Description
Mr. Wong talks about how the Chinese supported each other, and how they were just beginning operations when the war in Japan ended. He speaks about how the atomic bomb probably saved his life.
Victor Eric Wong
Mr Wong was born in Victoria, BC and enlisted in 1944 at the age of 18. He went overseas to fight in China after training at Camp Shiloh in Manitoba. He was a rifleman with the Special Operative Executive that fought in Burma and was trained in guerilla warfare.
Transcript
So we were just good buddies, everybody, we just met people from the Chinese from across Canada, lots of them we never knew and we met them and we were all buddies and we. Just like anybody else I guess, we had to look after each other. Matter of fact, as I said to start this conversation with you, those were the best times of my life. This is where it all started, this Special Operative Executive (SOE), under Kendall and he apparently started with 13 to start with, you know, from British Columbia and I think they trained in Penticton, in the Okanagan and Douglas Jung was one of them. He is the first Chinese member of parliament for the conservative government, he was one of the boys that was in that group. Well right after that we finished, just towards the end of the war, just before the end of the war that's when we were knowledgeable to go in and groups were flying in there already, you know, lucky nobody got killed or anything, because it was not long after then that the war ended, when they, they dropped the atomic bomb. That really saved our life, I think if it wasn't for the bomb I think we would be all dead and if the Japanese caught us, we would be just, you know, they're won't be any Geneva rule about us, you know, we'd be shot on the spot, because we were actually spies in that sense.