Simon Morris
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Britain treated Chinese seamen as heroes when it needed their help to defeat Nazi Germany, but after the war it classed them as 'undesirables' and forcibly and secretly repatriated them. Their traumatised families still want answers.
"My Dad was deprived of love for the first ten years of his life by a government decision."
From heroes to 'undesirables'
If the Second World War was won by the side with the most resources, then it was won by seafarers in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans as much as by soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, or the towns of Belgium.
If enough weapons, food and men could make it across the Atlantic to Britain - and to its Russian ally - Nazi Germany could be defeated. If the U-boats and Luftwaffe could sink enough British ships carrying those supplies, Hitler had a hope of victory.
An excerpt from 'Escorts at work', a British wartime film about the vital role of the North Atlantic convoys and the dangers from U-boats.
An excerpt from 'Escorts at work', a British wartime film about the vital role of the North Atlantic convoys and the dangers from U-boats.
But with many of its own sailors fighting in the Royal Navy, Britain needed thousands of mariners from across the world to crew the vital merchant ships. Many came from the British Empire, but more than one in seven of the men who braved the U-boats, storms and freezing conditions was Chinese.
"Shoulder-to-shoulder in the greatest battle of naval history alongside their British seamen comrades,” was how the Chinese sailors' role was depicted in a 1944 British official information film which can still be found in the archives of the Imperial War Museum in London,
“They too, brave the torpedoes the bombs and the mines, making history under fire,” it told its viewers.
Watch an excerpt of the film below.
'Part of 'The Chinese in Britain' - a wartime film made by the British government.
'Part of 'The Chinese in Britain' - a wartime film made by the British government.
You can almost hear the same clipped tones of the film's narrator mouthing the phrase "Compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen," when civil servants held a secret meeting in Britain's Home Office, the following year, just a few months after the war had ended.
That was the title they gave to the file setting out a policy that ignored all that talk of courage and camaraderie.
The brave Chinese seaman standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their British comrades were no longer making history. They were being written out of it.
You can almost hear those same clipped tones of the film's narrator mouthing the phrase "Compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen," when civil servants held a secret meeting in Britain's Home Office just the following year.
That was the title they gave to the file setting out a policy that ignored all that talk of courage and camaraderie.
The brave Chinese seaman standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their British comrades were no longer making history. They were being written out of it.
File HO 213/926
The file can be found in Britain's National Archives, in Kew in south west London, not far from the famous Royal Botanic Gardens.
File HO 213/926 (the ‘HO’ refers to the British Home Office) is a slim, worn and stained folder containing barely more than 50 pages of minutes, memoranda, reports and correspondence, some typed and some handwritten.
But in those few pages you can see unfolding the process which effectively obliterated the memory of the Chinese seamen’s contribution to the war effort, abruptly upended the lives of thousands of them and inflicted a trauma on hundreds of British-born women and children which is still being experienced today, nearly eighty years later.
"He was deprived of love for the first ten years of his life by a government decision,” is how Kellie-Ann Flower describes the impact on her father Brian, whose own father was one of the many repatriated.
Key meeting
The file documents that decision in action. It starts with a meeting on October 19 1945, attended by 13 men from the Home Office, the immigration department, Liverpool Police, Foreign Office and the Ministry of War Transport.
The note sets out the ‘problem’: the number of Chinese had grown from a few hundred before the war into thousands; Liverpool council wanted the housing they were occupying. While the war was on it had been difficult to send them back to China but now it would be more doable; they were undesirable because there had been 1,000 convictions for opium smoking and 350 for ‘gaming’ in the last three years; "over half’ were suffering from sexually transmitted diseases or tuberculosis; many of their British-born wives were "of the prostitute class."
There’s no evidence in the file that anyone contested this view of the Liverpool Chinese community, which made no distinction between the large numbers of brave, hard-working, committed sailors (who were also seen as supportive family men by many British women), and a few who presented problems for the authorities.
Deportations
There were legal grounds to deport only 18 of the men, so the authorities searched for another solution. They found it in the rules regulating the arrivals of ships' crews, known as their landing conditions. By changing these, officials could effectively oblige men to report to a departing ship that would take them on a one-way voyage to Asia.
Deportation orders would be prepared as a backup if they failed to adhere to the altered conditions.
