Jack is a WW2 veteran who fought for Australia against the Japanese in British North Borneo. Jack turns 84 on the 12th of September. I'm currently reading his book Blood on Borneo and wow has this guy had an amazing life. Happy Birthday.
A lot more on Jack's life can be found at
www.jackwongsue.com
I am currently in discussion with his son Barry on some form of interview so stay tuned.
Jack is one of the hundreds (possibly thousands) of Australians of Asian heritage who fought for Australia at a time when the White Australia Policy was active and discrimination was prevalent. Asian Australians have fought in every war (including the Boer War) and yet we are always seen as foreign or not up to the task The Defence force didn't record details of race back then so a lot of us would only be able to find the veterans of asian descent by name, if their name hadn't been anglicised too much that is. Many many eurasian kids of Asian fathers and white mothers also elected to use their mother's maiden name (to seem more European) to get past the discriminatory recruitment practises.
If you read up on Simpson's life (John Simpson Kirkpatrick - the guy with the donkey(s)), you'll realise Simpson wasn't born here and definitely didn't spend much of his life here, he only had lived in Australia for four years and had only joined the war for a free passage to England. And yet we get taught in class how much of an Aussie hero Simpson was. What the? Why don't they tell the truth, oh yeah it'll probably shatter the "Anzac Legend" myth that they have worked so hard to cultivate. Don't get me wrong, Simpson was some sort of a hero, but there are so many homegrown Aussies and 1.5 generation Aussies who fought in the wars we should be reading about in class and appreciating. Simpson is definitely not one of them, not as an Aussie anyway.
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