Around 80,000 Chinese residents were shipped in secret across Canada during the First World War.
A question from a visitor to the Vancouver Island Military Museum in Nanaimo inspired a soon-to-be opened exhibit at the facility.
The collection includes the riding crop used by Canadian Corps Cmdr. Arthur Currie during the First World War, a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler that was used as a target and brought home by a Nanaimo veteran, and rare items linked to Nanaimo fighter ace Raymond Collishaw, with exhibits updated when new information or artifacts come in.
McFadden said that in 1916 and 1917, the French and British government negotiated with the Chinese government to have access to tens of thousands of male workers in Shandong Province who they wanted for labour on the Western Front in France and Belgium. McFadden said that around 80,000 Chinese men were transported in sealed railway cars for the six-day trip from Vancouver to Halifax and weren’t allowed out of the cars. Some men who died along the way were buried in unmarked graves.McFadden said work cleaning up battle zones and loading and unloading equipment and ammunition was hard and dangerous.
“They received little or no recognition in history books or war memorials for their contribution and sacrifices during WW 1,” McFadden said.
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