THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S THANKS TO HUNDREDS OF CHINESE SEAMEN FOR SERVING IN BRITHISH SHIPS DURING WW2.

A sad story just come to light.

26-01-2006

Memorial aims to soothe 60 years of families' agony

(Daily Post (Liverpool) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)

CHINESE merchant seamen who served Britain during both world wars were honoured in a moving ceremony at Liverpool's Pier Head yesterday.

Among those commemorated in the plaque were the hundreds of Chinese seamen who, exactly 60 years ago, were forcibly repatriated to their native land after being recruited to help keep the vital Atlantic sea lanes open during World War II.

They were sent back to China despite settling in Liverpool and starting families.

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From the China news agencey

    LIVERPOOL, Britain, Jan. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- It was freezing at the seafront. But for many of the dozens of people gathering here on Monday afternoon in the Pier Head of Britain's port city along the Atlantic, it was a warming moment long overdue.
    A plaque dedicated to the memory of Chinese seamen who had served in British merchant fleet during the first and second World War was unveiled about half a century too late, thanks to the persistent efforts of a group calling themselves "Dragons of the Pool" -- children of the Chinese seamen who had married local British during the war years.

    This piece of history is indeed largely unknown not only to the British but also to the Chinese.

    Liverpool saw the first Chinese merchant sailors in 1850s, when the then Alfred Holt & Co. established its shipping line from Shanghai to Liverpool and recruited Chinese sailors, making the China Town in Liverpool Europe's oldest.

    During the Second World War, according to the book "Friendship Arch A celebration of Liverpool and Shanghai", compiled by Cities500 International Publishers, Liverpool became the headquarters of the Western Approaches that monitored the Atlantic, guarding the crucial lifelines on the sea.

    After years of arduous warfare and lost ships and crews, the British merchant navy started recruiting sailors from its allies across the world and Liverpool thus was turned into a reserve pool for Chinese merchant sailors, with up to 20,000 registered sailors at one point coming from China's Shanghai, Ningbo, Shandong, Hong Kong and Singapore.

    Thousands of the Chinese sailors lost their lives to the Atlantic during attacks from German submarines and as part of the British fleet, the Chinese sailors played an important role to Britain's victory in the war.

    After the war, however, due to the ongoing fights on the domestic front between China and Japan, the Chinese sailors could not be repatriated as stipulated in their two-year contract and had to stay on shore in Liverpool to scrape a living with the pitiful Chinese-standard salary.

About 300 sailors married or cohabited with local girls, giving births to about 900 Eurasian children.

    In September 1945, however, as documents from the Public Record Office in Kew indicated, the British government started the repatriation.

Although most of the sailors were willing to return to China, some who had families in Liverpool were not given an opportunity to stay as the law prescribed. More than 200 were forcefully repatriated in a two-day period leaving behind devastated wives and children believing they were abandoned.

    It was not until 2002 when the British Broadcasting Corporation ran a documentary program on the repatriation incident did it occur to the dragons and their families that they were by no means deserted by the sailors.

    "Giving respect to my ancestors is very important to me. You can't know you where you are going until you know where you come. Knowing the truth is a very positive thing for me. It changed the whole psyche. I'm very proud to be Chinese and British," said Barbara, one of the dragons who flied all the way from Canada to attend the event.

    The words both in English and Chinese on the plaque read:

    "To the Chinese Merchant Seaman who served this country well during both World Wars.

    For those who gave their lives to this country - thank you.

    To the many Chinese Merchant Seamen who after both World Wars were required to leave.

    For their wives and partners who were left in ignorance of what happened to their men.

    For the children who never knew their fathers.

    This is a small reminder of what took place.

    We hope nothing like it will ever happen again. For your Memory."

    In between the Chinese and English verses is "peace" in larger Chinese version. The dark-marble plaque placed on the wall faces out into the sea while not far behind it, is the India Building which used to house the Alfred Holt & Co. , employer of the Chinese sailors during the war times.

    "Isn't it beautiful?" asked Val, a "dragon" who is lucky enough to have her dad's photo and his letter to her mom shortly after his repatriation.

    "It's stunning," marveled Barbara, caressing the words on the plaque, tears streaming out helplessly.

    Up to now, Barbara doesn't know where her dad was from although she happened to keep a wedding photo of her dad's brother.

    "I will not rest until I find the truth," she said.

    Yvonne Foley, leader of the group, has known from the pieces of information from her mom that her dad was from the French quarter in Shanghai, but like the others has nothing left written in Chinese, which makes the search extremely difficult.

    "I can't shut up about the great injustice done to our fathers.Today we dedicate a memorial to all of them and to an event that has affected the lives of so many of us here," she added.

    To the dozens "Dragons of the Pool" and their family, the plaque is, as Yvonne put it, "a reward and sadness", for when they just started to know about they fathers, most of them have passed away.

    "We are now all in our 60s. We don't want the history to slip away, nor do we want our children and grandchildren to forget it,"she said.

    Starting from last March, Yvonne and her husband Charles have been doing research on the history of Chinese sailors in Britain, before exchanging information with other "dragons". "Most of the files had been destroyed in the war or by other natural disasters.What we are now doing is to piece together the history and hopefully put it in a book when time is ripe," said Yvonne.

    Meanwhile, the "Dragons of the Pool" appealed to Chinese historians and individuals with any information to contact them, working together to retrieve this unknown British-Chinese history. 

A number of children from these unions - who grew up never knowing their fathers - have now formed themselves into an eight-strong group called the Dragons of the Pool to ensure the seamens' contribution is not forgotten, and to draw attention to this murky episode from after the war.

