The Foreign Service Journal, January 2012

26 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 2 beach town where we sometimes summered, and my mother, sister and I did not return inland to the university when we usually did. My child’s understanding of this decision was murky; but I now be- lieve that we were advised to stay put until the United States’ re- sponse to the outbreak of hostilities was clear. (It may also have had something to do with devastating floods.) But in a few weeks we went back home, and life returned to normal. Because the medical school where my father taught was inside the ancient city wall, we sometimes went into town in a rickshaw with our mother. To enter the gate, we were required to go through a Japanese checkpoint. One of the soldiers always smiled at us and often had a small gift for my younger sister and me. In retro- spect, I realize he must have missed his own small daughters. But at the time, he was just another friendly adult at the edges of our lives. By December 1940, war was clearly looming. For me, though, life was routine: starting first grade, climbing trees, helping Mummy rake leaves, roaming the campus, playing with friends. But the State Department had commandeered three cruise ships to evacuate as many American women, children and “unnecessary” men around Asia as would leave. Refugees at “Home” I didn’t know the details of all that until later. All I knew was that suddenly, in a flurry of packing trunks and organ- izing documents, our pregnant mother, my sister and I were going back “home” to America, wherever that was, whatever home meant. And Daddy was staying behind to continue teaching. We took the train to Tsingtao, a port city, hugged hard, blew kisses and waved good-bye as the tender went fur- ther into the harbor, and climbed aboard the S.S. Mari- posa to cross the Pacific. So on that December Sunday in 1941, along with my mother and my two younger sisters, I was a refugee. We lived with my paternal grandpar- ents in Mississippi, feeling like out- siders and waiting. Pearl Harbor determined for what. On Dec. 8, the United States declared war. Daddy had already flown to Hong Kong and then to the interior of Free China as the faculty and students moved the uni- versity. With hostilities declared, he joined the U.S. Office of War Information in Chungking, putting his expertise at the service of the war effort. He would not be coming back to us anytime soon. Letters arrived rarely, after long delays. Daddy flew out over the Hump— the name for the eastern end of the Hi- malayas over which Allied pilots flew transport missions in and out of China from India during World War II — to come to the States for consultation and to be with us, though for only one summer. By the time he re- turned for good, I was nearly a teenager and my youngest sister, born after we got back to the States, was no longer a baby. A New Vocabulary Everyone was part of the war effort. To do our bit, we smashed tin cans and collected newspapers for reuse. Gas, sugar, shoes and other things were rationed. (To this day, I am fussy about shoes be- cause I had wide feet and only fit into ugly brown boys’ shoes, one pair a year.) Victory gardens were commonplace. We canned what we grew, churned butter (if we could get whole milk) and learned to slice bread and squeeze the yellow back into lardy-looking margarine. Each week, we carried our dimes and quarters to school to buy stamps toward war bonds. Everyone knew boys who went off to war, or had fa- thers who had been called up, or passed houses with a small flag with a gold star in the window. New places came into our vocabularies and onto school maps: Normandy, the Bulge, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Hiroshima. News arrived via the radio or the newspaper (which published “extra” editions for major events like President F OCUS On that December Sunday in 1941, along with my mother and my two younger sisters, I was a refugee. The author (right), her younger sister, Har- riet, and their amah, Wong Neinei, in 1940 in Tsinan, China.