'Unsung heroes' in Anti-Fascist War remembered

Contribution of Wha Chi guerrillas in WWII treasured in the Philippines

Chinese-Filipino businessman Aquino Lee was in his 30s when he learned that his father was part of the Philippine-Chinese Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Force, more commonly known as Wha Chi, and fought side by side with the Filipino guerrillas against the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines during World War II.

Lee, now 75 and a former president of the Wha Chi Veterans Descendants Association, recalled his father never telling him anything about that time of his life.

"I feel that they think that it's just a chapter in their life that they just passed," Lee told China Daily, noting that his father, who was then in his 20s, returned to work in a construction shop in Manila shortly after the Wha Chi was decommissioned at the end of the war in September 1945.