Morris Cohen (adventurer)

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Morris Abraham "Two-Gun" Cohen (1887 - 1970) was a Jewish soldier and adventurer who became aide-de-camp to the Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen and a major-general in the Chinese army.

According to a 1954 biography written by Charles Drage with Cohen's assistance, Morris Cohen was born in London in 1889 to a family that had just arrived from Poland. However Cohen was actually born into a poor Jewish family in Radzanów, Poland. Soon after his birth in 1887, the Cohens escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe and emigrated to the St. George's in the East district in London's East End.¹

Cohen loved the theaters, the streets, the markets, the foods and the boxing arenas of the English capital more than he did the Jews' Free School, and in April 1900 he was run in as "a person suspected of attempting to pick pockets". A magistrate sent him to the Hayes Industrial School, an institution set up by the likes of Lord Rothschild to care for and train wayward Jewish lads. When he was released in 1905 and Cohen's parents shipped the young Morris off to western Canada with the hope that the fresh air and open plains of the New World would reform his ways.

Cohen initially worked on a farm near Whitewood, Saskatchewan. He tilled the land, tended the livestock and learned to shoot a gun and play cards. He did that for a year, and then started wandering through the Western provinces, making a living as a carnival talker, gambler, grifter and successful real estate broker. Some of his activities landed him in jail.

Cohen also became friendly with some of the Chinese exiles who had come to work on the Canadian Pacific Railways. He loved the camaraderie and the food, and in Saskatoon came to the aid of a Chinese restaurant owner who was being robbed. Cohen training in the alleyways of London came in handy, and he knocked out the thief and tossed him out into the street. Such an act was unheard of the time, as few white men ever came to the aid of the Chinese. The Chinese welcomed Cohen into their fold and eventually invited him to join the Tongmenghui, Sun Yat-sen's anti-Manchu organization. Cohen begun to advocate for the Chinese.

Morris Cohen soon moved to the city of Edmonton in the neighboring province of Alberta. There he became manager of one of the provincial capital’s leading real estate agencies and was appointed, on the personal recommendation of the Attorney General Sir Charles Cross, to serve the province as a Commissioner of Oaths, an appointment offered only to “fit and proper persons”².

Cohen fought with the Canadian Railway Troops in Europe during World War I where part of his job involved supervising Chinese laborers. He also saw some fierce fighting at the Western Front, especially during the Battle of Passchendaele. After the war, he resettled in Canada. But the economy had declined and the days of the real estate boom were long over. Cohen looked for something new to do, and in 1922 he headed to China to help close a railway deal for Sun Yat-sen with Northern Construction and JW Stewart Ltd. Once there, he asked Sun for a job as a bodyguard.

In Shanghai and Canton Cohen trained Sun's small armed forces to box and shoot, and told people that he was an aide-de-camp and an acting colonel in Sun Yat-sen's army. His lack of Chinese—he spoke a pidgin form of Cantonese at best—was thankfully not a problem since Sun, his wife Soong Ching-ling and many of their associates were western educated and spoke English. Cohen's colleagues started calling him Ma Kun, and he soon became one of Sun's main protectors, shadowing the Chinese leader to conferences and war zones. After one battle where he was nicked by a bullet, Cohen started carrying a second gun. The western community were intrigued by Sun's gun-totting protector and began calling him "Two-Gun Cohen." The name stuck.

Sun died of cancer in 1925, and Cohen went to work for a series of Southern Chinese Kuomintang leaders, from Sun's son, Sun Fo, and Sun's brother-in-law, the banker TV Soong, to such warlords as Li Jishen and Chen Jitang. He was also acquainted with Chiang Kai-shek, whom he knew from when Chiang was commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy, which was located outside of Canton. His dealing with Chiang, though, were minimal since Cohen was allied with southern leaders who were generally opposed to Chiang. Cohen ran security for his bosses and acquired weapons and gunboats. Eventually he earned the rank of acting general, though he never led any troops.

