By Your Southwest Media Group
This year’s Remembrance Day stamp recognizes Chinese Canadians who volunteered for secret Allied operations in Asia during the Second World War.
Unit 136, at your service. Canada Post’s 2026 Remembrance Day stamp features Chinese Canadian volunteers in uniform, with the unit name handwritten in English, Chinese and French. The stamp honours about 150 Chinese Canadians who served on secret Allied missions behind Japanese lines during the Second World War. IMAGE COURTESY CANADA POST
“Despite facing racial discrimination at home, about 150 Chinese Canadians stepped forward for dangerous missions behind Japanese lines,” a Canada Post statement said.
Officials unveiled the stamp during a Nov. 3 event in Vancouver, attended by family and friends of those who volunteered for a unit called Force 136.
At the start of the war, Chinese Canadians were prohibited from enlisting “due to racial discrimination,” the statement said. “That changed in 1944, when Allied planners sought Chinese Canadians with language skills and the ability to blend in for covert operations in Japanese-occupied Asia.”
Those recruited served either with Force 136, part of Britain’s Special Operations Executive, or with Australia’s Services Reconnaissance Department. They underwent intense training for a mission “to gather intelligence, support local resistance networks and carry out sabotage operations,” the statement said.
“They wanted to prove that they were Canadians, and they thought the best way to do that was to fight for this country, even though they were treated as second-class citizens,” said Catherine Clement of Vancouver, an award-winning Chinese Canadian community historian, curator and author.
By the end of the war, more than 600 Chinese Canadians had served in all three branches of the Canadian military, the statement said. In 1947, the federal government repealed the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, giving Chinese Canadians full citizenship and the right to vote.