My name is Wong Kwong Hon. I was born in Guangzhou, in Guangdong province of China on March 19, 1925. My childhood was very simple. I spent some time studying in an old-style private school and I just remember that what they taught us was very difficult to understand, so I wasn't very interested in studying. Later on, I switched to a modern primary school and it was a bit better. My father was a chef, and my mother an ordinary village housewife. She gave birth to 15 children, but only 6 of them survived. I had 3 older brothers and then one older and one younger sister.
In 1938, before I even graduated from school, Japan began to bomb Guangzhou. Once, I saw a bomb drop on the opposite side of the street from where I was, but luckily it didn't explode. We really hated Japanese at that time and that was the reason why later on I insisted on joining the army.
Same as in other parts of China, people in Guangzhou started to resist the Japanese invasion. A unit was formed that provided military training for both male and female youth. I think they were called "Guangzhou Society Training Team." In 1938, this unit established another group for the teenagers that was called "The Junior Company." They provided military trainings for younger boys and girls, aged twelve to eighteen. I told my family that I wanted to join the company, but wasn't permitted to do so. One of my older brothers even laughed at me, saying, "How can you join when even a rifle is taller than you?" Yet, I insisted on joining the unit, so I did it without my family's permission. The training I received at the Junior Company was more or less the same as the formal military one. The weapons were the same size as the real ones used in army, except ours were made out of wood. Anyway, I enrolled in the unit in July of 1938. Every day we had 3 field trainings and 2 lectures. The activities took all day and by evening everyone was absolutely exhausted. Each company had 144 members. We were divided into 3 platoons, and each platoon was further divided into 3 squads. There were 16 people in each squad. The instructors were very strict, and if we didn't obey orders, we were put in a disciplinary cell as a punishment.
Around October 1938, the Japanese were getting close to Guangzhou, and the government decided to disband the Company and relocate, but asked if we would like to stay. Around 40 people decided to stay, but majority decided to follow the leaders. I was among the second group.
Oh, and I also would like to say that our Company was very unique as our leader and 3 platoon leaders were all female.
So, we moved to Guangdong for a little bit, in the northwestern part of China. We settled in Shaoguan, a small city in the north of Guangdong. And we were taken to the Guangdong province children's home.
I remember the roof of the house was made of pine bark. The life was quite tough, we ate pumpkin for almost every meal, and there were no tables or chairs, so we had to sit on the ground for meals. A lot of people got infectious diseases. One of those was night blindness. And another one was malaria. When the sick people felt chilly, they would shiver even with a few blankets on them. Only Quinine could cure the disease. Others got rashes and skin diseases, some were infested with lice.
It wasn't easy, but with time things got better. The children's homes became better organized and they hired more teachers. In our group, they hired the Cantonese Opera actor Kwan Tak-hing as our Cantonese Opera teacher. Our Dean wanted to introduce the kids to the arts and to have them learn Cantonese Opera, drama and magic tricks for public performances.
We didn't receive any actual military training there. I was 14-15 years old at the time. But despite the hardships, I look back on those days with gratitude to my teachers. I got extra attention from the Dean and the teachers as they thought I had a talent for acting, and I performed in a few drama plays while I was there.
Unfortunately, it was later discovered that my teacher was having an affair with some female team members. Because of that, the divisional commander decided to disband the team. After the propaganda team was disbanded, people got relocated, the teacher was punished, and I was sent to learn telecommunications only because I could speak a little bit of English.
That was still in 1940, and the Army lacked the talent for radio and communications at that time. I began as a warrant officer, but soon I was promoted as a Second Lieutenant.
I joined the army as a warrant officer, which was the lowest officer rank, but I was still an officer. So soldiers had to salute me as a higher ranking officer when they saw me and let me tell you, they were not happy. They even discussed this with our commander; they wanted him not to commission me as a warrant officer and give me a rank of the staff sergeant instead, but the commander refused.
I spent three months learning telecommunications. Mainly it was just basic knowledge of the machinery, telegraph code and also transmitting and receiving messages. I can't remember the salary we received, but in general the welfare was only so-so.
In March 1942, our 6th army received the order to go to Burma as part of the expeditionary force. Unfortunately, only three months later we had to retreat back to the Yunnan province. At that time, there was a huge quality gap both in personnel and equipment between the Japanese army and us, and we were simply not good enough to fight the Japanese.
