When Eunice Joyce Chinn celebrated her 100th birthday, few people knew that she was one of the 15 women of Chinese descent from Victoria who served in the Australian Army in World War II.
Chen Jinzuan’s parents were from Guangdong Province, China. When World War II broke out, the family’s three children – Chen Jinzuan, her sister and brother – all enlisted in the Australian Army.
“She and her sister wanted to join the Navy and unfortunately they were rejected because of the color of their skin. So, they joined the Army,” Anthony Leong, Chen Jinzuan’s son, said in an interview.
According to Leong, Chan spent most of his time stationed in Alice Springs in northern Australia, teaching other soldiers how to transmit and receive messages using Morse code (also known as Morse) and telegraph, among other things.
“They were receiving code messages directly from their command. Because they were communicating with personnel in the Pacific …… what these people were doing was observing the activities of the Japanese Army and Navy in the Pacific,” said Leung Pak Hung.
“In a sense it was often heartbreaking from time to time because they knew what was going on when silence fell on the other end of the radio.”
The war stories of Chan Kam Wan and hundreds of other Chinese Australians are included in a new book, For Honour and Country, recently published by the Australian Chinese History Museum. The new book aims to shed light on the bravery of Victorian Chinese soldiers who fought for Australia in World War II.
According to the book, 280 Chinese-Australian males (about 45 percent) and 15 Chinese-Australian females (about 4 percent) of military age in Victoria were drafted into the army during World War II. Edmond Chiu, one of the co-authors of the book, said in an interview that this history is still unknown to many Australians.
“More than 1,000 Australian Chinese men and women enlisted in the Army and 200 in the Air Force. There were only 15 in the Navy. The Navy was less willing to take on Chinese applicants,” said Eugene Chiu.
After retiring from medical research, Zhao Ruquan joined the Australian-Chinese History Museum as a volunteer and began nearly a decade of research on Chinese-Australian veterans of the two world wars. He says the new book, Honor and Country, “fills a gap in Australian history”.
The new book documents that at least 38 Chinese-Australian families had more than two children who served in the military. The most prominent is the Mahlook family of the King Valley, with 21 family members in the military. The SING family of Ballarat and Kwong Sue Duk, a prominent herbalist family, have 15 descendants who have gone to war. The Kim family of Casterton was also part of the family. The four Kim brothers’ battlefield legends
Kim family veterans Cyril (second from left), Arthur (third from left) and Raymond (far right) with their siblings in their later years.
The Kim family (Kim), from Castleton, WV, was born to a Chinese mother in Ballarat and a father from Guangdong Province, China. The Kim family had four sons who fought in World War II – Cyril, Raymond, Arthur and James – but only three came back alive.
Their niece, Katrina Kim-Worley, jokes that she is “the historian of the family” because she is the only one who is always curious to ask these uncles after they return from the war about all sorts of things that “no one ever asked them about
battlefield experiences.”
“My father died when I was very young,” Katrina said, “and I was fortunate to have good uncles and aunts, and our families are very close.” Of the four, she said Cyril (Loon Yaun Ming Kim) was closest to her.
Cyril was a private first class on a road train and marched with his unit from central Australia to Darwin during the war.
“His Australian comrades called him ‘Doc’ because he always took care of them when they were sick,” Katrina said.
“His troops were marching toward Darwin at the time. As night fell, he suddenly had a feeling to tell everyone to camp in a place less than Darwin. He told everyone to stop and not keep going, and they all thought ‘Doc’ was up to something here,” Katrina said.
“The next morning was the morning Darwin was bombed by the Japanese. If [the doctor] hadn’t stopped them, they’d all be on the port dock.”
Considered “Australia’s Pearl Harbor,” the Darwin air raid was the largest attack by foreign forces in Australian history.
The Kim family’s other son, Loon Jong Ming Kim, was the younger of his brothers and joined the Air Force when he was 18.
“He told me they were losing plane after plane like flies over Europe at the time, and he was sent to Benalla, where he learned to fly a Tiger Moth, which was a small plane,” Katrina said.
