{"id":3612,"date":"2020-12-14T20:36:41","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T04:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/?page_id=3612"},"modified":"2026-01-29T16:17:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T00:17:44","slug":"william-wone-aka-billy-der","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/veteran-stories\/army\/william-wone-aka-billy-der\/","title":{"rendered":"William Wone (aka Billy Der)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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William Wone (whose real name was Der Ying Thin) was born in China and came to Canada as a \u201cpaper son.\u201d During the early 1900s the Canadian government passed every\u00a0tightening\u00a0immigration acts designed to slow down and even\u00a0halt Chinese immigration. One way of getting into Canada was to buy papers from a deceased person\u2019s family. As the story goes, when William was a teenager, his family paid $1,000 dollars to buy the papers of a deceased William Wone who was about the same age.<\/p>

Upon clearing immigration as a paper son, Bub, as he was called, settled in Luseland, near Saskatoon. He lived with some close relatives who had a restaurant business. Although he knew no English when he arrived, he managed to complete Grade 8. At the time, many children left school after they finished the\u00a08th grade and went to work.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Bub\u00a0loved to play soccer and recalled shoving newspapers into the toes of his too-large soccer boots. His children would later recall that he had\u00a0well-defined soccer calf muscles\u00a0right\u00a0into his 70\u2019s.\u00a0Bub was also a\u00a0very good bowler and ping pong player.<\/p>

Bub proudly served in the Canadian\u00a0armed forces during WW II and was stationed in India. He was\u00a0a member of a special unit called Force 136, which was under British command. The young men of Force 136 were trained in jungle survival and commando-type warfare. Their missions involved going into the jungle in Japanese-occupied territories of Southeast Asia, and working with local resistance fighters to conduct espionage and sabotage. Since Bub\u00a0was Asian and would speak\u00a0Chinese fluently,\u00a0the British knew he could easily blend in with local residents.<\/p>

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William Wone (aka Billy Der) is in the first row, fifth from the right.<\/p><\/div>

Bub\u2019s picture and name appear in the book by Marjorie Wong called The Dragon and the Maple Leaf<\/em>. In this book, which focuses on Chinese Canadians in the Second World War,\u00a0Bub is listed in the index as William Wone, L\/Cpl CIC India (his paper son name).\u00a0However, in a grainy group picture taken in Toronto, in the summer of 1945, his name is recorded as Billy Der (his real birth family name).<\/p>

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Throughout his life, Bub remained proud of his role in the war and how his service helped to win full citizenship for every Chinese in Canada. Every Remembrance Day he would faithfully put on his uniform and march with other veterans in Vancouver.<\/p>

In 1962, the former soldier had the opportunity to seek amnesty for coming to Canada under someone else\u2019s papers. He chose not to be among the 12,000 paper sons\u00a0who sought\u00a0amnesty.<\/p>

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William Wone (whose real name was Der Ying Thin) was born in China and came to Canada as a \u201cpaper son.\u201d During the early 1900s the Canadian government passed every\u00a0tightening\u00a0immigration acts designed to slow down and even\u00a0halt Chinese immigration. One way of getting into Canada was to buy papers from a deceased person\u2019s family. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3613,"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-3612","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\/3612","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=3612"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5795,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3612\/revisions\/5795"}],"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\/3613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}