I didn't know the content of the messages, as I was just receiving the codes, giving them directly to the office, and then transmitting the codes back whenever necessary. The messages were all encrypted. The staff with security clearance did all the decryptions of the coded messages. We were not armed and didn't even receive the training on how to use guns or any other weapons. I only had some weaponry training back when I was in the Junior Company, but those were wooden guns. Our communications squad had around 10 people: a leader, four or five radio operators, and several other soldiers, also unarmed, who would carry our equipment. When I was promoted to be the squad leader, and took charge of the team, I named my squadron WKH, after my own initials.
Although I was not on the front lines, I understood the reason for our failure very well - we were undertrained and ill equipped. The Japanese soldiers had proper backpacks, while we were using a big square cloth to hold our possessions. They had boots, and we were wearing straw sandals. That's just the basic stuff, I'm not even talking about weapons and equipment. So that's why we retreated.
Our base was very close to the road, and one day we received the order to retreat. We passed the orders, and about half an hour later we saw a convoy of cars and armored vehicles coming in our direction. One of the guards at the checkpoint got on top of an armored vehicle and was immediately shot, because those were the Japanese soldiers coming.
Thankfully they didn't see us. They searched the area and fired in our direction, but I don't think they saw us. Finally they moved on.
When we joined our retreating troops, I heard a rumor about the Division Commander. As we expected the retreat to happen, we were all well prepared. Yet the Division Commander was asleep when the order for retreat was given, and he didn't even have time to dress.
During the three months we spent in Burma, our salary was paid in Indian rupees. And the first meal we had in Burma was unforgettable for me - the rice there was so white, smooth and fluffy compared to the brown rice we had before. The weather in Burma was quite hot. As we retreated back, walking through the tropical jungle, we saw lots of leeches, black ants, and other creatures. Black ants were huge, and you didn't want them to bite you, it was pretty painful.
After retreating to Yunnan, we stayed in Tengchong for a short time. We were stationed on top of a hill for a while. I can't remember how long we were there, it should have been like a month. On some occasions, we would fire at the other side called Songshan - there were some Japanese stationed there. Later on we moved to Baoshan. When I was in Baoshan as part of the 6th army, there were no specific tasks given to us. We were there for quite a while, more than a year, for sure. We didn't have any radios, so there was nothing for us to do, but we still received the salary. We didn't stay in the military camps, but instead lodged in normal households. I remember I was staying in a two-storey stone house, and we were living upstairs. Our equipment was also there. The landlord's last name was Wong, and both him and his brother didn't have any sons, just daughters. He once asked me to marry into his family by taking his youngest daughter, but I refused.
Anyway, then the US became China's ally, and I was relocated to the Sino-American Training Center. The aim of the center was to train the Chinese military officers to use the new American weapons and telecommunications equipment.
When we arrived at the training center, we saw that the equipment introduced by Americans was completely different. When I first learned telecommunications, the transmitter was around 2 ft. long and 18 inches high and was stored in a wooden box. We had to manually generate electricity for the transmitter. The receiver was like an ordinary radio, and we had to wear earphones to use it. We had to use two 1.5V batteries for the receiver, they were pretty large. I remember their transmitter was more or less the same size as ours, but with a stand that could hold the transmitter. The most powerful transmitters were mounted on big GMC trucks. After the training, around 1946, I was relocated to Shenyang.
After the war ended, we were disbanded, and I moved to the northeast. I left the 6th army and moved to Shenyang. I was transferred to the central telecommunications unit of the government. I was under the command of the Anti-rebel force. Same as before, I was working on transmitting and receiving telegrams. I left the army in 1947. I had been away from home for eight or nine years. Like many other guys at that time, I didn't want to be involved in the civil war. Yet it was really hard to leave the army. In the end I bribed the commander, and without any proper procedures I left the army.
I went to Tianjin, and from there I boarded a ship of Swire group to Hong Kong as my older brother was already there. I couldn't get a job in the Hong Kong telecommunications company called Cable and Wire, as they required employees who were born in Hong Kong and fluent in English. I was not qualified. I went back to Guangzhou in 1948 and worked as a bus conductor selling tickets. I tried to search for jobs in telecommunications, but couldn't find anything. Later, in 1950, I went to Hong Kong again and stayed for good. By that time Guangzhou was already under the Communist regime. I worked as a coach driver for Hong Kong China Travel Services Company. I retired in 1984.
I'm glad to see that two parties, the Nationalists and Communists are talking. I don't want to see things like the civil war ever again.
I didn't think much about my life. After all these years, I finally got in touch and saw some of the people that were in the children's home with me. I found out that some of our teachers were jailed for almost a decade during the Cultural Revolution. Some of them had a really tough life.
Now I spend my time playing with computers, and I just keep learning and learning.