“He never had the opportunity to fly in combat during the war, but he was prepared for it. He said it was great to be a part of the whole big picture. He told me about all these things and tanks he flew, he went to New Guinea, he went to Canada, he went to London to help fly the planes …… He retired as a flight sergeant.”
Arthur (left) and Raymond joined the Australian Army and Air Force, respectively.
Another of Katrina’s uncles is Arthur Stanley (Loon Park Ming Kim), who is featured on the cover of the latest book, “Honor and Country. But unlike Cyril and Raymond, Arthur never talked about the war when he returned.
“He was sent on the Kokoda Trail, a long trek from Balikpapan to Sandakan. The only thing he ever said was that because he was Asian and was fighting Japanese soldiers, his biggest fear was that when he looked up, one of the soldiers in his own unit would shoot him,” Katrina said.
“He said he was scared because you have black hair, and that’s the first thing they would see. They didn’t wear those wide military hats, and he was very anxious about that.”
The only uncle who fought in World War II but whom Katrina never met was James King (Yan Cheuk Ming), who is also the King family’s most famous World War II warrior. During the war, James worked with the British Army’s Underground Aid Group in Hong Kong before being captured, tortured and later executed by the Japanese.
“He and his family went to China …… when he helped British prisoners of war and other Allied soldiers trapped in Japanese-occupied areas of China,” Katrina said.
James King wrote his will on the wall of his cell in Hong Kong before he was executed by the Japanese in 1943.
Before his execution, James wrote his will on the concrete wall of his cell in Hong Kong’s infamous Stanley Prison: “God bless my wife Annie and our babies, Diana, Edmund, Franklin, I love you all, dear, goodbye, Daddy Jim. on October 23, 1943.”
His youngest son was only 10 months old.
“He also kept a list of his cellmates and the dates they were executed,” Katrina said.
Today James lies at Stanley Military Cemetery, where he is commemorated by a headstone erected by the Commonwealth War Cemetery Commission. Today James lies at Stanley Military Cemetery, where he is commemorated by a headstone erected by the Commonwealth War Cemetery Commission.
Chinese-Australian contribution largely “invisible”
Australian historian Will Davies has written a book, The Forgotten, which examines an often overlooked part of Australian history – the sacrifices made by Chinese labor troops working for the British and French forces on the Western Front during World War I.
The sacrifices made. Australian historian Will Davies argues that the contribution of Chinese-Australians has gone largely unnoticed.
“I found these graves at the Commonwealth War Cemetery Commission’s Dernancourt Cemetery in France, over the wall and away from the graves of the Allied soldiers.
It seemed to me that they had been ‘forgotten,’ and I have been researching Chinese laborers ever since,” Dr. Davis said.
“I’ve written six books on World War I and, apart from Billy Sing and his sniping at Gallipoli, I don’t know about the Chinese-American soldiers in the Australian Army and their contribution, especially decorated soldiers like Caleb Shang,” Dr. Davies said.
More than 200 Chinese-Australians enlisted during World War I, despite the race-based recruitment policies of the time. But the exact number of these Australian soldiers of Chinese ancestry may never be known.
Darryl Low Choy, a fifth-generation Chinese-Australian from the northern Queensland town of Innisfail, served in the Army Reserve for more than 40 years, achieving the rank of major general before retiring. He says it shows Australia has always been a multicultural society.
“Regardless of your background, your race, your culture, your heritage, there is a natural tendency to be born in Australia, particularly among the Chinese in Australia, to voluntarily defend Australian values,” Maj. Gen. Lo Chua said.
Daryl Lo Chua served in the Army Reserve for more than 40 years and earned the rank of major general before retiring.
According to the book “Honor and Country,” eight Chinese-American soldiers from Victoria in World War I re-enlisted to serve Australia in World War II. Adil Soh Lim, one of the book’s co-authors, said in an interview that the book reveals that Chinese of all nationalities fought for Australia, most of them Australians, but also some from Malaya, China and Hong Kong.
“Nationality, race and dedication, these three are not necessarily the same,” Soh Lim Min Wee said.
“We don’t get to choose the environment we live in …… where you’re born, what family you’re born into, and where you’ll be when the world falls apart. But you can choose what you’re going to do and what you think is important.”
