Kathleen Quan Mane was one of the first Chinese Australian women to join the war effort in WW2 and served as a codebreaker in the Australian Military doing highly classified cypher work. She enlisted at age 18, despite her father being treated as a “foreigner and enemy” and her mother’s Australian citizenship being revoked after her parents married and having to report to the police station regularly.

The now 91-year-old war veteran was born in Sydney to an Australian-born Chinese mother and a Cantonese father who came to Australia in the early 1900s. She recalled her parents had been proud and supportive of her and her sister joining the Defence Force despite the family suffering under Australia’s discriminatory policies and racism. Each of her other four sisters served or had a son or husband in the Defence Force. “We spoke Cantonese in the home, ate Chinese food and lived a Chinese lifestyle and going into the forces was a great change for us. We were what you could call a military family, which was quite unusual because Chinese girls usually did not leave home before getting married.”

After the surrender of Imperial Japan, Kathleen Quan Mane and her sister, Doreen, devoted themselves to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), doing humanitarian work in China. Three decades later, in 1979, she returned to Australia and reunited with her family.

She was appointed as honorary secretary of the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force WA branch and served until 2016.

Records from the Chinese Museum in Melbourne show more than 600 Chinese-Australian men and women enlisted to serve their adopted country during World War II. We celebrate Amazing Women of Chinese Australian heritage from all eras.

Read Ms Quan’s full story at ABC News. 

Kathleen Quan Mane’s story is told with thanks to the Australian Government Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the Australian War Memorial.

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