Some of those attending yesterday's unveiling at the Pier Head had travelled from as far afield as Shanghai and Canada to be at the event.

Dragons of the Pool member Yvonne Foley, whose father was one of the Chinese merchant seamen who started a family with a Liverpool woman but was then sent back to the Far East, said: "We all grew up not knowing our fathers.

"They had served this country but then they were not needed any more and were surplus to requirements.

"They were sent back in the baggage-holds of ships, which was a terrible thing to happen after they had risked their lives for this country.

As a result of Home Office policy of the time, families were broken up and many of the British-born wives and children left behind became destitute, some women even thought of suicide as a way out of their misery. Others remarried and tried to forget the past. Many believed their husbands had deserted them and, for years, explained away their embarrassment by claiming they had drowned at sea.

The truth is much harsher and more brutal.

From October 1945 to July 1946, hundreds of Chinese sailors were rounded up, largely in Liverpool - quite a few at night by crack squads of police led by Special Branch - and repatriated.

In reality, almost 5,000 were sent back to China under specially altered directives that affected their landing rights.
Their children - at least 450 - were told little of their fathers, or that they were dead or had left, others were adopted by strangers who knew nothing of their background. Their early lives were cloaked in mystery and confusion.

"The unveiling of this memorial plaque is a very special event for many of us today and will remind us of the role the Chinese merchant seamen played."

Speaking at yesterday's ceremony, Liverpool-based actor and film-maker David Yip said: "This month, 60 years ago, the first ships left Liverpool taking away the fathers of hundreds of the children of that community.

"We hope that the strengthening of the relationship with China, and particularly with Shanghai, will be the real memorial to the sad events that took place on the waterfront all those years ago." Among those who laid wreaths were Sing Zaywoo, who had travelled from Shanghai and is one of the oldest surviving seafarers, and the Chinese Vice Consul General Wu Yangyu.

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A second memorial plaque for the seamen is due to be placed in the heart of Liverpool's Chinatown in August.

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A memo locked away for decades in the Public Record Office in Kew - amongst a fascinating archive that reveals the shocking depth and extent of the iniquity - dated November 9 1945 reads: "I am directed by the Secretary of State to say that, with the ending of the war against Japan, deportation to China is likely to become possible before long and the Ministry of Transport will shortly be making available transport for the repatriation of Chinese now in this country."

After the war, most returned to China, but around 2,000 settled in Liverpool. It has become clear from the records that the authorities wanted the Chinese population in the city to be reduced to its pre-war level of about 300.

Home Office files were unearthed in the national Public Records Office by Maria Lin Wong, author of Chinese Liverpudlians and the Liverpool-born son of a Shanghai sailor, Keith Cocklin, and more recently Yvonne Foley, herself the prodigy of a Shanghai man, and her husband Charles who took up the investigative baton from Mr Cocklin. They opened the flood gates on the story which awakened dark memories for so many others. .

A few years ago, Keith took part in a BBC Radio Merseyside phone-in, where he made a public appeal for others to get in touch.

DURING the programme, fragments of information came pouring in, helping the jigsaw to take shape.

"I was amazed at the response," says Keith. "Some told how they thought their fathers had drowned at sea and one woman even told of the late night police raids to 'lift' the seamen who were living in Liverpool and to transport them to ships sailing to China."

Many of those anxious to trace their roots are still chasing their dreams but Keith's quest has ended in a spectacular fashion. Sadly, his father - whom he hoped was still alive - died a few years ago in Shanghai.

But he has finally found in China's most dynamic city his younger half-brother and two half-sisters, born after his father returned to China and remarried: a family he had only heard about in whispers.

It is, he says, a joyous discovery but also an emotional rollercoaster. As he dug deeper into his past, Keith found that his seagoing father - an engineer with the famous Alfred Holt Shipping Line, known as Blue Funnel, which had operated the fabled China Boats - had been one of those ruthlessly rounded up and sent back to China.

But there are even deeper wounds to heal as he was also told that, in 1950, his father, Soo Kwai Dong, had tried to send for him.

He had met a Chinese sailor from Liverpool in Shanghai who told him about his son in Britain. "He gave the man £200 - an enormous sum then in China, and Britain - to persuade my mother to let me go. She didn't and it was never talked about, although I had overheard something being discussed.

"But I was only five and it was brushed over for years. It was only in my teens that I had this burning desire to find out the truth."

It was the same mission that drove Yvonne Foley, who first learned of the facts after the BBC documentary and she became determined to trace her own background.

"My interest was stirred by that programme and I met Keith. We agreed to help each other. He gave me the names of others and there are now about nine of us. We have called ourselves the Dragons of the Pool," says Yvonne,, who has actually lived in Hong Kong and visited China many times. In many ways, the "dragons" are now a family forged out of a shared heartache.

In the wake of these post war deportations came awful distress and even attempted suicides amongst broken, distraught families: women who had no idea where their men had gone, some believing they had deserted them while generations of children never knew their fathers or their true bloodlines.

Official records show that more than 230 married Chinese sailors were given no choice or chance to say goodbye to loved ones.

THE families of those courageous seafarers grieve to this day that they thought their fathers had abandoned them and only found out too late - when most were dead - that they hadn't.
Until today, there has never been any hint of rehabilitation or even an apology to the children and grandchildren of these men and, of course, most of those responsible are long turned to dust.
 
The epilogue to this astonishing story goes to Keith Cocklin who says: " I was saddened when I found out the truth, as all these men ever wanted was to settle in Liverpool. But I am not angry now. It is a part of my life and like the others, my life is moving on to a new chapter, hopefully a happier one with a new found family in China."