Exclusive: Children of lost Chinese sailors demand Home Office apology

THE elderly children of thousands of Chinese sailors deported from Liverpool after World War II today demanded an official apology for having their fathers “stolen” from them.

They want Home Secretary Theresa May to say sorry for the way the men were rounded up, without warning, by Special Branch agents in 1946 - or, to use the official jargon, “compulsorily repatriated”.

Children grew up believing they had been abandoned, others were subsequently put up for adoption by their destitute mothers after the men in their lives suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth.

It would be more than half a century before the truth finally came out and they learned that they were not deserted after all.

The families of these seamen were totally ignorant of these events thinking that the men were killed at sea or they had been deserted and left abandoned with no form of income

In the early 1940s,  20,000 Chinese men were recruited into the British Merchant Navy. Based in Liverpool, around 300 of these married or cohabitated with local women. 

They crewed ships in the U-boat infested waters of the North Atlantic, playing a vital part in Britain’s warfare, relaying supplies and arms from the US.

In return for their efforts they were, over a two-day operation, thrown out of the country they had helped save. Many were married with children, but they were denied the chance to even say their goodbyes.

Peter Foo, the man who has launched the petition on change.org, grew up in Liverpool never knowing his father, for many years resenting him for abandoning his family.

Now 71, he says the disappearance, almost 70 years ago, has had a lifelong impact.

“On behalf of all of the children, I have started this petition because my father disappeared in 1946 and this event has had a bad reflection on my life,” he said.

The episode continues to cause grief in Liverpool where people still remain separated from fathers they have never met.

An official monument near the Pier Head, dedicated to the children left behind, recalls what is often described as one of the most shamefully racist events in post-war Britain. 

Mr Foo is hoping to gather enough names to win an acknowledgement and apology from the British Home Office for the 1946 Forced Repatriation from Liverpool of thousands of Chinese sailors, on behalf of their families, wives, children and grandchildren.

Mr Foo said: “Due to civil conflict between the Communists and the Republicans and the coastal areas of main land China being inaccessible, the majority of these seamen were not repatriated but were put ashore in foreign countries thousands of miles from their homes.

“The families of these seamen were totally ignorant of these events thinking that the men were killed at sea or they had been deserted and left abandoned with no form of income.”

Hundreds of Liverpool children with Chinese fathers thought they had been abandoned when actually their dads had been kicked out of Britain without warning

Many of the Liverpool Chinese sailors deported were married to Liverpool women or were in relationships with British women and were fathers to young children. These women were wrongly described as prostitutes in the Home Office memos of the time.

Added Mr Foo: “These children are now in their late sixties or early seventies and have realised that their lives have been affected by the emotional upset of finding out that their fathers who had disappeared had probably been forcibly repatriated.”

He said others affected have found out in the last three years that they had been adopted and this has caused much upset to them and their children and grandchildren 

Peter Foo at the Pier Head monument to the families who had their lives devastated

“The consequence of this historic illegal deportation created a detrimental effect on the lives of innocent British citizens and has arguably had tragic and psychological life changing implications including financial difficulties and cannot be measured in any shape or form.”

Keith Cocklin, also half-Chinese, was born soon after his father had been thrown out of Britain and he never managed to trace his dad.

Keith is credited with the person who opened the "Pandora’s Box" in 1999 that led soon after to discovering the truth of what happened to the sailors.

“It was regarded as the ‘unspeakable’ truth, people too afraid to talk of what happened in 1946, but it left many of us not knowing what had happened. I had been brought up to believe my father had been killed at sea, when all the time like many others he was forcibly deported.”