The sweeping nature of the decision is underlined by casual references to "bulk clearances" throughout HO 213/926; by the use of cargo holds to ship many of the men back, by the letter a Home Office civil servant wrote to Britain’s most senior policeman asking him to identify any Chinese nationals they could deport.
My husband disappeared: the story of a Chinese sailor's wife.
My husband disappeared: the story of a Chinese sailor's wife.
There are occasional softenings of the hard bureaucratic line when, for instance, an official urges that men ‘with bad records’ should not have their deportation deferred “over the heads of the many Chinese who have given long and loyal sea service throughout the war.”
But this is expressed as concern only for “the success of future repatriations.” There’s no suggestion that those who gave “long and loyal” service shouldn’t also ultimately be pressured into leaving.
The file can be found in Britain's National Archives, in Kew in south west London, not far from the famous Royal Botanic Gardens.
File HO 213/926 (the ‘HO’ refers to the British Home Office) is a slim, worn and stained folder containing barely more than 50 pages of minutes, memoranda, reports and correspondence, some typed and some handwritten.
The cover of file HO 213/926: 'Compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen.'
The cover of file HO 213/926: 'Compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen.'
But in those few pages you see unfolding the process which effectively obliterated the memory of the Chinese seamen’s contribution to the war effort, abruptly upended the lives of thousands of them and inflicted a trauma on hundreds of British-born women and children which is still being experienced today, nearly eighty years later.
"He was deprived of love for the first ten years of his life by a government decision,” is how Kellie-Ann Flower describes the impact on her father Brian, whose own father was one of the many repatriated.
Key meeting
The file documents that decision in action. It starts with a meeting on 19th October 1945 attended by 13 men from the Home Office, the immigration department, Liverpool Police, Foreign Office and the Ministry of War Transport.
The note sets out the "problem": the number of Chinese had grown from a few hundred before the war into thousands; Liverpool council wanted the housing they were occupying; while the war was on it had been difficult to send them back to China but now it would be more doable; they were undesirable because there had been 1,000 convictions for opium smoking and 350 for "gaming" in the last three years; "over half’ were suffering from sexually transmitted diseases or tuberculosis; many of their British-born wives were "of the prostitute class."
There’s no evidence in the file that anyone contested this view of the Liverpool Chinese community, which made no distinction between the large numbers of brave, hard working, committed sailors (who were also seen as supportive family men by many British women), and a few who presented problems for the authorities.
My husband disappeared: the story of a Chinese sailor's wife.
My husband disappeared: the story of a Chinese sailor's wife.
Deportations
There were legal grounds to deport only 18 of the men, so the authorities searched for another solution. They found it in the rules regulating the arrivals of ships' crews, known as landing conditions. By changing these, officials could effectively oblige men to report to a departing ship that would take them on a one-way voyage to Asia.
Deportation orders would be prepared as a backup if they failed to do so.
The sweeping nature of the decision is underlined by casual references to "bulk clearances" throughout HO 213/926, by the use of cargo holds to ship many of the men back, by the letter a Home Office civil servant wrote to Britain’s most senior policeman asking him to identify any Chinese nationals they could deport.
There are occasional softenings of the hard bureaucratic line when, for instance, an official urges that men "with bad records" should not have their deportation deferred “over the heads of the many Chinese who have given long and loyal sea service throughout the war.”
But this is expressed as concern only for “the success of future repatriations.” There’s no suggestion that those who gave “long and loyal” service shouldn’t also ultimately be pressured into leaving.
As non-British citizens the Chinese sailors didn’t have a legal right to remain, although the married men may have been able to make a case. The officials acknowledge that, but there's no evidence anyone made a point of telling the seamen.
British-born wives
There are several discussions about what to do about sailors with British-born wives, but while the married men weren't the first priority for repatriation, in the end, many of them were swept up along with the rest.
The papers give the clear impression that the government's overriding concern was to remove as many Chinese sailors as possible and that the impact on British-born wives and children hardly figured.
Review in 2022
A review of the files completed by the Home Office in 2022 suggested 8,300 men were repatriated either as crew, passengers or, in effect, cargo.
It found 197 marriages between Chinese sailors and British-born women had taken place in Liverpool between September 1939 and December 1946.
It doesn’t account for the unknown numbers who had children but hadn’t married, often for the practical reason that British women lost their citizenship as soon as they married an 'alien'.
