Canadian Armed Forces Apology for Racial Discrimination and Racial Harassment: LCdr (Ret’d) Albert Wong
Video / April 16, 2026
Transcript
Capt (Navy) Kelly Williamson: Our third intervener is the retired Albert Wong.
Albert served for nearly four decades in the Canadian Armed Forces, dedicating his career to building bridges across cultures and communities. Since retirement, he has continued to serve our country as a citizenship judge, ensuring that new Canadians begin their journey with dignity, recognition and belonging.
Albert has been honoured across the country for his leadership and for his defence of newcomers. And he has both the force of service and the grace of community service. So, please join me in welcoming the retired Lieutenant-Commander Albert Wong.
LCdr (Ret’d) Albert Wong: Elder Dumont, Your Excellency, distinguished guests all, honoured veterans, member of Canadian Armed Forces, friends, good afternoon. The value of today’s apology would be greatly diminished if it was seen simply as the closing of an uncomfortable part of some distant and disconnected history of previous generations of the Canadian Armed Forces. That is not the type of apology that any of us should be prepared to accept, and it’s not the apology that I’m here to accept, because racism in the Canadian Armed Forces is a reality for far too many service members in uniform today. Instead, I’ve come to extol the potential of this historic event, bringing voice to the scars caused by systemic racism on so many former and current members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
This is not a closing of a chapter, as my two other colleagues have mentioned. Instead, it is the first of many steps that would make the Canadian Armed Forces into a better, stronger and more resilient fighting force. This is the promise of today. It is a promise to the memory of a remarkable band of sisters and brothers in arms, warriors who came forward to serve Canada during this country’s darkest hours, and serving with honour and dignity despite a country not wanting them – warriors like Private Buckam Singh, who came to Canada in 1907 at the age of 14, born in Mahilpur, India. He was married by the time he came to Canada, but the immigration laws at that time prevented his wife from accompanying him.
Authorities had hoped that by separating these men from their wives and children, most Sikhs would eventually return to Punjab. Buckam enlisted with the 59th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces and was one of nine Sikhs to fight for Canada in the Great War. He deployed to France with the 20th Battalion on January 21st, 1916, and saw his first engagement in the battlefields of Flanders. Wounded by shrapnel six months later, he was treated at a field hospital and returned to the frontlines a second time. Twenty-four days later, on July 20th, 1916, Buckam was wounded in St. Eloi and was sent to a hospital commanded by Dr. John McCrae. His second injury was quite grave, and he was repatriated to a military hospital in Manchester.
Almost a year later, Buckam recovered sufficiently to be deemed fit for combat and was sent back to the frontlines a third time. However, he developed severe tuberculosis while waiting at the Central Ontario Regimental Depot, and was sent back to Canada in May, 1917. Admitted to a military hospital in Kitchener, he died on August 27th, 1919. He died alone, his wife unable to join him. While Buckam received a war pension, his widow did not. Appealing this decision, the Board of Pension Commission, following an investigation, concluded his widow was, quote, “no worse off financially,” unquote, and that Buckam had, quote, “no intention of complying with the Christian custom of living with his wife upon a domestic basis,” unquote.
Private Hasan Amat was born in Singapore, 1894. He was a merchant sailor in a ship called into Vancouver. He decided to leave his ship to stay in Canada. He jumped ship. Like Buckam, Hasan decided to enlist and fight for Canada at the start of the First World War, joining the Royal Canadian Regiment on January 14, 1916. During the enrolment process, he was asked to identify his religion and was given five choices. Hasan crossed out each of the five choices and wrote Mohammedan, a follower of Islam, as his religion. He was accepted and then discharged a few months later. Officially, he was discharged for medical reasons, but one of his discharge documents labelled him as undesirable.
Hasan did not quit. He moved to New Brunswick, and two weeks after being discharged by the RCR, joined the Fourth Overseas Pioneer Battalion. This time, he was asked at his enrolment for his prior service, and Hasan wrote, quote, “Five minutes in the RCR in Halifax,” unquote.
