{"id":2164,"date":"2016-04-15T18:59:12","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T01:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/?page_id=2164"},"modified":"2026-01-29T15:14:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:14:25","slug":"harden-lee","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/veteran-stories\/army\/harden-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"Harden Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harden Lee was born in Vancouver on March 16, 1924. He was just a kid — barely in his 20s and working in his sister’s grocery store — when he responded to a\u00a0letter\u00a0from the Canadian Army asking him to report for duty.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/p>\n

Lee was first assigned to basic training in Chilliwack, B.C.. There\u00a0he joined a number of other young Chinese-Canadian men who are getting ready to do a very special assignment:loaned to the British Army, dropped behind Japanese lines, and seek out and assist local resistance movements. In other words, become commando soldiers in\u00a0Force 136 and be assigned to South East Asia.<\/p>\n

It did not take long for Lee to\u00a0realize he had signed up for a dangerous mission. Some said it would be a suicide mission given the ferocious reputation of the Japanese Army.<\/p>\n

\"Harden

Harden Lee’s booklet<\/p><\/div>\n

Many\u00a0of the young Chinese Canadian men trained in\u00a0Chilliwack were shipped to India. However, for some reason, Lee was selected to join a group already training in Australia. This original group, who were the first recruits of Force 136, were known as the Operation Oblivion men or the “Kendall men” (the name of the\u00a0British Major who recruited them). Before Lee\u00a0left for the continent “down under,” he and his fellow recruits\u00a0spent a few glorious days in San Francisco where they\u00a0captured some fun moments on a streetcar.<\/p>\n

\"Harden

Harden Lee (far right) on a San Francisco streetcar with his friends including Ed Fong, Hank Chang and Dick Lam.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lee took a ship\u00a0across the Pacific and continued his intensive, commando-style training on Fraser Island, off the east coast of\u00a0Australia. Part of that training focused on surviving in the jungle and living off of whatever plants, animals or insects they came across.<\/p>\n

Lee’s daughter clearly remembers her father talking about experimenting with\u00a0new food sources.\u00a0“To be sure we could survive in the jungle without any support, he\u00a0learned to eat raw grubs and other insects. They also gave my father\u00a0a book on jungle plants so he\u00a0knew what was edible … and what could make him\u00a0sick or kill him.”<\/p>\n

The many photos Lee’s\u00a0family shared with our museum suggests he\u00a0and his friends had a good time. Certainly there was\u00a0lots of tough training, but also lighter moments playing tennis, going to the cinema, buying souvenirs, mugging for the camera, etc.<\/p>\n

\"Harden

Harden Lee (second from left) enjoys a break playing tennis.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Harden

Harden Lee in Australia<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Harden

Harden Lee playing with a Japanese sword (Australia 1945)<\/p><\/div>\n

Sadly, Harden Lee left this world on May 26, 2002. Fortunately, for our museum, Lee never threw anything out. We thank Harden Lee’s family for loaning us photos and precious artifacts to help tell the Force 136 story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harden Lee was born in Vancouver on March 16, 1924. He was just a kid — barely in his 20s and working in his sister’s grocery store — when he responded to a\u00a0letter\u00a0from the Canadian Army asking him to report for duty. Lee was first assigned to basic training in Chilliwack, B.C.. There\u00a0he joined a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2174,"parent":594,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-nosidebar.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2164","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","post-preview"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2354,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2164\/revisions\/2354"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}