As non-British citizens the Chinese sailors didn’t have a legal right to remain, although the married men may have been able to make a case. The officials acknowledge that, but there's no evidence anyone made a point of telling the seamen.
British-born wives
There are several discussions about what to do about sailors with British-born wives, but while the married men weren't the first priority for repatriation, in the end, many of them were swept up along with the rest.
The papers give the clear impression that the government's overriding concern was to remove as many Chinese sailors as possible and that the impact on British-born wives and children hardly figured.
A review of the files by the Home Office in 2022 suggested 8,300 men were repatriated either as crew, passengers or, in effect, cargo.
It found 197 marriages between Chinese sailors and British-born women had taken place in Liverpool between September 1939 and December 1946.
It doesn’t account for the unknown numbers who had children but hadn’t married, often for the practical reason that British women lost their citizenship as soon as they married an 'alien'.
Liverpool's Chinese sailors in 1942 - through the eyes of Bert Hardy, Britain's top news photographer of the time.
Liverpool's Chinese sailors in 1942 - through the eyes of Bert Hardy, Britain's top news photographer of the time.
Prejudice
Why did the British government really want the Chinese sailors to leave in such large numbers, at such short notice?
The racial prejudice on display in HO 213/926 shouldn't be discounted. There had been official, legal discrimination against non-white seamen from 1925 in the form of the Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order.
That was aimed at Indian, Somali and Arab, rather than Chinese seamen and it was scrapped in 1942.
But prejudice on its own doesn’t anyway seem like enough of an answer, even for 1940s Britain, when open racism might have been more ‘normal.’
Housing
One reason given is that Liverpool council was desperately short of housing. The city was the second most bombed in Britain after London: 10,000 houses had been destroyed, 4,000 people killed and 70,000 were homeless at the end of the war.
A series of photographs from police archives on display in the Museum of Liverpool shows the extent of the devastation.
In the video below Kay Jones, a curator at the museum, takes us through the photos of blitzed Liverpool.
The devastation was real, but she says, removing the Chinese seamen would probably have achieved little, given the scale of the problem.
Prejudice
Why did the British government really want the Chinese sailors to leave in such large numbers, at such short notice?
The racial prejudice on display in HO 213/926 shouldn't be discounted. There had been official, legal discrimination against non-white seamen from 1925 in the form of the Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order.
That was aimed at Indian, Somali and Arab, rather than Chinese seamen and it was scrapped in 1942.
But prejudice on its own doesn’t anyway seem like enough of an answer, even for 1940s Britain, when open racism might have been more ‘normal.’
Housing
One reason given is that Liverpool council was desperately short of housing. The city was the second most bombed in Britain after London: 10,000 houses had been destroyed, 4,000 people killed and 70,000 were homeless at the end of the war.
A series of photographs from police archives on display in the Museum of Liverpool shows the extent of the devastation.
In the video below Kay Jones, a curator at the museum, takes us through the photos of blitzed Liverpool.
The devastation was real, but she says, removing the Chinese seamen would probably have achieved little, given the scale of the problem.
Blitzed Liverpool: Kay Jones from the Museum of Liverpool explains the impact of German bombing on the city.
Blitzed Liverpool: Kay Jones from the Museum of Liverpool explains the impact of German bombing on the city.
So, was the government trying to free up jobs for returning British servicemen?
In a curious echo of the 2020s, there was actually a labour shortage in Britain as it tried to rebuild after the war.
Windrush
Barely had the last Chinese sailors been repatriated in 1948 when the first immigrants from the West Indies sailed into London on the Empire Windrush, recruited by the government to fill gaps in transport and the health service.
It’s a bitter and unwelcome irony to the descendants of the Chinese seafarers that the denial of residency rights and enforced repatriation many decades later of people who arrived on the Windrush and subsequent migrant ships, (which the Home Office has admitted was wrong), provides them with an instantly recognisable shorthand for explaining what happened to their fathers: another ‘Windrush scandal.’
Pay
The business model of the shipping companies carrying trade between Britain and east Asia depended on cheap labor: something explicitly mentioned in file HO 213/926.
The Chinese seamen had been paid much less than their British counterparts and denied a war bonus - until they went on strike in 1942.
The full role of the shipping companies which employed the men is not entirely clear from the Home Office papers, but they were certainly trying to get them back on much lower, Asian rates of pay.
