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Heroes from History People Really Don’t Appreciate Enough

Khalid Elhassan November 10, 2020 32 min

William Colby - William J. Donovan — William Colby (oak leaves on cap) with OSS personnel and Norwegian Resistance members in Norway. Special Operations

29. This Hero Grew Up Amidst Intense Discrimination

Bill Chong in 1938, when he worked as a house servant and cook. War History Online

Vancouver, where Bill Chong was born and raised, was seething with anti-Chinese discrimination in those days. Our hero grew up in a country where he could not vote, and where he could not even use a public swimming pool alongside white Canadians. Opportunities for advancement and upward mobility were few and far in between for Chinese-Americans, and equality was a pipedream. Against that backdrop, he eked a living from menial and low-paying jobs. That did not keep Chong from becoming a patriotic Canadian.

Chong was a house servant and cook in Vancouver when WWII began. When Canada joined the war, Chinese Canadians were divided about whether they should volunteer to fight. As some saw it, why volunteer to fight for a country that treated them as second-class citizens? Others argued that volunteering to fight would shift public perceptions about Chinese-Canadians and their right to full citizenship. As one veteran put it: “We weren’t demanding something extra, we just wanted to be equal“. Chong was in the latter camp, and he tried to do his bit out of patriotism and love of Canada.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.