Of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour my step-mom, Helen, told me, "I just felt sick". The horror in both Europe and the Pacific must have appeared hopeless and endless. Her brother Bob was one of the first US Officers on scene at a Nazi "final solution" 'camp'.
My Mom, Louise, worked in a CIL munitions factory near Montreal, packing gunpowder into shells and bombs during WW2. Fascist Germany seemed unstoppable. I recall scrapbooks with newspaper clips of battlefront maps with parents' notes and lines in red and blue pencil marking progress and losses in Europe.
She tried to make sense for me of war-related events in our lives. She rented to desolate roomers. One couple, persecuted for views unwelcome in Quebec's confused anti-conscription politics in the time of Premier Maurice Duplessis, an era sometimes called La Grande Noirceur ("The Great Darkness"), set out for a hilltop gathering in the US, returning when the apocalypse missed its cue, hoping for their hideout room back.
There was my collection of bubble gum cards that featured really grotesque depictions of yellowed Asian soldiers being blasted by jut-jawed US Marines. My mom could explain, but did not approve.
A later roomer was 'Tiny', a petite Japanese nurse and sole survivor of family and neighbourhood in Hiroshima. Somehow she got to Montreal with her treasured possession: a set of ancient family tea cups, white, touched with cherry blossoms and calligraphy.
Albert (uncle to Amber, my girlfriend of 50+ years), grew up on a Saskatchewan farm, volunteered for the Canadian army at 18, fought to liberate Holland, and returned often as a multi-medalled Vet to parades of adoring kids and cheering adults. He died this year of COVID in a Kitchiner care home, at 93.
My mom's older sister, Florence, was director of a Tokyo US military hospital at the beginning of the US occupation. She so liked South Sea exotica and military life she married 3 US Navy officers (in succession ! ), and personally occuped Honolulu. My youngest uncle, Julian, was a chemical engineering prof at Cornell who contributed to uranuim separation technology for the Manhattan Project, something he spoke little about.
For me, remembrances are not just about those who served or who didn’t come home, but about what was hoped and fought for. And what is made of them by this season's people. Lest we forget.
Some appreciations:
Jane
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An additional Memory:
My granny Bertha, Louise's mother was fairly well-to-do, and always had 1 or 2 helping servants about the place. Her last was a maid/cook/caregiver called Stephanie. Her story was amazing: she was German, in Germany during then war, and somehow was separated from her young son. My guess is that it was something like the British who moved kids out of the cities during the bombing. And then she escaped Germany, without her son.
Much later, she moved to Canada, established herself, and began to search for her son - the Red Cross being one of the searchers.
Eventually he was found: he was a major in the Canadian Forces. Reunion very happy.