DOUBLE DUTY

When Chinese veterans like Roy Mah & Daniel Lee went to war, they weren't just fighting for democracy: they were battling for citizenship.

Photo by Dan Toulgoet

A group of aging, frail men sits in rows of plastic red chairs at Chinatown Memorial Square.

Their faces, lit by the afternoon sun, bear the lines of years of hardship and sorrow.

On this fall Sunday, however, these Chinese war veterans in their traditional navy-blue blazers, grey slacks and dark berets are finally having their day in the sun. More than 300 people have gathered to watch as a monument is unveiled to honour the veterans and long-forgotten Chinese railway workers of the late 19th century.

At its centre is a 20-foot high concrete column, flanked by a six-foot bronze casting of a soldier armed with a rifle, and a railway worker resting a shovel on his shoulder. At its base is a gold maple leaf relief.

It's a fitting tribute to the struggle veterans such as 85-year-old Roy Mah endured-not only as a soldier, but as a Canadian-born man who was not considered a citizen until he returned from World War II.

"We were fighting a war on two fronts," says Mah, a demolition expert during the war. "We were fighting to win the recognition as Canadian citizens, and we were fighting a foreign enemy to preserve democracy."

Prior to enlisting, Mah recalls being treated like a "second-class citizen" in Victoria and Vancouver, forced to attend a segregated school, sit in Chinese-only sections in movie theatres and being barred from city-owned swimming pools. A 1902 Royal Commission had described Chinese and Japanese immigrants as "unfit for full citizenship... obnoxious to a free community and dangerous to the state."

"We were the object of ridicule all the time. They called us 'Chink, Chink, Chinaman.' We were living in a racist society where the common saying at the time was, 'Oh, you don't have a Chinaman's chance.'"

Despite the prejudice they experienced, about 600 Chinese stepped up to enlist in World War II. Many, like Mah, were selected for special training because of their ability to blend in with the Asians in Japanese-occupied countries, and were dropped behind enemy lines to sabotage bridges and ammunition dumps belonging to the Japanese.

After struggling to be accepted in the air force, Daniel Lee, now 82, served as an aircraft mechanic in England, where he made and lost friends in the battlefields of Europe. Lee, too, was born in Canada.

"I was considered an alien back then. When people looked at me, I could sense they didn't like something. You'd have a bitter feeling inside."

By the time the Chinese soldiers returned to Canada after the war, things had changed. Mah attributes that to the fact the soldiers had proved their loyalty.

"The mood had altogether changed in the city. We were allowed to vote, work at government jobs-we had accomplished our goal."

Unlike Mah and Lee, however, fellow soldier Quan Louie never got to see his fellow Chinese become citizens, earn the right to vote or become doctors, lawyers and other high-ranking professionals.

Louie, a star soccer player with the University of B.C. in the early 1940s and one of nine sons of legendary grocer H.Y. Louie, was shot down over Germany on Jan. 16, 1945.

Three days later, the dreaded telegram from a Royal Canadian Air Force casualties officer arrived at his mother's doorstep in Chinatown. It began with, "We regret to advise..."

He was only 23.

Poring over a scrapbook in memory of his brother, 73-year-old Willis Louie recalls the day his mother received the telegram and read it to the family in their house on East Georgia Street.

Fifteen at the time, Willis-who'd last seen his brother at the train station when he left for war-was devastated by the news. His brother, his inspiration, was gone.

"We were all in tears, and felt a deep sense of loss," he says, noting that a special assembly was held at Britannia High School to remember Quan.

Serving as a bombardier aboard a Halifax bomber, Quan and four of his crewmates went down in flames in Bahrendorf, Germany, after an evening bombing raid.

Two other crew members, including air gunner Doug Jacobi, parachuted to safety, only to become prisoners of war. It wasn't until 1994, when Willis tracked down Jacobi in Ontario, that the Louie family learned more about that fateful night.

