My Father's Escape from Japan

I have very little information about how my father was able to rejoin us in Vancouver, in August of the year of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Apparently the men who were employed by the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company could not get passage out of Japan.  Many were stuck there and were interned in Japanese civilian concentration camps. There were no airplane flights.  All the passenger ships were moving troops. My mother and I were on the last passenger ship to leave Yokohama.  The Hiye Maru was soon after converted to a troop carrier.  All but 50 lbs. of baggage were allowed to leave the country.  Furniture, possessions,  all left behind.

Years later my father gave me a ring, a jade ring.  The story was that he had managed to purchase a jade stone with our remaining bank balance. But how to get it undetected out of the country? He had it set in a cheap ring.  When he crossed the border he turned the stone to the inside of his hand showing only a cheap metal band that no one at customs paid attention to. 

I know that he was able to get to a  friend in Shanghai. Somehow passage was arranged  to Vancouver.  Years later he told my brother Jonathan that he was able to sail from Shanghai on an American troop ship.

My birthday was on the 31 of July.  He sent me a poem to celebrate the occasion, a poem which suggested that he would join us soon.  I have it memorized.

"Won't it be lovely to meet again
Won't it be nice to say 'hello'?
You're growing bigger and bigger each day
Learning so much and delighting in play.
But after the fussing and excitement's about
All talking at once, no on listening no doubt
Time will pass quickly and 'fore anyone knows
Why bedtime is coming and sweet repose.

There'll be piggy back rides as of old, just for fun
And maybe after a story, dear one.
Then Mummy will shout out "Now Daddy, you know
Its terribly late, so don't be so slow."
So out go the lights and I give you a kiss,
For my precious is off to that land of sweet bliss."

The moment of his return that August night I was fast asleep.  I woke up the next morning in the Murphy bed in some astonishment.

Vancouver

This is about our life after my mother and I left Japan. It was March of 1941 when we arrived in Vancouver.  My mother and Mrs. Robertson knew the area around English Bay, since we had been there the year before.  But we had no connections, no friends or relatives to take us in.  There was certainly no welcome. I remember going from apartment house to apartment house only to be told that they didn't take children.  We finally found a dreadful place, a basement apartment near English Bay.  The concrete walls were garishly painted red.  

I do not remember going to school when we first arrived,  but that summer I played on the beach of English Bay.  Perhaps I  had met Peter the summer before.  He was my age, 7.   Peter, Irene, Betty and I with a gang of kids found pieces of driftwood  and assembled them into little airplanes. My mother would dig herself a hole in the sand, put a beach towel down, and settle herself comfortably on it.  She folded origami propellors for our airplanes.  We would then run as fast as we could holding the planes overhead to make the propellors spin.  There were other emigres on the beach and my mother always seemed to have companions to talk to as the women sat and watched the children play.

Peter's mother lived in a large house in Shaughnessy Heights.  Her husband was a drunkard, so to pay the bills for her family of six, she opened a day care center in her home.  There were two older children, a boy and a girl, and one younger than Peter.  Dawn was three and had been born deaf.  The doctorswere able to restore some hearing, but she was, as we would say, 'language impaired'.  I was  fascinated that a three year old talked like a toddler.  She would say "Muk, Dawnie,"  when she wanted for milk.

My resourceful mother offered her services to Peter's mother tohelp with cooking and cleaning, in exchange for a room in a nice neighborhood for herself and her daughter. Then, with  the Canadian Pacific Company's tiny stipend that was all we had to live on, she enrolled me in a private school, York House, still operating when Robin and I visited Vancouver recently.  This did not go well with the Klaugsey children, who thought I was 'stuck up.'  Since I didn't have much experience with the rough and tumble of a large family I endured the taunting silently.  I remember that Easter I received a large chocolate egg filled with candy.  Chocolate was becoming  a luxury due to wartime rationing.  The Klaugsey kids came into our room and stole the candy and some of the chocolate egg.  They called me 'brat'.  Poor little Valerie.


The Klaugsey family
York House was fun and I met some nice friends there.  I was put into third grade although chronologically it should have been second.  The six months I had with the nuns in Japan had prepared me well.  At York House we wore uniforms, the 'Royal' colors green and gold were our school colors.  We sang the school song, "Our royal colors green and gold, in honor and respect we hold.  Not for ourselves alone our aim, far greater these than wealth and fame." 

At recess we would play with our Bolo bats, a paddle with a ball attached by an elastic band.  I became quite skillful at it.  We would also throw and catch balls against a concrete wall.  The girls had a separate recess time from the boys. 

I especially remember  music theory class.  I learned about quavers, and semi-quavers, and even hemi-semi-demi-quavers!  I walked to and from the Klaugsey house every day, about a mile, and picked flowers from the well tended gardens to give to my mother, my best friend in the whole world..  I was invited to lots of birthday parties by the kids in my class. 

We finally moved out of the Klaugsey house into an apartment, with the Robertson's close by.  It had black cloth over all the windows, 'blackout curtains' .  There were regular air raid warnings.  There was a Murphy bed in the living room, but I slept with my mother in the one bedroom.

In the next apartment house was a 'rich' girl.  She had no mother, but lived with her father who bought fabulous clothes for her.  she had a beautiful white 'fancy ice skates' and aleopard skin fur coat!  She was not allowed to play with other children,  so I would go across the street to make houses in the high grass and imagine all manner of wonderful make believe things.  I felt rather sorry for her.

Wendy

Just talked to Wendy.  She is back from a trip to Genoa, and will go into a nearby clinic tomorrow to get ready for hip replacement surgery on July 3rd.  She will be home in a couple of days, and will need about two weeks of going easy on one side.  Coincidentally, Jane and Andrew are in Paris after a trip on the continent, staying in the Rue Ernst house but arriving just as Wendy is leaving!!  They will stay a couple of days, leaving Paris on Thursday.  Alex arrives on Friday!  What an amazing family.

More Japan stories coming soon.   Love to all,  Val