Chinese labour corps plaque on eBay - it is named

[Guest Pete Wood]

There is a memorial plaque on eBay at the moment, which is interesting.

The seller believes that the casualty was a Chinese Labout Corps man called IF KUN FOOK.

I can't find this man on the CWGC register.

The other thing that is puzzling me, is that plaques for Chinese Labour Corps men were supposed to be produced with their number, NOT their name.

You can see the plaque on eBay by clicking here

I have no connection with the seller.

[Ivor Lee]

Racing

I also tried without success to find this casualty on the CWGC list.

The nearest I could find was Kun Fuk a labourer in the Royal Indian Marine.

One for Terry's expertise?

[Chris_Baker]

You don't think this is a leg-pull, do you?

[Terry Denham]

I have now checked the names of every Chinese Labour Corps man on the CWGC list and no name is remotely like the one quoted.

The two words 'If' and 'Kun' do not appear in any name and the word 'Fook' in only one (Labourer YEP FOOK died 09.11.18 and buried in Colchester Cemetery, Essex).

This leaves the following options

1) The name is wrong or a fake

2) The new version of the name is very different

3) He was a Chinese serving in a unit other than the CLC

[Paul Reed]

Certainly the Plaques I have seen to CLC had their numbers on and no name - but that doesn't necessarily mean this one is 'wrong'. Is there no-one on the CWGC database with this name?

[Conor Dodd]

Is it possible to research the numbers on the CLC plaques ?

Conor

[Terry Denham]

Paul

See my post above.

This morning I checked all 1800 or so CLC names with the result I have already given.

Conor

If you have the number, it can be traced.

[Gregory]

With reference to the observations about the plaque in the name of name If Kun Fook:

1. The name 'If' is not standard Chinese. Chinese words do not end in 'f'. Therefore, if this plaque is genuine, 'If' could be an error for 'Ip' or 'Yip', both common Cantonese forms. Names ending in '-k' are also Cantonese. Most CLC personnel were from northern China, and their names are Mandarin (or dialectal).

2. The name 'Yep Fook' of the man buried in Colchester is a mystery. His number is associated with a different name in other sources. Again, the name 'Yep Fook' is not a northern name.

3. The CWGC list is only partial, as there were several other CLC men who died (e.g. aboard ship en route to Europe or back to China) who do not have CWGC graves and are not listed on the commemoration wall at Noyelles. (There are also a couple of duplicates - names on the Noyelles wall of men who are in graves elsewhere.)

4. My suspicion is that if this plaque is genuine, it refers to someone from Hong Kong who served in a military or naval unit.

On a related topic, I note the remark, "Over recent years CWGC has had experts study the Chinese characters on each headstone to produce a correct English transliteration of each name." Really? I have been in touch with the CWGC over this, and have received no such information. I think that whatever has been done has been piecemeal, and not systematic. Firstly, many of the CWGC headstones do not have Chinese-character names on them. Secondly, I am afraid that the CWGC list of romanised forms - at least the one available online - is full of the most elementary errors of transcription. Some of these are due to bad scanning from an original, others simply to ignorance. And because different systems have evidently been used, it seems that changes have been made to the list over time. And, of course, in other sources, many of the names are transcribed differently. The CLC was directed by the War Office to use only the Wade system of transcription, but even this was not applied in a consistent form by those making up the original lists of recruits, so much variation existed even in the CLC itself.

I have recently undertaken the compilation of a full and as accurate as possible list of all the CWGC headstones, and now have available a multilingual database with Chinese characters (where these are available on the headstones), Wade (with variations from as many sources as I have been able to locate) and modern pinyin (the Chinese-Roman transcription system now used by libraries and other institutions worldwide), which I have shared with the CWGC, and which I am willing to share with anyone interested. I have just under 300 headstones to check - on my next visit to France, I hope to be able almost to complete the list.

[Terry Denham]

Gregory

The remark was made to me in person by CWGC staff in January 2002.

They did not say that it was systematic or that it was complete.

Welcome to the Forum, by the way.

[Gregory]

Thank you.

What has happened, I think, is that over the years people who have visited the sites of CLC graves and have noticed discrepancies between the Chinese names and transcriptions have informally sent in their observations to the CWGC, rather than that the CWGC has actually commissioned any investigation. Some articles I have seen (e.g. in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society) lead me to this conclusion.

What I'd like to know - and the CWGC hasn't been able to tell me - is whether there was an original list of names in Chinese characters, which the engravers of the headstones used. All the CLC records, which were in Chinese and English, in China appear to have been disbursed at the end of the war; I don't know whether any records made/kept in Europe included names in Chinese characters. As the headstones were not carved until some time after the war (by CLC personnel who stayed on for this purpose), how had the records of those who had died been kept, and did these records survive? Because of the numerous discrepancies between the Chinese and romanised names on the headstones (sometimes they are quite different names), such a record would be a very valuable help to resolving the numerous outstanding issues of identity.

The CWGC's response to my database has been very enthusiastic, and I hope that in the end, we may get things tidied up. My aim is to provide a better research tool available for everyone. (For interest, my database also includes causes of death, where I have been able to corroborate these in other records. Unfortunately, there isn't much information available, but I've included what I've been able to find.)

[Terry Denham]

Good stuff, Gregory. Well done.

Were you working on this two years ago? The thought occurs to me that you might be the 'expert' to whom they referred!

They definately said they had someone working on it but I did not question it further - it was only a thirty second part of another conversation.

I have no doubt that they would be enthusiastic over your reseach as this area would have been a nightmare for them. Perhaps we shall see the fruits of your labour in the database shortly.

[Gregory]

No, not me, because I didn't start on this topic until last summer, when my son (a native-speaker/reader/writer of Chinese) and I came across the site at St-Etienne-au-Mont quite by chance. That piece of serendipity fired our imagination, and we've been back to Belgium/France three times since, and built up our database gradually. We're off to France this weekend, to visit the last few sites on our list. We're nearly finished.

I think the expert mentioned may have been someone from Hong Kong (whose name I can't remember) who did send in a list of comments and observations in 2001/2002, but only with reference to headstones in a limited number of sites.

The problems of identification of some of the CLC personnel are very great. In some cases the Chinese and the romanisations don't match. In some cases, the names and numbers don't match with other records. There are duplications, as I have mentioned, and several other discrepancies, including, crucially, of dates. One headstone at Noyelles is even dated 31st June, And there's a 30th February in the CWGC database!

Yes, you will see the fruit of our labour shortly, and I hope that the CWGC will adopt some of the changes to their own database that we are recommending.

Meanwhile, does anyone know where I might obtain a good picture of a genuine (numbered) CLC plaque?

[Terry Denham]

Racing Teapots is the Forum's plaque expert. He could no doubt help out if nobody else can - He is in India until Feb 19th.

[Guest Pete Wood]

Gregory, good luck with your project!!

The two plaque factories managed to make lots and lots of mistakes with 'English' names, so I have no doubt that lots of errors were made with names that were not familiar to the British workers.

I am inclined to agree with you that this plaque is not a CLC item. They were all numbered. But it would help enormously to be able to put the correct name to the number, so I support your cause whole-heartedly.

A colleague has found a newspaper that reported the death of a dock worker, in Liverpool, named IP FOOK, in an accident just after the war ended. As this man was a 'civilian' he would not be mentioned on the CWGC register. But as I have seen on a few occassions, now, if enough pressure was put on the War Office, a plaque would be made for the next of kin of anyone killed while on 'war service'.