As Willis tells it from his kitchen table, with the help of a model Halifax bomber, the night 420 "Snowy Owl" Squadron left its base on the northeast coast of England for Germany, a storm was raging.

The crew had already flown 16 successful missions, with Quan taking his position in the glass enclosure at the nose of the plane, and Jacobi at the rear.

Because of the storm, the crew was forced to turn on its running lights, making the plane a target. Enemy flak was heavy as they dropped bombs over Magdeburg, Germany, before turning back for Tholthorpe air base.

Quan's crew, however, had been trailing the other Allied bombers and came under heavy ground fire from the Germans. The four-engine hulk of a plane got hit hard at the nose, forcing Jacobi to bail out of his turret, and air gunner Ted Lynch to slide out a trap door near the rear.

Seventy-nine-year-old Jacobi, who now lives in Niagara Falls, Ont., says the force of the anti-aircraft shells instantly sent the bomber into a nose dive, with only seconds before it crashed.

"There was no opportunity for any of them at the front of the plane to do anything. Everything happened so fast, and when you're going down nose first, centrifugal force is working against you. It was a horrible thing."

Lynch died about five years ago, leaving Jacobi as the only surviving member of what he described as a tight-knit crew. Though Quan was the only Chinese member, and non-Canadian citizen, Jacobi says he wasn't treated any differently.

"He was certainly accepted as an equal in the crew. He was a very modest, smart man, that's all. But I've got to say it was pretty goddamn disgraceful how the Chinese were treated back then, when you consider what men like Quan did for this country."

Quan was one of three Louie boys to serve in the war. Ed, who didn't see any combat, served six months in the U.S. army, and Ernie parachuted behind enemy lines in Malaysia as a member of a Canadian special operations force.

All three were born in Vancouver, and despite the presence of anti-Chinese leagues and a racist government, they all thought it was their duty to take up arms.

"This is our home and native land," says Willis, noting the B.C. government honoured Quan's service in 1996 by naming a small lake, north of the Capilano watershed, after him. "We're all very proud of what my brothers did."

Quan was the only casualty of the three and is buried in the Berlin War Cemetery, grave 20, plot five, row G. Willis visited the grave site in 1985, and stopped by the decaying control tower at Tholthorpe air base in England to etch his brother's name.

"I had to go there just to see those places. It was so emotional, I cried like a baby," he says, flipping through the photographs of his journey. "But like one of my other brothers once said, 'Quan was born a Canadian, served as a Canadian and died as a Canadian.' You can't do much better than that. Really, you can't."

Roy Mah never met Quan Louie, but knows his story well.

As he recalls, not many Chinese died during the war, but all were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for Canada.

That sentiment was most evident in 1943 at a boisterous meeting in a Chinatown church, where about 100 young Chinese men proudly announced they would volunteer to fight.

It was a morale boost for Mah and others who believed the Canadian government could no longer ignore the basic rights of the Chinese and their contribution to the country.

"We were on our way," says Mah, who now lives in Yaletown, "and knew when we came back, we would have solid credentials to demand to become citizens."

Like Ernie Louie, Mah's service overseas involved commando work.

On loan to the British Army, Mah-who became a sergeant because of his reserve and officer training-led the first 109-man contingent to England and India for demolition and communications training.

Sri Lanka-then called Ceylon-became the launching pad for Force 136, where groups of six men would parachute into Singapore, Burma and Malaysia to blow up bridges, train tracks, communication lines and ammunition dumps.

The high-risk, secretive work meant each soldier had to be equipped with cyanide pills, which they were ordered to take if captured by the enemy.

Mah was about to sneak into one of the occupied countries on his first mission when the United States dropped the bomb on Japan, ending the war.

Two years later, largely because of the efforts of the Chinese soldiers overseas, Canada repealed the hated Chinese Exclusion Act, which had stopped Chinese immigration to Canada for 18 years.

Chinese-Canadians were finally allowed to vote, were officially recognized as citizens and even allowed to run for political office, as veteran Douglas Jung did in 1957, becoming MP for Vancouver Centre.