That meant getting them to sign on to ships in Asian ports rather than British ones, and so living there, too. One official admits that the way the men were denied work in Britain looked like “enforced repatriation.”
Present day Home Office Minister Kevin Foster, who commissioned the review which reported in 2022, concluded:
“The records show very few of those who were repatriated as passengers were the subject of formal Deportation Orders.
"Nevertheless, it appears from contemporary accounts, as well as from the stories told by relatives, that this does not mean all repatriations were entirely voluntary in nature.
"Due to the threat of such Orders being imposed, or the refusal of shipping companies to allow Chinese seamen to sign on to British ships, many sailors, including some who were married, would have had no choice but to board ship for the Far East."
“I very much regret that some of those who served in the Merchant Navy during World War 2 were treated in this way.”
The descendants of the sailors want an official apology from the current government and from the Labour Party that was in power at the time of the repatriations. They also want recognition that the men were forced to go, and official help in tracing what happened to them.
Judy Kinnin, whose father disappeared with no explanation in 1946, believes the government is just waiting for her generation to die off.
"It hurts though. It hurts," she said.
Judy Kinnin was born in Smithdown Road, Liverpool, in 1945 and still lives in the city.
She was one year old when her father, Chang au Chiang disappeared. All she has is one photograph of him with her and her mother, Maureen Duddy.
The only photo Judy has of her father, with herself and her mother.
The only photo Judy has of her father, with herself and her mother.
Maureen wrote a poignant message on the back in the hope he would get to see it. He never did.
Chiang was a ship's fitter who couldn't write English. Judy's mother took two years to recover from the shock of him disappearing.
She even gave a sailor on another ship a second photo of her and Judy, in the hope that he would find Chang au Chiang. But he was never found and the photo was returned.
The note Judy's mother wrote on the back of the photo, not knowing what had happened to her husband.
The note Judy's mother wrote on the back of the photo, not knowing what had happened to her husband.
“She never knew what happened,” says Judy, who fears the government is just waiting for her generation to die off.
“It hurts though,” she says. “It hurts."
Judy Kinnin at home in Liverpool
Judy Kinnin at home in Liverpool
Ann Pearson at the grave of her uncle Havan, who died just three weeks old.
Ann Pearson at the grave of her uncle Havan, who died just three weeks old.
Ann Pearson says that her grandmother, Esther, never really recovered from the disappearance of her husband Chow ah Wong, who was repatriated.
Ann's grandmother, Esther Beddow, whose husband Chow Ah Wong, was repatriated.
Ann's grandmother, Esther Beddow, whose husband Chow Ah Wong, was repatriated.
Left destitute, Esther was unable to afford a grave stone for her baby son Havan, who died, just three weeks old in 1945. He was buried in a pauper's grave along with 43 others.
Esther also felt unable to look after her young daughter, Ann's mother Valerie and gave her to be adopted by her own parents.
Esther died when she was just 30 .
Ann believes the name Wong Chow on this crew list for the Blue Funnel ship Ajax, which repatriated men to Hong Kong may refer to her grandfather. The man was discharged in the city with 24 others on February 25, 1946
Ann believes the name Wong Chow on this crew list for the Blue Funnel ship Ajax, which repatriated men to Hong Kong may refer to her grandfather. The man was discharged in the city with 24 others on February 25, 1946
Ann was ultimately able to locate baby Havan's grave and erect a gravestone: too late she says, to put things right for Esther.
"She died thinking and feeling she'd been abandoned," says Ann.
"For my mom, it meant that she grew up without a father. She's never had a photograph of her dad.
Ann's mother Valerie, with the grandparents who adopted her.
Ann's mother Valerie, with the grandparents who adopted her.
"She's never had a relationship with her dad because she was brought up by her grandma and granddad who were born in 1896, in 1898, with very traditional English background. And they kind of closed ranks around her to keep her safe and try and harden her to the racism that she having to face at the time."
When June Caddick wanted to get married in 1963, her then fiancee Geoff Caddick asked local officials for her birth certificate. It was only then that she discovered her birth name was 'June Loy ' and that her real father was a Chinese sailor who had been repatriated after the war.
Her biological father Ng Loy was a 29 year-old ship's steward, living in Canning Street in Liverpool when he married her mother Ida 1945.
The marriage certificate of June's parents.
The marriage certificate of June's parents.
