Douglas Jung
| Douglas Jung | |
|---|---|
| Member of the Canadian Parliament for Vancouver Centre |
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In office 1957–1962 |
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| Preceded by | Ralph Campney |
| Succeeded by | John Robert Nicholson |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
February 24, 1924 Victoria, British Columbia |
| Died | January 4, 2002 (aged 77) |
| Political party | Progressive Conservative |
Douglas Jung, CM OBC CD (traditional Chinese: 鄭天華; simplified Chinese: 郑天华; pinyin: Zhèng Tiānhuá; February 24, 1924 – January 4, 2002) was a Canadian politician. He was the first visible minority elected to the Canadian Parliament, as well as the first Canadian Member of Parliament (MP) of Chinese and Asian descent in the Canadian House of Commons.
Douglas Jung was born in Victoria, British Columbia, on February 24, 1924. During his childhood, the Government of Canada passed numerous pieces of legislation that disenfranchised Chinese in Canada. Jung and a group of young men from British Columbia enlisted in the Canadian Army during World War II in order to change the status of Chinese Canadians.
Although Jung enlisted himself in the Canadian Army back in 1939, he did not receive his first assignment until 1944, mainly because politicians in Ottawa and Victoria did not want to deal with the issues of enfranchising the Chinese after the war. However, Winston Churchill's wartime Special Operations Executive recruited Jung and a group of Chinese-Canadian soldiers who were sent to British Malaya to train local guerillas to resist the Japanese Imperial Army occupying Malaya and Singapore. The mission for the Asian Canadian soldiers was known as Operation Oblivion. However, the operation came to an abrupt cancellation, allowing Jung to lead his troops through China in their own search and rescue missions.
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