Roy Chan, attached to British Special Operations Executive during the Second World War
Group photograph: Roy Chan is 3rd from left, front row. Operation Oblivion team photographed at Mount Martha in Australia,1944. Back row from left to right: Douglas Jung, Jimmy Shiu, Norman Wong, Henry “Hank” Wong, Louey King. Front row from left to right: John Ko Bong, Edward “Eddie” Chow, Roy Shin Twe Chan, Wing Lee Wong, Norman Mon Low, Roger Kee Cheng, George Thomas Lock, Vincent Yeung, Raymond Young Lowe. Canadians who became secret agents during the Second World War served with two British secret organizations: The Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) and M.I.9 (Military Intelligence). Because they often could speak the local languages and blend in with local populations, Chinese-Canadians played an important role in S.O.E. in 1944. It was a dramatic switch for the Chinese-Canadians who up until then had been prevented from playing any role in the defence of their country. Operation Oblivion was cancelled on January 26, 1945, and while they were waiting in Australia to be deployed, Chan, Roger Cheng, Louey King, Norman Low, and Jimmy Shiu volunteered for the Australian Services Reconnaissance Department (S.R.D.). They were assigned to a Commonwealth team led by a British officer for Operation Hippo, which put them behind Japanese lines in northern Borneo on August 10, 1945. Operation Hippo was part of a larger S.R.D. operation called Semut, begun in March 1945 to support the Australian invasion of Labuan Island and Brunei Bay. Its goal was to enlist Dayak groups and support them in a secret guerilla campaign against the Japanese. Roy Chan and his comrades operated with the Iban, the most aggressive of the Dayaks. One of their primary objectives was to liberate the more than 2,000 Allied captives at the Batu Lintang Camp in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak. The war ended in August 1945 before that could happen. The Canadians remained in Borneo until October 1945 to help repatriate POWs, after which they returned to Canada. Roy Chan, Louey King, Norman Low, and Jimmy Shiu were awarded the British Military Medal (MM) for their bravery. Bibliography: Cheng, Roger Kee. Interview by Reginald Herbert Roy. Cheng, Roger: my Army recollections (February 22, 1971). University of Victoria Special Collections and University Archives, February 22, 1971. Audio. https://doi.org/10.58066/4npp-bm35 Helliwell, Christine. Semut: The Untold Story of a Secret Australian Operation in WWII Borneo. Docklands, Victoria: Penguin Random House Australia, 2021 Ooi, Keat Gin. The Japanese Occupation of Borneo, 1941–45. London: Routledge, 2011. "Operation Oblivion." Oblivion Productions. © 2020. https://www.operationoblivion.com/index.html. Operation Oblivion. Produced by National Film Board of Canada. Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 2012. https://www.nfb.ca/film/operation_oblivion/ . Weicker, Chris, Colonel (Retd). Chinese Canadian Secret Warriors in the Pacific, 1944–46. The Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada, August 3, 2020. https://studyofcanada.ca/chinese-canadian-secret-warriors-in-the-pacific/ Wong, Marjorie. The Dragon and the Maple Leaf: Chinese Canadians in World War II. London, ON: Pirie Pub., 1994.
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- Roy Chan, attached to British Military Intelligence during the Second World War
- Victoria’s Chinatown, a gateway to the past and present of Chinese Canadians
- Victoria's Chinatown Project Website: https://chinatown.library.uvic.ca/index.html
- May 10, 2012
- 600 dpi tiff. Metadata by MT and SC. Metadata enhanced by Rick Green, November 2025.
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