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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

28. Bill Chong Tried to Enlist in the Canadian Military, But Was Rejected Because He Was Chinese

Canadian WWII recruitment poster. Legion Magazine

Bill Chong might have loved Canada, but Canada did not love him back. When he tried to enlist in the army, he was turned away by recruiters who were unenthusiastic about signing a “Chinaman”. As fate would have it, Chong would end up playing a greater role in the war than anybody could have imagined when he was spurned by the Canadian military.

It began with a family bereavement. Chong’s father died in Canton, and his sister, who lived in Hong Kong, wrote her brother to tell him that he was needed to help settle the estate. He traveled to Hong Kong in 1941, but probate was more complicated and took much longer than expected. Weeks turned into months, and Chong was still in Hong Kong in December, 1941, when Japan kicked off WWII in the Pacific and Asia by attacking American, British, and Dutch colonial possessions.

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.