She has never been able to celebrate Father’s Day, said 79-year-old Barbara Ong Janecek, whose Chinese father was believed to have been deported to Singapore from Liverpool, Britain, in 1946 after World War II ended. Her father, Mr John Ong, was a merchant seaman who was...
Ms Barbara Ong Janecek's “stolen” father, Mr John Ong, might have a family in Singapore after he was deported from Britain in 1946.She has never been able to celebrate Father’s Day, said 79-year-old Barbara Ong Janecek, whose Chinese father was believed to have been deported to Singapore from Liverpool, Britain , in 1946 after World War II ended.
The only photo she has of her dad was taken in Liverpool in 1943, showing a tall and handsome man at a wedding. The family was destitute after his disappearance, and always went hungry, added Mrs Janecek. They lived in the basement of a dilapidated Victorian house in Upper Stanhope Street in Liverpool.
“I was very upset when I found out. It was a lost opportunity and I think my dad was reaching out to us,” said Mrs Janecek, who has three middle-aged sons with her late husband.In December 2023, she was here again, this time with Mr Tom St John Gray, a British freelance documentary director who featured her and others in a recent documentary on deported Chinese seamen from Liverpool.
“It’s very possible many thousands of young Singaporeans today are related to this astonishing story without ever knowing it,” Mr St John Gray said. “And one of those many thousands might hold Barbara’s missing puzzle piece.” A few weeks after she left Singapore, Mr St John Gray found a message in the personal column of the Liverpool Echo newspaper from 1955. It was a request by Mrs Janecek’s mother and stepfather for Mr John Ong, who was sometimes known as “Ong Ah Mow”, to contact them.
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