Remembrance & Reconciliation (Researching Your Family History)

Member Name: skidd

Product:	Researching Your Family History
Date:	09/04/09 (170 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Closure

Disadvantages: Tears

I must preface this article by an apology that it is probably in a misleading place but unfortunately there is no suitable category in Speakers Corner and my attempts to post this under the General heading were foiled. Everytime I tried it would take me to my last review under that heading with an invite to update it! Therefore I gave up and searched out this heading - after all this is a little piece of my family history!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This week the two themes of Remembrance and Reconciliation have been on my mind. To explain why this is, I must return to the beginning of a story. It started years ago but the most recent chapter opened some eighteen months ago and is best recounted in a piece written by my Mum. It was her contribution to the local version of "Talking Newspapers for the Blind " which, being November, was including some reflections on Remembrance Day

+++My Mum's Story in her Own Words+++

Many years ago, 1936 to be exact at the age of 10, I said my goodbyes to my brother Ted. Ted had followed in our father's footsteps and joined the Royal Artillery and was home on embarkation leave. He took me to a matinee performance at the Hippodrome in Dover. I don't remember much about that, but I do remember the overcoat he bought me afterwards. He was the third of my five brothers and, as the youngest in the family, I was spoilt by them all. He was going to be stationed for three years in Rawalpindi, which, in those days of the Raj, was in India. Three years! To me, at that age, it was a lifetime away. Little was I to know!

His tour of duty ended in 1939, but with the outbreak of war in Europe his homecoming was deferred. Then, in 1941, on his way home, his ship was turned back when Pearl Harbour was bombed. I don't know where or when it happened but he was captured by the Japanese. I have a card he wrote in 1944, from a prisoner of war camp in Taiwan mentioning that I was now 18 years old and he hoped to be at my wedding. The next year the family heard that he was to be moved to Nagasaki in Japan and later on the sad news that he had died of pneumonia. The War Graves Commission sent us a booklet showing the Memorial Crass and the rows of stone plaques, beautifully kept, in the Commonwealth Cemetery in Yokohama.

That was many moons ago.

Ted's name is now on the list in Deal's War Memorial Hospital. Long may it remain! But often I have felt great sadness that Ted died and was buried so many miles away, without any of the family there. I always thought that one day I would go there but the years have gone by and I never made it.

However a few months ago one of my nephews, Martin, rang to tell me that his son Jonathan, had made the acquaintance of a young Japanese lady on the internet. She had invited him to visit her home in Yokohama and he was out there at that moment. She lives only a ten minute bus ride away from the cemetery and they had gone there that morning, found Ted's grave and laid flowers for him. Martin said we would find a copy of the photo they had taken on our computer and we did. It was the first time we had seen just his grave and the inscription. Starting with his army number it reads:-

838852 L. Sjt
E R C HARRISSON
ROYAL ARTILLERY
26th April 1945. Age 29

Now Ted's great nephew is back and I have received more photos of him and the Japanese girl, Yoko, carrying the flowers they laid on Ted's grave. We have now heard that she will visit Jonathan next year. I hope that I shall be able to meet her. She and Jonathan have made me feel that there has been closure, in that a member of the family has visited his graveside - " in a foreign field that is forever England".

+++Uncle and Great Uncle Ted+++

Unfortunately my Mum now has an eye condition which prevents her crying but, although I am not given to over sentimentality, I shed a few tears for her when first reading her story and viewing the pictures. Of course I never knew my Uncle Ted but his memory has always been kept alive in the family. However, until I read this I had never really appreciated how young he was when going off to Rawalpindi, how, because of World War II, he was away from home for nine years and how young he was when he died, the same age as my son is now! Coincidentally, when Mum wrote this in October 2007, my own daughter was in Islamabad, doing the initial training for her one year VSO stint in Pakistan. She too has grown up with an awareness of her Great Uncle Ted's story and would have loved to visit Rawalpindi, just a few miles away, on her own little pilgrimage. In fact she would have landed very near there as it is now the location of Islamabad International Airport but she was strongly advised not to go there as it is now the headquarters of the Pakistani Armed Forces and, as such, it is a dangerous location in that troubled. country. My own anxieties about my daughter at that time brought the whole thing home to me especially thinking of my Grandmother, seventy years ago, waving her lad off and presumably experiencing the same mixed feelings of pride and trepidation which I was then experiencing.

+++Moving On+++

Nearly a year later Jonathan brought Yoko to visit my parents. She brought them little traditional Japanese gifts and they were absolutely charmed by her. Unfortunately I have still not had the opportunity to meet her but think that will soon be rectified because last week my cousin Martin and his wife flew to Japan so that they could be present at the wedding of their son and Yoko. I expect there will also be a family trip to pay respects to Uncle Ted. This is why the two themes Remembrance and Reconciliation have been very much in my thoughts this week. I wonder what my Uncle Ted would have made of it all but, if he was anything like the rest of my family, I like to think he would have approved and wished the young couple well.

I don't want to comment too much on the rights and wrongs of war. I suppose by nature I am a pacifist but I am also a realist and can understand why some people believe in the concept of a "just war". I also appreciate the sacrifice made by so many in past and present wars. However it is a sobering thought that four months after my uncle died in a Nakasaki Prisoner of War Camp, the Americans dropped the second atomic bomb on that unfortunate city.

On Saturday my Japanese friend, Mariko, called round for dinner. I have only known her for a couple of years and had not mentioned the story to her before because of some misplaced feeling that I should not mention the war (a la Fawlty Towers and John Cleese). However I really wanted to tell her about the wedding and that led on to the story of my Uncle Ted and the subsequent history. I needn't have worried. She was delighted by the news of the marriage and it sparked a brief conversation about the history of our two countries and the futility of war which in a way cemented our friendship. It was she who first identified that we now had our very own Jon and Yoko in the family! Sadly she said that although she has lived in this country for some thirty years (she married an English man but is now a widow) she still occasionally experiences some prejudice against her race.

And so begins another chapter in our family history. Hopefully the younger generation will never again experience the horrors my Uncle Ted and so many others must have witnessed. I feel proud that they seem to be free of prejudice and are moving on whilst still keeping the memories alive, memories which should provide a lesson to us all.

Summary: RIP Uncle Ted