The Home Office’s plan was impeded somewhat by British law

January 8, 2022 10:11 AM

The secret deportations: how Britain betrayed the Chinese men who served the country in World War II. During the second world war, Chinese merchant seamen helped keep Britain fed, fuelled and safe – and many gave their lives doing so. But from late 1945, hundreds of them who had settled (some married, with kids) in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth.
posted by lalochezia (12 comments total)

I’m a white American male. This story brought me to tears.

Why do we do this to each other?
posted by khrusanthemon at 12:00 PM on January 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Thanks for this. I used to live a stone's throw from Chinatown in Liverpool but I didn't realise it was probably the oldest Chinese community in Europe. As usual, the British state is reprehensible. But the Chinese community in Liverpool is still there, and stronger than ever. The University has been courting wealthy Chinese students for some time now too, so I expect there's more people of Chinese descent than ever before. Still, they get chewed up and spat back out. Brexit shows that in many ways, nothing has changed.
posted by Acey at 12:39 PM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

That is so unbelievably fucked. (Sorry there’s not a more polite way to put it). It’s not unsurprising, but that doesn’t make it any less shocking and horrific and sad.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 12:44 PM on January 8, 2022 [8 favorites]

The list of “alien repatriates” on that ship numbers 196 people: 194 men, one woman, and “baby Kenneth Ling”.
posted by away for regrooving at 1:37 PM on January 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

That's much much worse than US's failed promises to Filipino soldiers, or the Nissei detention camps.
posted by kschang at 3:10 PM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Britain has as much to be ashamed of historically as Germany does, and the fact that it has never had its nose rubbed in its legacy means that it carries on much as it did at the height of the Empire it is convinced was an unalloyed good. In a just world, a significant part of central London (perhaps Trafalgar Square, or the site of the British Museum) would be a Monument to the Victims of the British Empire, and schoolchildren would be given tours of the atrocities their country committed much as German children tour Auschwitz, and the idea that the British Empire was a force for good would be confined to the fringes alongside Holocaust denial.
posted by acb at 3:12 PM on January 8, 2022 [15 favorites]

Oh, acb! Your optimism is so quaint. Just look at the reaction to the acquittal of the 4 individuals charged with bringing down a slave trader's statue in Bristol. The Brexit demographic see any criticism of Empire, implicit or otherwise as tantamount to treason.
posted by epo at 12:39 PM on January 9, 2022

I cannot understand why British people are not more ashamed of their documented history.

Please note that I am British.
posted by plonkee at 2:18 PM on January 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

I know that getting from here to there without the UK going through a catastrophic defeat and reconstruction by progressive-minded occupiers who know what they're doing is extremely unlikely (and even in that case, it may well end up like Japan or Austria, not accepting any blame and nursing a victimhood complex), though surely one can dream?
posted by acb at 2:39 PM on January 9, 2022

I don't think speaking of what a just world would look like is quaint. If we can not envision justice, how can we hope to achieve anything approaching it? How can you honor your heritage, if you refuse the lessons it teaches?

Countries can't be ashamed though, only people. Countries don't feel, they only act, a wonderful situation for people who are amoral, and a terrible burden on everyone else.

Every powerful nation has done harm to others or to their own. What the people of those countries should feel is responsible. Not responsible for the crimes and horrors of the past before they could have changed things, but responsible for the things they didn't fight against, and for making things better now. You don't have to know the right or perfect thing to do; certainty is the privilege of people who stand for the status quo, not those trying to change it.

You just have to do something that you think makes things better, and be willing to change that as new information arises. So many people see injustice, and they don't know what to do exactly, so they do exactly nothing.

These men and their families deserved better, and deserve better now.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 5:58 PM on January 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

One of the most annoying things to witness throughout my life has been the shift from mute embarrassment at Britain's blood-soaked history to a perverse pride in the empire. The lampshading which turns the Union Jack from something which signifies the National Front to the obsequious reverence being demanded today is infuriating.

We have never fully understood or acknowledged our monstrous history but at least we used to think it was evil.
posted by fullerine at 1:54 AM on January 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

We used to think it was mildly embarrassing, though possibly not as bad as the other European powers (something something Wilberforce something conquistadores King Leopold those beastly Germans/Frenchmen something), and the Indians got trains, cricket and Shakespeare out of it so it's all swings and roundabouts. Now we glory in the virility of our dominance and jeer at the beta soycucks triggered by our chest-beating and/or the urine stains on our national trousers.
posted by acb at 3:17 AM on January 10, 2022 [1 favorite]