Japan Story War Clouds

After being put to bed, I could hear, in the next room, my parents discussing  politics.  My father's BBC accent would loudly voice opinions about people who were presumably important in the world.  The name Chamberlain came up frequently, and Mussolini.  Then there was someone called Schikelgruber.  This was in the time-frame of 1939 to 1940, and Hitler was on the march in Europe.   Since all my relatives came from England, there was much interest and concern for the fate of the British people.

My father did a comic imitation of Hitler that I thought very clever.  He would tousle his dark hair, produce a small dark 'mustache' from somewhere, place it under his nose and fulminate in a convincing imitation of Teutonic rage.  This Hitler person was someone to be mocked rather that feared.

That summer, as I have said, we planned to visit our relatives in England, but it was not to be.  By the summer of 1940 passage to Europe across the Atlantic was no longer an option.  My maternal grandfather had died, shortly after my birth, but his widow was there, and his son Norman and wife Cora, with daughter Susan.  My father's parents were no longer living, but he had two sisters, Bess and Belle, who had inherited the two shops my grandfather had started, which sold gentlemen's hats.  They were 'spinsters', who had lost their sweethearts in WW1. My father also had a brother, Leyland, who did not seem to be very enterprising, but had one son David, who later earned a PhD from Bristol University, the first in our family to achieve a degree. I never met any of them, except David, much, much later.

We learned that my grandmother was 'bombed out of her home' several times, but managed to survive the blitz.  We sent them all care packages of items scare in Britain.  Meat and sugar were particularly appreciated.  My grandmother lived until I was a teenager, in the 1950's, and we had an acquaintance by Air Mail over the years.