When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, Cohen eagerly joined the fight. He rounded up weapons for the Chinese and even did work for the British intelligence agency, Special Operations Executive (SOE). Cohen was in Hong Kong when the Japanese attacked in December 1941. He placed Soong Qingling and her sister Ailing onto one of the last planes out of the British colonies.

Cohen stayed behind to fight, and when Hong Kong fell later that month, the Japanese tossed him into Stanley Prison Camp. There the Japanese badly beat him and he languished in Stanley until he was part of a rare prisoner exchange in late 1943.

Cohen sailed back to Canada, settled in Montreal and married Judith Clark, who ran a successful women's boutique. He made regular visits back to China with the hope of establishing work or business ties. Mostly, though, Cohen saw old friends, sat in hotel lobbies and spun out tales—many of them tall—of his exploits. It was his own myth making, together with the desire of others to fabricate yarns about him, that has resulted in much of the misinformation about Cohen, from the claim that he had a hand in the making of modern China, to such outlandish ones like him having an affair with Soong Qingling and a wife in Canada back in the 1920s. After the 1949 Communist revolution, Cohen was one of the few people who was able to move between Taiwan and mainland China. Unfortunately, his prolonged absences took a toll on his marriage, and he and Judith divorced in 1956.

Cohen then settled with his widowed sister, Leah Cooper, in Salford, England. There he was surrounded by siblings, nephews and nieces and became a beloved family patriarch. His standing as a loyal aide to Sun Yat-sen helped him maintain good relations with both Taiwanese and Communist Party of China leaders, and he soon was able to arrange consulting jobs with Vickers (planes), Rolls Royce (engines) and Decca Radar. His last visit to China was during the start of the Cultural Revolution as an honored guest of Zhou Enlai.

Morris Cohen died 1970 in Salford. He is buried in Blakeley Jewish Cemetery in Manchester³

[edit] Footnotes

(1) Historically it was stated that Cohen was born in London in 1889. This is what is written in the Charles Drage book, which Cohen essentially dictated to his friend Rose Klyne from his home in Montreal, and Klyne and Drage then organized as best they could, after which Drage gave it a narrative thread. Cohen’s sister, Leah Cooper, with whom Cohen lived in England following his return from Canada in the 1950s, though stated following his death in 1970 that it was an open family secret that Morris Cohen was actually born in Poland and came over as a young child. He was also born in 1887 and not 1889. This 1887 date has been confirmed by numerous other Cohen relatives. Cohen's own death certificate lists his date of birth as August 1887, and his tombstone reads: "In Loving Memory of General Morris Abraham Cohen who died 7th September 1970 aged 83 years old," which means he was born in 1887. The 1889 date was used when Cohen was arrested as a youngster in London for picking pockets. By claiming a younger age it ensured that Morris could go to an industrial school where he could learn a trade. As a result he would not be given a more severe punishment and place of incarceration. It probably also saved Morris from a life of crime and enabled him to go on and have the amazing life that he had. Cohen, though, quite regularly gave the earlier August 1887 date as the time of his birth. For instance, when he is admitted to jail in Winnipeg in April 1909, he is listed as 21, which works out for an August 1887 birth. When he is interviewed by the Shanghai Police in March 1929, he gives his birthdate as August 3, 1887. Similarly, records at the Public Record Office at Kew in England, memorandums from the Canadian Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs as well as files from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police state that he was born in 1887.

(2) Appointments made under the provisions of “An Act Respecting Commissioners to Administer Oaths”.

(3) “Two-Gun Cohen’s Tomb in Manchester” by Rena Krasno http://www.sino-judaic.org/pointseast/twoguncohen.html

[edit] Books about Cohen

• Charles Drage (written with Cohen's help)- Two-Gun Cohen (1954)
• Paolo Frere - The Pedlar and the Doctor (1995)
• Daniel S. Levy (the best book about Cohen so far)- Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography (1997)