When Mah returned to Vancouver, he and a couple of friends started The New Citizen newspaper to continue to fight for civil rights of the Chinese. The paper lasted about four years, after which Mah launched The Chinatown News, a now defunct English newsmagazine.

Now journalists are writing about Mah, whose contributions to the country and society were recognized in June with the Order of British Columbia-a proud moment for an Edmonton-born kid.

"Looking back, I'm satisfied with what I've done."

Daniel Lee, at five-foot-six and weighing "less than a jockey," is trying on the old Royal Canadian Air Force jacket he keeps on a hanger in his East Side basement.

"I haven't gained a damn pound, it still fits," he says, smiling.

He'd wanted to join the air force since he was six years old, when he listened to a radio broadcast of the famous 1927 Charles Lindbergh flight from New York to Paris. "My imagination of what I could be took over from then."

After attending Trapp Technical School in New Westminster, where he was taught by officers of the Royal Westminster Regiment, he attempted to enlist in the air force in 1940, but was rejected.

"They said, 'We'll let you know.' But I didn't hear a damn thing. I knew exactly why-I was Chinese."

Determined to work with planes, Lee moved to Toronto in 1941 and attended Central Technical School, where he earned a diploma in advanced aircraft maintenance.

A year later, the government allowed Chinese to enlist in the air force, and Lee quickly moved up through the ranks to become an aircraft mechanic with the 168th Heavy Transport Squadron.

He went overseas in November 1944, and was stationed in Kent, England, where he would hear the daily "doodle bugs"-German flying bombs-screaming overhead.

"As soon as the whining stopped, then watch out-that's when they came down."

Lee is easily recognizable as the only Chinese male in a black and white photograph of 29 recruits taken at an Ontario training school, just before he went overseas.

Lee says his fellow soldiers treated him with respect-it was the government, not the servicemen, that was the problem.

"We didn't talk about that stuff. The other guys just said, 'You must be good if you made the grade.'"

During his training, he kept in touch with school friend Norman Gillis, who was already stationed overseas. The last letter he sent to Gillis is now on display in Chinatown's military museum.

"They sent it back to me, and right on the front of it some air force person wrote 'killed.' That was it. No explanation, just 'killed.' I felt rotten about that for a long time."

On a back wall of Lee's basement hangs a framed proclamation marking the creation of Pacific Unit 280, formed by a group of about 160 Chinese veterans in Vancouver in 1947.

About 60 are left, many in their 80s and in ailing health. Fourteen have died in the past two years, according to a newsletter of the Chinese Canadian Military Museum Society.

For Lee, who is the unit's president, the loss of veterans and their stories is accompanied by a sense of sadness. He strongly believes that younger generations-and even many new immigrants-don't know about the Chinese veterans' role in the war, or seem to care.

That was driven home this summer for Lee when squatters chose Victory Square to set up a tent city. Lee confronted some of them. "I told them I never had their freedom when I was young, and I told them to get off their butts."

On the verge of tears, he says, "I did my part. Not enough people are doing theirs. It's like John F. Kennedy said, 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.'"

Back at Chinatown Memorial Square, a large red drape covering the monument has been lifted so spectators can see the figures of the soldier and railway worker.

On behalf of the veterans, Roy Mah shuffles slowly to a microphone in the shadows of the monument. In a clear voice, with the simple, effective style of an accomplished journalist, Mah speaks of the significance of this day. Lee and the 30 or so vets seated in the first few rows fix their gazes on Mah, as his voice echoes off buildings surrounding the square.

"This is the dream we were fighting for. The statue, symbolizing this dream, will stand as a constant reminder of the tremendous struggles and sacrifices the railroad workers and the Chinese-Canadian veterans had made to ensure that this country, this province and this city is a better place in which to live."

Applause follows him as he returns to his seat, where he folds his hands and glances up at the large Chinese characters on the monument's column, which translate, in part, to "Chinese-Canadian pioneers shining as bright as the sun and the moon."