Albert Kunyuku Ngoma was a young Congolese corporal in the colonial Belgian army when he was forced to battle in World War II as far away as Burma, now called Myanmar.
Now 97, Ngoma is one of only two surviving former members of the colonial “Public Force” military living in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) capital, Kinshasa, who are honored in a new documentary titled The Shadow of the Forgotten!
Recalling the battles of six decades ago, Ngoma described fighting side by side with Belgium troops against the Japanese in Burma.
Photo: AFP
“In the trenches in Burma, we saw Belgian officers fall to enemy bullets,” Ngoma said. “It was a real shock for us.”
The Public Force was formed as a military unit when Belgian King Leopold II controlled the colony. Thousands of Congolese were drafted as part of the colonial armed forces, and fought during World War II in east Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Dressed in their worn-out former uniforms, Ngoma and his former brother-in-arms Daniel Miuki, 94, were praised as “living monuments” of Congolese history at a recent showing of the documentary by academic Jose Adolphe Voto.
In the film, they are shown proudly wearing their campaign medals on their chests as they recalled details of their postings from Leopoldville, as Kinshasa was once known, to the Middle East and to Burma, a British colony invaded by the Japanese during the war.
Caps on their heads and canes in hand, two men leafed together through a yellowed photograph album from Miuki’s home showing pictures dating from 1940 to 1945.
US soldiers were not great shots, they said, but they praised the combat skills of the Japanese, Chinese and Korean soldiers on the ground.
Both remember the racial segregation they had to face even as they fought shoulder to shoulder with the Belgians.
“We were like slaves, because it was Belgium that brought us into this war. We could not say anything,” Ngoma said.
“When the bombs began to fall, white and black would die the same way,” said Miuki, a former infantry nurse.
As Belgium’s prime minister visited the DR Congo this week, Miuki criticized what he called the “ungrateful” attitude of the former colonial ruler towards its Congolese ex-soldiers, saying they were tossed aside “like dirty towels.”
“France still takes care of Second World War veterans from its former colonies, and their heirs,” Ngoma said.
Congolese soldiers never received any compensation from the countries for whom they fought in 1940 to 1945, said a complaint filed in 2018 in the DR Congo by seven children of ex-combatants from the Public Force.
They accuse the former colonial power, as well as France, Britain and the US, of neglecting their parents and claimed more than US$7 million, the Belgian Ministry of Defense said.
The case was in court late last year, but no judgement has been made.
“I wanted to pay tribute to those who gave their all, not only for the Congo but in the world war,” Voto said. “I wanted them to be rewarded morally. When I spoke with them, I was disappointed to learn that they have never been recognized by Belgium.”
THE ANSWER? The drug uses neutralizing antibodies produced by the human immune system, which the team isolated from the blood of 60 recovered patients A Chinese laboratory has been developing a drug it believes has the power to bring the COVID-19 pandemic to a halt. A drug being tested by scientists at Peking University could not only shorten the recovery time for those infected, but even offer short-term immunity from the coronavirus, researchers said. Sunney Xie (謝曉亮), director of the university’s Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, said that the drug had been successful in animal testing. “When we injected neutralizing antibodies into infected mice, after five days the viral load was reduced by a factor of 2,500,” Xie said. “That means this potential drug has [a]
‘SERIOUS QUESTIONS’: Three US senators sent a letter to the US commerce secretary asking whether the project ‘takes into consideration national security requirements’ US Senator Chuck Schumer and two other Democratic colleagues have written to top US administration officials asking for details of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd’s (TSMC) plan to build a US$12 billion fab in Arizona. Hsinchu-based TSMC on Thursday last week announced that it would build a plant to make 5 nanometer chips by 2024 that would have the capacity to produce 20,000 semiconductor wafers per month. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker already has one chipmaking fab in Camas, Washington, and design centers in Austin, Texas, and San Jose, California. It said it planned to start construction in Arizona next year and
VULNERABLE: Many women do not report sexual harassment by their landlord over fears they could lose the roof over their head, an expert said A growing number of landlords are asking tenants for sex in exchange for housing as COVID-19 lockdowns and job cuts have left many struggling to pay their rent, housing experts said. A survey by the National Fair Housing Alliance of more than 100 fair housing groups combating discrimination across the US found that 13 percent had seen an increase in sexual harassment complaints during the pandemic. “If I did not have sex with him, he was going to put me out,” one woman facing eviction by her property manager told the alliance in an podcast on its Web site. “As a single
MOM’S LONG CAMPAIGN: Mao Yin had been brought up in Mianyang, Sichuan Province, without any idea that he was the target of a decades-long, high-profile search A Chinese man who was stolen from his family as a toddler has been reunited with his parents after 32 years. Mao Yin (毛寅), then two-and-a-half years old, was snatched in 1988 when he was walking home from nursery with his father. His parents finally embraced him again on Monday in Xian, where he was born. After Mao vanished, his mother Li Jingzhi (李靜芝) quit her job and launched a decades-long search for her son, that included sending out more than 100,000 flyers and appearing on numerous TV shows. That long campaign helped 29 other families find their own missing children and made
RSS