Japan Exodus

I have been experiencing blog block, and a busy schedule here at La Costa Glen that makes creative time difficult.  So much for the excuses.

Considering how to approach this next phase, leaving Japan, I realized I would have to do some research into the years, months and weeks preceding Pearl Harbor.

As I have said, my parents and I went on a trip to Canada and the United States in the summer of 1940, but were thwarted in the original plan because civilian travel was no longer possible across the Atlantic.  Consequently I never saw the grandmother, aunts uncle and cousins we had planned to see.

Returning to Japan was a shock.  We no longer could live in the little bungalow, Ju Ichi Ban Yamato.  We moved a mile or so away to a Western multiplex , 234E. the Bluff.  We no longer had Japanese servants.  Jane Savory had bright red hair, and an illegitimate daughter. She was therefore unemployable as far as the Japanese were concerned.  My parents had no such scruples and she served us in the new quarters.  She and her daughter, Setseko  slightly younger than I, lived in the one room servants quarters at the back.  Years later I was able to track down her granddaughter, now in the United States, who said Setseko (now known as Emily) was still alive but had recently suffered a heart attack.

I remember the name Chamberlain and heated discussions about him from my parents.  He was a man who was famous for saying "Peace in our Time".  My parents did not think much of him.  I was five.

When we got back to Japan in 1940 my school had closed, the International Private School where most ex-pat children were educated.

The only English speaking school open was the Sacred Heart Convent which I attended through that winter and spring.  A lot of our friends had left the country. The Robertsons remained. My mother and I left with Mrs. Robertson and Irene and Betty.  The men were not so lucky.

Increasingly there were scarcities.  My resourceful mother would take my outgrown clothing to the marketplace and bargain for precious eggs.  Increasingly the Japanese people showed hostility.  "Baka! baka!"  The propaganda trucks would slowly pass along the Bluff, their loudspeakers blaring stern words in Japanese.  I went to school, I went to Sunday school (Anglican) I played with friends and my father brought wonderful presets home.  But there was the looming feeling that all would soon change.

Then one day I was asked to select a few of my favorite possessions, clothes, dolls, treasures, only up to fifty ponds, the maximum amount were were allowed to carry out of the country.  I chose my doll, Setseko San with her beautiful Japanese clothes.  Also the prize chest of drawers from the Fancy Dress Christmas parade, the scale from the shop Santa had brought, my Norah Welling dolls and the Burnie box my neighbor had made for me.  Everything else, furniture, pictures, household furnishings, had to be left behind.  And money.  I didn't concern myself with money, but later learned that it was impossible to take cash out of the country.  We left with a few personal possessions, that was it!