyal subjects that fit the bill? The answer was Canada.

In 1944, Ottawa finally accepted Chinese-Canadian volunteers. (They also took Japanese Canadians, who signed up even though they had been interned as enemy sympathizers.) The Chinese Canadians would parachute into the jungles of Malaya and Borneo. One mission was so risky it was dubbed Operation Oblivion.

About 800 enlisted. At top-secret training camps in Penticton and Kelowna, B.C., they learned silent killing, demolition, sabotage and how to attach a mine to the hull of an enemy ship. These boys -- once banned from municipal pools -- now had to learn to swim.

"The first day we got our uniforms, we walked down Granville Street," Alex Louie, now 74, says in one of the documentary's most moving moments. "You felt like a free man."

The first team parachuted into the Malayan jungle in mid-June. Another parachuted into Borneo in early August. The next day, the United States dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima. The war was over.

Back home, the Chinese veterans tried to join the Canadian Legion. It turned them down. George Campbell, father of future prime minister Kim, was then president of the Pacific veterans. He supported their application for a separate charter.

In gratitude, Mr. Campbell is always been invited to their gatherings. "Don't I look Chinese?" he joked at that dinner in Vancouver.

For two years after the war, the Chinese veterans lobbied, always in uniform. In 1947, Parliament repealed the Chinese Immigration Act, giving Chinese Canadians the vote. In 1957, Douglas Jung, a veteran, became the first Chinese Canadian to win a seat in Parliament. He ran as a Progressive Conservative because, he told me, the Mackenzie King Liberals had passed the Exclusion Act and wrote the secret memorandum.

I was curious about native Canadians. It turns out that 10,000 had fought during the Second World War, even though Ottawa gave them the vote only on condition they forfeit their treaty rights and Indian status. In 1960, Parliament finally gave them the unconditional right to vote.

"They should have got the vote before any of us," Bing Wong says.

In Unwanted Soldiers,Jari Osborne notes that the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act didn't exactly throw open Canada's doors. Five years later, her dad's mom was still stranded in China. Alex Louie wrote to Ottawa, pointing out that three of Mrs. Louie's sons had fought in the war. Only then, in 1952, was Mrs. Louie allowed to come home.
Unwanted Soldiers airs Monday at 10 p.m. on CBC Newsworld and as a CTV Remembrance Day special Thursday at 11 a.m.