Is that not the dry wit we anticipate in all our Canadian soldiers today? Hasan was killed in the Battle of Hill 70 on August 20th, 1917, and his remains were never found. Hasan was one of 22 Muslim soldiers known to have served Canada in the First World War and the only one killed in action. His name is on the Vimy Memorial and in a book of remembrance at Parliament Hill. And every once in a while, when I come to Ottawa, I visit the Cenotaph and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I say, “Hasan, is that you?” Because that’s who [inaudible] in this world. I’m sorry.
Sergeant Masumi Mitsui was born to a Samurai family in Tokyo on October 7th, 1887, and he came to Canada in 1908. He and a group of over 200 Japanese men decided to enlist and fight for Canada at the start of the First World War to prove their loyalty to this country and for their community’s right to participate fully in Canadian society. His attempt to enlist was rejected by the recruiting depot in Vancouver in 1915. Undeterred, he made his way to Calgary, where he was able to enrol as a private with the First Canadian Infantry Battalion on September 1st, 1916. Masumi had a working knowledge of English, and was therefore put in charge of a platoon of 35 soldiers of Japanese descent, even though he was still a private.
He led his platoon into the Battle of Hill 70, one of the costliest battles for the Canadian corps. This platoon fought bravely, and Masumi was promoted to sergeant. He was awarded the Military Medal for Bravery and Leadership following his battle. Masumi survived the war. And he struggled with the emotional toll of the war. He wrote in 1919 that he felt very depressed with the heavy casualties his unit suffered. On returning to Canada, Masumi led a movement to campaign for the right to vote for the entire Japanese community. He won a partial victory when the British Columbia legislature passed an act to allow Japanese veterans from the First World War the right to vote, but no one else from that community. Even if they were born in Canada, they did not have the right to vote.
He settled in Vancouver following the war, married, started a poultry business. He and his wife raised a family there. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Masumi and his family were forced into internment. He threw his war medals to the floor when he was being registered and dared his jailers to take them, exclaiming that those medals were obviously of no value. He and his wife lost everything during the internment: all their furniture, all their personal belongings and their business, stolen by their neighbours. He also lost his property, which was sold under him.
The only item that was saved was his samurai sword, which his son had buried in the garden just as the authorities came to take Masumi and his family away. Masumi was the last surviving Japanese-Canadian veteran from the First World War. He remained bitter to the end of his life – and each Remembrance Day, he would wear his medals and mourn the loss of his men at home. He refused, consistently refused, to join the other veterans at the Cenotaph.
The two brothers, Wee Tan Louie and Wee Hong Louie, and they were born in the Shuswap country in British Columbia. Wee Tan was denied permission to enlist in the recruiting centre in Kamloops due to his ethnicity. It was felt that if persons of Chinese descent were allowed to enlist, their demands to be treated fairly could not be ignored easily. In response, Wee Tan bought a horse and undertook a three-month journey over the Rocky Mountains in winter to Calgary to enlist there. If there’s anyone that I would want to be a soldier beside me, surely that must be him.
Wee Hong, the older brother, also joined the fight, and he was a wireless operator and driver. Surviving the war... pardon me... surviving the war, he earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Chicago. He then purchased a radio repair shop in Orillia, Ontario, but was denied a business licence because of his ethnicity. This was a decision stemming from the policies outlined in the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act. In response, Wee Hong mailed his Army uniform and medals to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, along with a letter arguing against the injustice. Prime Minister King sent an apology and granted Wee Hong his business licence. Wee Hong ran his radio repair shop until 1976. These brothers were part of a contingent of 300 soldiers of Chinese descent who served in the Canadian Army during the First World War.
Aircraft Woman First Class Jean Suey Zee Lee was born in Cranbrook, British Columbia on July 26th, 1924. She made history as the first and only Chinese woman to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division during the Second World War, a division of over 17,000 airwomen.
Private Marion Laura Mah also aspired to join the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War but was told they were not accepting female recruits. She therefore joined the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. Six Chinese women were known to have joined the Canadian Women’s Army Corps: Private Edna Silaine Lowe, Corporal Lila Wong, Private Marion Laura Mah, Private Mary Ko Bong, and Private Helen Hoe. Dozens others served the war with the St. John Ambulance Brigade. They all had to overcome two barriers, as was said earlier, racial and gender discrimination, in order to serve.
