My mother was 5 years old in 1942. She was born and raised in California… mostly central and southern California. She told a heartbreaking story of the Japanese internment camps right here on US soil and home in California. There was a little Japanese boy in her kindergarten class. One day he and his entire family up and disappeared without a word. When she asked her parents, my grandparents, it was explained to her that they were most likely taken to the internment camps and how wrong that was. My grandmother’s mother was an immigrant from Germany pre-world war 1 and was a German Jew. She instilled the value of all people to my grandmother along with fairness and equality.
Both of my maternal grandmother’s parents were European immigrants. Her mother from Germany and her father from Norway. Grandma had an older half-sister in Norway who was an international translator during WW2. I wish I’d been able to get some of the stories she had to tell. As a translator, I’m sure she saw, heard and was privy to all sorts of information.
I know my stories aren’t necessarily about the war and battles, but they were part of the history of the world during that time. WW2 impacted every family in some way across most of the globe.
As told by Jodie McDowell, 8-31-19
The Burma Road, the novel 