{"id":706,"date":"2011-10-16T21:58:29","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T04:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ccmm.sodadesign.com\/?page_id=706"},"modified":"2026-01-29T15:33:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:33:36","slug":"ronald-lee","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/veteran-stories\/army\/ronald-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"Ronald Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ronald Lee of British Columbia was born March 4, 1919. He was one of five boys who grew up in Vancouver’s Chinatown. To\u00a0help raise money for the family, as a kid he delivered the Vancouver Sun<\/em> newspaper in Chinatown each morning. He also recalls street rumbles on Pender Street between caucasian and Chinese youth, and can remember the location of famous Chinatown nightclubs like the Marco Polo.<\/p>\n

Like so many other\u00a0Chinese Canadian men, Lee\u00a0was initially “shown the back door”\u00a0when\u00a0he tried to enlist in the Army at the outbreak of the Second World War. \u00a0It was only after the Japanese bombed\u00a0Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and started an aggressive and successful campaign\u00a0for territory in South East Asia, that things changed for Chinese Canadians.<\/p>\n

Their ability to speak Chinese and to seamlessly blend\u00a0in to the communities of South East Asia made them perfect for sabotage and intelligence gathering.<\/p>\n

Lee\u00a0was\u00a0selected for Force 136 – a special unit that came under British intelligence. He found himself on an adventure of a lifetime doing basic training in Chilliwack and travelling to England, Cairo, Bombay, Calcutta and Ceylon (known today at Sri Lanka).<\/p>\n

He was trained in guerrilla warfare tactics, and\u00a0specialized\u00a0as a wireless operator. Lee’s\u00a0kit included an opium pill (for trading) and a cyanide pill in case he was captured.<\/p>\n

While waiting in an airport for his deployment into Japanese-occupied Burma, the U.S. detonated an atomic bomb over Hiroshima and then Nagasaki. Lee\u00a0recalls he breathed a sigh of relief.\u00a0There was a good chance that had he been parachuted into\u00a0Burma, he would have not survived.<\/p>\n

Ronald passed away a few months short of his 102nd birthday.<\/p>\n

Read\u00a0this\u00a0feature story on Ronald that appeared in\u00a0the Globe & Mail<\/a>\u00a0November 2021.<\/p>\n

Read\u00a0a\u00a0Vancouver Sun story<\/a>\u00a0(from Nov 9\/15) on his wonderful life.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Ronald<\/a>

Ronald Lee (middle) with his mother and siblings.<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ronald Lee of British Columbia was born March 4, 1919. He was one of five boys who grew up in Vancouver’s Chinatown. To\u00a0help raise money for the family, as a kid he delivered the Vancouver Sun newspaper in Chinatown each morning. He also recalls street rumbles on Pender Street between caucasian and Chinese youth, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1412,"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-706","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\/706","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3654,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/706\/revisions\/3654"}],"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\/1412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccmms.ca\/staging\/9619\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}