Chinese-Canadians’ determination to serve in the Second World War was nothing short of remarkable given the situation they faced at the time. But they persevered due to their strong patriotism for Canada, and came home to win the rights they had been denied for so long.
After Canada entered World War II, a debate raged in the Chinese community as to whether joining up to go fight was the right thing to do given the racial policies in place at the time.
Even Chinese-Canadians born here were not recognized as citizens—they had no right to vote and were banned from entering the professions—and the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act with its punitive head tax was in full force.
There were two sides to the debate. One view was that volunteering for military service would prove Chinese-Canadians’ loyalty to Canada and win them the right to citizenship, while the other was a reluctance to fight for a country that denied them equal rights.
Victoria-born Douglas Jung was in the first camp. In the documentary “I am the Canadian Delegate,” Jung says he knew it was imperative to join up if Chinese-Canadians were to gain legal status down the road.
“Some of us realized that unless we volunteered to serve Canada in its hour of need, we would be in a very difficult position to demand our rights as citizens because the Canadian government could say to us, ‘What did you do during the war? When everybody else was off fighting for Canada, what did you do?’”
But some who tried to enlist were not accepted, and the situation was similar for the First World War, when some Chinese-Canadians were turned away from recruiting stations—particularly in British Columbia, where racism against Chinese was widespread.
“In B.C. especially it was very anti-Asian, but some of those who lived further away or over in Alberta—they were able to join up,” says King Wan, president of the Chinese Canadian Military Museum Association.
