Some stories remain completely hidden until the facts are exposed by probing journalists. Others may be part-known, but get forgotten until something changes: Records are released, attitudes change, fresh eyes examine the facts. The story of the Chinese sailors who were deported from Liverpool after World War II is one of the latter.

The decision in October 1945 to remove the 'undesirable' seamen was taken behind closed doors by civil servants, but it was hard to hide the disappearance of hundreds of men who all vanished in a relatively short space of time, even if the precise circumstances remained a secret.

So the wives of the repatriated sailors formed a campaign group in 1946 and there were questions raised in Parliament by the Liverpool lawmaker Bessie Braddock, whose statue can now be found in Liverpool's Lime Street railway station.

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But little resulted from those efforts and the story faded from public view, only kept alive through personal memories and stories passed down through families. 

Fresh eyes

Even after the records became public many decades later in Britain's National Archives, it was hard to find out what had happened to the men. In a parliamentary debate in 2021, contemporary Liverpool lawmaker Kim Johnson paid tribute to the efforts of the sailors' descendants, but said they were still being frustrated in their search for answers.

That debate led to the internal Home Office report which finally put the spotlight back on the issue, revealing that more than 8,000 men had been repatriated for reasons which were at least in part racially motivated, and leading a minister to express 'regret' at how people who had helped Britain during the war were treated.

When CGTN took up the story, then, there were numerous people burning with a sense of injustice and personal hurt who had already done their own research and who were willing to talk to us about their family stories and their frustration at not being able to find out more.

What most of them have found nearly impossible is to find out in what circumstances their own father or grandfather was repatriated, where he was sent to and whether he was one of the ones who was simply rounded up by the police.

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Maritime archives

So if your father or grandfather disappeared from Britain without trace more than 70 years ago, how would you go about finding him?

If he was a sailor in the merchant navy then the UK's National Archives are a good place to start, for reasons directly connected to Britain's imperial past.

As an island nation the country relied heavily on sea power, and paid close attention to organizing and resourcing its ships. From the middle of the 18th Century, when Britain was already well on the road to becoming the world's supreme naval power, the government imposed a requirement on all merchant ship owners to keep a list of every sailor who sailed on every vessel on every voyage.

The result is that Britain has records of all its sailors, and what they did, stretching back well over 200 years. 

Anyone can inspect the records for free, by pre-arrangement with the National Archives in Kew, in south-west London. 

For the descendants of our missing Chinese sailors, the crew lists, along with ships' logs and registration documents, should be a potential treasure trove of information. They could potentially reveal which ship took him back to China or Singapore, to which port on which date.

But these extensive records are still only the start. Firstly, to find an individual sailor you need to know, or at least have a hunch about, what ship he may have sailed on. Because the Chinese sailors worked mostly for the Holt Company's Blue Funnel Line, the search can be narrowed down to their ships – a few dozen at most.

Furthermore, the repatriations happened between late 1945 and probably some time in 1948, so the date range can be confined.

However, names are generally transliterated into English – often inaccurately – and some men may have used false names for various reasons, so it's hard to be certain you have the right man. The crew lists help here because they give an age and occupation for each sailor, but you need to know what those are from other sources to confirm you have found him.

Even if you do find a man who seems to fit, the crew list only tells you whether he signed on as crew and where he was discharged. It doesn't tell you to what extent he was coerced into signing on, although it's clear many men were, through police action and legal or economic pressure. 

The same goes for passenger lists, which are also available. But if your ancestor was one of the men who were shipped back in a hold, like so much cargo – as hundreds were – then his name may not even have been on any list.

There are other records which might help, if they could be found. The Liverpool Police Special Branch would presumably have had a list of the men it was tasked with rounding up, but that has not turned up in the police archives. 

There may also be local records which could help in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, where the men were discharged. One descendant and researcher, Yvonne Foley, has been able to examine archives of shipping agents, local government and unions in those places, and turn up some useful information about what was happening at the time the men were sent back.

The fate of individual sailors, however, remains largely unknown. Many descendants fear time is running out to trace their Chinese father or grandfather, and want the UK government to put resources into helping them find out – as well as to apologize for what was done.

 

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