Just Like one of the Guys!

I just act as if I was a white guy. As a matter of fact the fellow that got to be a good friend, Morgan Freyder from Nanaimo, he was sometimes quite forgetful but he was smart enough guy. If we go on a manoeuvre and we generally have a hot meal, and he would forget his mess tin or something, so he would come up with me and we would go up to the chef there or whoever was dishing out the food, can we have two portions, share out of the same can, so sometimes I give him a spoon or a fork or whatever. We ate out of the same can just like brothers, you know, no discrimination at all. But we didn’t’ realize it was so bad; some of them tried to join up they refused them because they were Chinese. A lot of them tried to join the air force they wouldn’t accept them but then it got later on when they needed some people that could speak Chinese and all that to blend with the natives in Burma to go and try to work behind the Japanese line. I think the force was called 136 and they had, you know, radio training and all that stuff and close combat. And apparently what they did was each of those guys were issued a cyanide pill and if they were captured better swallow it because the Japanese were going to torture you anyway, torture and kill you. As far as I was concerned when I joined up discrimination was farthest from my mind especially in Victoria. Victoria was supposed to be bad because it’s a very rich colony, B.C., Victoria. As far as I was concerned, you know, there was nothing like that at all, I was just one of the guys.