“There's nothing I know about him. Nothing at all,” says June.“I don't know what happened. All I know is when I was older, I heard he’d sent a letter to my mother to say that he was destitute and he wanted money (from Singapore). Well, I don't know what happened, whether she sent the money or what.”
Even more mysteriously, when June got a duplicate of her birth certificate many years later her Chinese father wasn’t even on it. There was simply a blank straight line under ‘father.’
The official duplicate of June's birth certificate, from which her father's name has been omitted.
The official duplicate of June's birth certificate, from which her father's name has been omitted.
June Caddick and husband Geoff.
June Caddick and husband Geoff.
Keith Cocklin has been looking for answers for more than 20 years.
Keith Cocklin has been looking for answers for more than 20 years.
Keith Cocklin's father Soong Kwai Sing was a medical doctor from Shanghai who fled to India to escape the turmoil of the Japanese invasion of China. He found work as a supervisor and translator in the engine rooms of the Blue Funnel Line ships.
Keith's father, Soong Kwai Sing
Keith's father, Soong Kwai Sing
"I always wondered why my children were so brilliantly clever,”says Keith, who later worked for the Blue Funnel Line himself.
Soong Kwai Sing met Keith's mother in Liverpool but, says Keith, he was among those rounded up by Liverpool Police Special Branch in 1946 and disappeared. Keith was a shy boy who didn't ask what had happened and his mother didn't want to talk to him about it.
The two sisters Keith discovered he had in China.
The two sisters Keith discovered he had in China.
But for more than 20 years now he has been trying to find out what happened: “For the sake of the children left behind, to know about the fathers who disappeared,” he says.
He eventually discovered that his own father had passed away but also that he had two sisters and a brother in China.
Keith's family in China, including his brother and nephew.
Keith's family in China, including his brother and nephew.
Kellie-Ann Flower's father Brian was one of four siblings.
When Brian's father, Zai Fah Chow disappeared, his mother Dorothy had no idea he'd been repatriated. She went looking for him in London, believing he may have gone looking for work there.
Brian was put in an orphanage in the south of England and grew up believing he had no parents, or brothers and sisters.
Brian Flower, aged 11
Brian Flower, aged 11
When he was 11 years old he was given a train ticket and told to meet the mother he din't even know he had in Liverpool.
A photograph of him then in borrowed clothes is the earliest family record Kellie-Ann has on her father's side.
It's the impact on the families left behind that most upsets Kellie-Ann.
"My dad's quite lucky - he was returned to his mum at 11," she says.
" There’s many others went into the care system who had no one to be
returned to."
"So there's possibly people out there that don't even know they're part of this story: half-Chinese British people brought up in an orphanage, and they've got no idea that this is the set of circumstances that led to them being in orphanages in the first place."
Kellie-Ann Flower and her father Brian.
Kellie-Ann Flower and her father Brian.
Brothers Joe (L) and John (R) long believed they'd been abandoned.
Brothers Joe (L) and John (R) long believed they'd been abandoned.
For many years Joe Phillips (left, above) and John Sze (right, above) were angry at the father they'd never known, believing he'd abandoned them, their two sisters and mother in Liverpool.
Joe was so angry that he got his name changed officially to lose the surname of his father, Ah Lung Sze.
John(l), Joe (c) and sister Veronica (r) with their uncle Johnny who looked after them in the absence of their father.
John(l), Joe (c) and sister Veronica (r) with their uncle Johnny who looked after them in the absence of their father.
"I decided I had no allegiance to this man," explains Joe.
"Why should I have allegiance to this man, when he left four children in the UK?"
Now the brothers believe their father, a ship's boatswain was forcibly repatriated.
John always kept the name, because of pride in his Chinese heritage, but shared his younger brother's anger.
"When you’ve been left, or, you’re always yearning for your father," he said.
"It was so awkward to not have one. Now, I was led to believe that my father left my mother and she was angry at him. Since then I found out
he was Shanghaied, meaning he was deported."
Like a number of children whose fathers were repatriated, Joe (third from r, top row) was in the cast of the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman.
Like a number of children whose fathers were repatriated, Joe (third from r, top row) was in the cast of the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman.
"I'm not angry anymore, " says Joe. What I want now is the truth. It needs to be exposed. The injustice needs to be put right."
Know more about this story? email sailors@cgtn.com