17. The Spy Who Loved a Country That Didn’t Love Him Back
William “Bill” Gun Chong, BEM, (1911 – 2006), a Chinese-Canadian born in Vancouver, was visiting relatives in Hong Kong in 1941, when the Japanese invaded. He escaped, then volunteered to serve with the British Army Aid Group, a paramilitary organization of spies and clandestine agents operating in southern China as a unit of Britain’s Directorate of Military Intelligence Section MI9. The British desperately needed spies who could speak both Chinese and English, so Chong was a catch. Given the codename “Agent 50” (“five-oh”), he was inserted into Japanese-occupied China to gather intelligence, shepherd POW escapees to freedom, and deliver desperately needed medical supplies. He spent the years from 1942 to 1945 traveling behind enemy lines, doing his best to avoid the unwelcome attentions of both Japanese patrols on the lookout for spies, and Chinese outlaws. Captured three times, he proved a slippery customer, and managed to escape each time.
Vancouver, where Chong was born and raised, seethed with anti-Chinese discrimination. He was a house servant and cook in Vancouver when WWII began. He had grown up in a country where he could not vote, or even use a public swimming pool alongside white Canadians. Opportunities for advancement and upward mobility were few for Chinese-Canadians, and equality was a pipedream. That did not keep Chong from becoming a patriotic Canadian. He might have loved Canada, but Canada did not love him back. He tried to enlist in the army, but was rejected by recruiters unenthusiastic to sign a “Chinaman”. As fate would have it, Chong played a greater role in the war than anybody could have imagined when he was spurned by the Canadian military. It began when Chong’s father died in Canton, and his sister, who lived in Hong Kong, needed her brother’s help to settle the estate.