Major General Lo Chua, currently a retired professor emeritus at Griffith University, believes the contributions of Chinese-Australians have not been widely disseminated and that a great deal of research needs to be done in this area.
“I think what needs to be done is that the efforts, sacrifices and achievements of all Chinese-Australians to the development of Australia need to be widely disseminated. This includes, of course, those Chinese-Australians who enlisted to serve the country they were born into in World War I, World War II and other conflicts,” said Major General Lo Chua. The cost of war is “humanity”
Leung Kwok Cheung and Chan Kam Wan have a deep appreciation for war.
While Chan was teaching Morse code to Australian soldiers in Alice Springs during World War II, her husband, Kwok Cheung Maurice Leong, was mediating with the Japanese army 6,000 kilometers away in China.
“They had known each other before the war because the two families knew each other well. My father traveled between Australia and China. He joined World War II in China. My father actually had to flee Hong Kong at the time before the Japanese closed the port. Because as a member of the resistance, my father would have been captured and killed,” Leung Pak-hung said.
It was only after the war ended that they were reunited in Australia. Chan Kam Wan accepted a government offer of re-education to study for a master’s degree at the University of Melbourne. She then taught French at the University of Melbourne and Monash University for more than 30 years until her retirement.
“My father didn’t talk about World War II as much as my mother did. Because he saw what I know my mother didn’t see …… Mother didn’t have to fight. She didn’t have to pick up a gun. My father needed to,” Leung Pak Hung said.
But Leung Kwok-cheung, who lost most of his best college friends in the war, and Chan Kam-wan, who lived and died with many of his colleagues on the other end of the airwaves, share some deep and similar insights about war.
“The first thing is you never invade another country. You can’t do that. It’s not right. Secondly, unless it’s a war of liberation, war is totally wrong. It’s a terrible waste,” Leung Pak Hung said.
“The price paid is not just lives and money, but humanity,” he said.
It’s a terrible waste,” Leung Pak Hung said.
“The price paid is not just lives and money, but humanity,” he said.
Their expectation for their son, P.H. Leung, is that he will follow the same course.
“You have to fight for your own survival, you have to fight against a country that wants to do terrible things to you …… but to say you’re fighting for whatever political faction you have or you’re planning to invade another country, no, no, you can’t do that,”
Liang Bo Xiong said. In the Kim family, where four uncles who fought in the war are now dead, Katrina has compiled letters and photos documenting her uncles’ war experiences into a book titled My Kim Family History. Katrina and her closest uncle, Cyril.
“To understand the road ahead, we have to understand the past that was traveled. I think it’s important to take that history with us.
“A sense of pride, a sense that it’s a beautiful thing to be able to say ‘my family came from here’ or ‘my family has a great story.'” Letting children ‘remember’ their ancestors
Every year on ANZAC Day, Sydney native Peng Guangming and his wife visit the Australian Chinese Veterans Memorial on Dixon Street to lay a bouquet of flowers. He said the couple will do the same this Sunday.
“War shows the best and the worst of us,” Pang said.
A few years ago, Pang Guangming took his two teenage children to Gallipoli, Turkey, for the ANZAC Day World War I centennial commemoration. “Trying to stay awake in the cold all night” was only “a small part of what these brave souls suffered,” he said.
“I want my children to feel and experience what our young Australians went through in the First World War, in Gallipoli …… the wet, the cold, the hunger, being shot at and having to climb those steep hills.”
A few years ago, Pang Guangming took his two teenage children to Gallipoli, Turkey, for the ANZAC Day World War I centennial commemoration.
For Major General Lo Chua, ANZAC Day has been a busy day since he first participated in his hometown’s veterans parade as a Boy Scout in 1960.
Over the past 60 years, Maj. Gen. Lochai has attended morning prayer ceremonies around the country and been invited to speak at them. He would spend the day with fellow engineers who served with him in Brisbane’s Veterans Parade, and he enjoyed being invited to many schools to speak to children about the meaning of ANZAC Day.
“I’m pretty sure that you can tell by my facial features that it’s obvious I’m Chinese. I don’t think I have to say it myself, they can figure it out for themselves,” he said with a smile.
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