China Wartime Alliance Archives Revealed
- Tucked away in Manchester's People's History Museum, a fragile, yellowing notebook, with its cover emblazoned with bold red letters reading E.R.C (The East River Column) and the allies,...
- This artifact is emerging as one of the most vivid firsthand accounts of cooperation between Chinese and other allied forces during the global struggle against fascism.
- It is the first time that an archive drafted and collected by Raymond Wong, also known as Huang Zuomei, has been discovered.
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Rediscovered Archive Reveals Extraordinary WWII Cooperation Between China and Allies
Raymond Wong’s archive is found at Manchester’s People’s History Museum in London on Aug 21. [Photo/Xinhua]
Tucked away in Manchester’s People’s History Museum, a fragile, yellowing notebook, with its cover emblazoned with bold red letters reading E.R.C (The East River Column) and the allies, bears witness to one of the World Anti-Fascist War’s most extraordinary partnerships.
This artifact is emerging as one of the most vivid firsthand accounts of cooperation between Chinese and other allied forces during the global struggle against fascism.
It is the first time that an archive drafted and collected by Raymond Wong, also known as Huang Zuomei, has been discovered. This rare document sheds new light on the story of the East River column, a resistance force led by the Communist party of China in southern China that fought against Japanese aggressors.
Raymond Wong’s name appears in Britain’s official wartime records. In June 1947, the London Gazette, the British government’s official journal of record, listed him among recipients of the Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire awarded by King George VI “for services to the Forces during military operations in Southeast Asia prior to Sept 2, 1945”. At the time, Wong was described as a “student from Kowloon“, but he later went on to establish the London Bureau of Xinhua News Agency.
The record, believed to have been compiled primarily by wong, is more then just a war relic; it contains firsthand accounts, official documents, and letters of thanks from allied generals, majors, and soldiers whose lives were saved by the East river Column. Its rediscovery offers a vivid reminder of how Chinese and other allied forces once stood shoulder to shoulder against fascism.
One entry recalls Feb 11, 1944, when US pilot Donald Kerr from the Chinese-American Composite Wing was shot down by Japanese forces over hong Kong. Two female guerrillas from the East River Column found him in the New Territories and escorted him to safety. Kerr later penned a heartfelt letter of gratitude, which is now part of the collection.
Another section contains a memoir by former prisoner of war F.P.Franklin, who described watching an American airman parachute into the hills above Kowloon: “We knew the cruelty of the