Lieutenant William Lore joined the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War after the direct intervention of Admiral Nelles, following three earlier failed attempts to enrol. The grounds of his rejection were not based on a lack of skill or physical condition; rather due to his ethnicity. He served in the Operational Intelligence Centre at the Canadian Naval Service’s headquarters, and then in London, where he was posted to the Combined Services Radio Intelligence Unit before being embedded with the Southeast Asia Command under the command of Lord Admiral Louis Mountbatten.
He was loaned to the British Pacific Fleet and was part of the fleet that sailed into Hong Kong Harbour, which had been under the Japanese Imperial Army’s occupation since 1941. There, he became the first allied officer to land ashore – and with a detachment of Royal Marines, liberated Hong Kong by taking over the facilities at HMS Tamar, the Royal Navy’s shore base prior to the fall of Hong Kong. On August 30th, 1945, Lore led a detachment of troops with interpreters to the Imperial Japanese prisoner war camp in Sham Shui Po, liberating Canadian, British and Hong Kong prisoners of war.
And finally, Captain Roger Cheng, who was born in British Columbia in 1915 and led a team of special SOE operatives, Special Operation Executive Operatives from Force 136 into the jungle of Borneo in 1945. Force 136 consisted of a remarkable group of Chinese men from Canada who were selected for a secretive force for use in the Pacific theatre. Modelled after a similar group used in France to support the French Resistance, these men were trained to be Special Forces working deep behind enemy lines. Born in Canada, Captain Cheng was the first officer of Chinese descent in the Canadian military, serving in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals. With force 136, he led the mission into Borneo with his team of special operatives, Sergeant Roger Cheng, Louey King, Jim Shiu and Norman Low.
The apology today gives promise that the scars from racism endured by this remarkable group of warriors and others like them will no longer be invisible; that their struggles memorialized, their voices heard. To that end, I ask that their stories be told, and their patriotism... patriotism featured and memorialized in our recruit and battle schools. I ask that the leadership and sacrifice of Sergeant Masumi Mitsui and others like him be studied at the Professional Development Programs for senior non-commission members and junior officers. I ask that the pioneering efforts of Aircraft Women First Class Jean Suey Zee Lee and other racialized women who served Canada during the Second World War be celebrated. I ask that the Canadian War Museum prominently exhibits the exploits of Lieutenant Commander Lore, who was the first officer of Chinese descent to serve in the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Navy. And I ask that the courage of Captain Roger Cheng, who I believe is the first Canadian officer to lead a team of special operatives into combat deep behind enemy lines, should be recognized and celebrated.
These small but meaningful efforts will help fulfill the promises made today. They not only honour the memory of our veterans, they also empower the hundreds of racialized service members currently serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. And most importantly, they will inspire the thousands of others who want to join the Canadian Armed Forces of tomorrow.
Finally, this apology must promise to tear down the veil of wilful blindness, veils that protect and shelter those who pervert our policies and our procedures. They do so in the safety and comfort of assuming they will not be held accountable. Wilful blindness harm our sisters and brothers in arms, pervert our culture, prevent the full measure of the contribution of all service members from equally valued and fully realized. This apology today should hold accountable all those who are unwilling or unable to protect and defend the rights and privileges and dignity and honour of all our comrades in arms. They weaken our institutions. They can no longer be allowed to hide in the shadows of invisibility, to hide behind assumptions of their inherent superiority and the inherent inferiority of those who serve with them.
They can no longer be permitted to cower behind the shield of assumed infallibility. Their honesty and integrity must be examined. They must be asked who they are fighting for and what are they defending if they’re not willing, not able, not fit to protect and defend their comrades in arms. Equal value of all who serve this country and a full realization of their potential will ensure a Canadian Armed Forces that is stronger, more capable, more resilient and more lethal – an Armed Force that fights Canada’s fights and wins. This is the potential and the promise of today’s apology.
Capt (Navy) Kelly Williamson: Thank you, Albert, for your wisdom and your lifelong commitment to inclusion.
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Canadian Armed Forces Apology for Racial Discrimination and Racial Harassment: LCdr (Ret’d) Albert Wong |
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Canadian Armed Forces Apology for Racial Discrimination and Racial Harassment: The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean |
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Canadian Armed Forces Apology for Racial Discrimination and Racial Harassment: Delivery of the National Apology |
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Canadian Armed Forces Apology for Racial Discrimination and Racial Harassment: Closing Remarks |