Bill Chong Story — page 3

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"That became one of the turning points. The Canadian government eased up and took in Chinese Canadians in 1942."

By this time, Bill Chong was already behind Japanese lines, spying for the British.

Chong had been in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded in December, 1941.

"My sister wrote me saying, 'We're disposing of my [late] father's property in Canton, China,' " explains Chong, who was born and raised in Vancouver's Chinatown. "So I went back and got caught in the middle of the war. The Japanese occupied Hong Kong and I couldn't go back to Canton."

The Japanese army was brutally repressive when it took over Hong Kong. Chong witnessed a Japanese officer killing a Canadian soldier in cold blood on the street.

"I had seen so much of the war in Hong Kong I was full of hate," he said. "I had seen how the Japanese killed people, killed Canadians without any cause. They'd just shoot anybody they want, they'd shoot people left and right.

"I said, 'I've got to do something about this.' I felt like getting a gun and just going out and shooting a few Japanese [soldiers]. So I escaped to China to join the British army."

At first he thought he would become a guerrilla fighter, but an Australian named Lindsay Ride convinced him he would be more valuable doing intelligence work. His code name was Agent 50.

"We didn't have any communications; we had to use the Chinese telegraph office," he relates.

"Every time I'd send a message back, they wanted me to include the word 50. I'd write I was going back for my mother's 50th birthday, I'm waiting for transportation, things like that. Then they understood it was from me. If I had some escapees, I said I had three cattle, three escapees."

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