Chinese Anzacs: Australians of Chinese Descent in the Defence Forces 1885-1919.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Position: Book review

CHINESE ANZACS Australians of Chinese Descent in the Defence Forces 1885-1919

Second Edition (Revised to include New Zealand-born Chinese of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force 1914-1919)

Author: Alastair Kennedy

Published by: New Zealand Chinese Association, Wellington, 2015, 173pp, $40 (books can be obtained from jamesto@es.co.nz).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The very wordy title of this book reflects the fact that it has something of an after thought quality. When it was first published, in 2012, it had no coverage of Chinese who served in the New Zealand forces, despite including the word 'Anzac' in its title. This was not, of course, unusual, for Australians often tend to overlook the 'NZ' in the acronym. The author admits in his preface that he was 'foolish enough' to overlook the New Zealanders, but he soon acted to remedy the omission with assistance of Chinese in New Zealand. A second edition published digitally in 2013 contained a 24-page additional chapter on New Zealand-born Chinese in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. The New Zealand Chinese Association has now acted to provide a hard-back version.

The experience of Chinese in both Australia and New Zealand was often marked by indifference, discrimination and hostility in the period up to and during the First World War. Although the number of Chinese in New Zealand had been as high as 5000 in the 1870s, there were roughly half that number in 1914. But to enlist in the NZEF men had to be British citizens and not all the Chinese in New Zealand held that status. There were perhaps only about 150 men who were eligible to enlist. Alistair Kennedy's investigation indicates that perhaps a third of them answered the call.

Kennedy provides biographical information about the men that have so far been identified as Chinese in the NZEF. It will perhaps come as a surprise to readers to find that two Chinese were among the New Zealand troops that landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. These were James George Patterson, grandson of one of the first Chinese to arrive in New...