Liverpool ceremony honors 31 'forgotten' Chinese sailors

More than seven decades after their deaths, 31 Chinese sailors who died during World War II were remembered at a ceremony in Liverpool in northwestern England on Nov 27.

The sailors served on Dutch merchant vessels and died in Britain between 1942 and 1945. They were given new gravestones at Anfield Cemetery.

The men were commemorated in a eulogy written by Walter Fung, a council member for the Society for Anglo Chinese Understanding, and read by the Lord-Lieutenant of Merseyside Pamela Brown.

"They have lain here for 70 or more years, largely forgotten and their sacrifice unacknowledged," Brown said. "We remember their loved ones in faraway China - some of whom probably do not even know that their fathers, brothers, husbands and grandfathers are lying here in a distant land."

Liverpool's Lord Mayor Malcolm Kennedy read a poem by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas at the service, which was led by the Reverend William Addy of Liverpool Parish Church.

The mariners were first laid to rest at the cemetery between 1942 and 1945. The majority of the original gravestones disappeared over the years, though the sites were known to Roel Broer, a manager at the War Graves Foundation in the Netherlands, who arranged for the reinstallation of headstones this week.

"I see the impact that World War II still has on people," Broer says. "It's important that these men are remembered."

The Dutch Navy went into the service of the Allies after the Netherlands was occupied by Germany in 1940. Broer says it's likely the Chinese sailors joined the Dutch Navy in the then-Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), which were occupied by Japan in 1942.

Most of the men served in ships' engine rooms, while some worked as cooks in the galleys. Death certificates indicate that many of them died from illnesses, including tuberculosis, thrombosis, cancer and bronchitis.

Many of the death certificates do not list birthplaces, though at least eight were born in the same village, listed as Ting Tow Si Pien, which is near Fuzhou, the capital of East China's Fujian province.

angus@mail.chinadailyuk.com

(China Daily Africa Weekly 12/01/2017 page14)