Re: memories.e18
Lotte Evans (rylcae@MINYOS.ITS.RMIT.EDU.AU)
Fri, 2 Feb 1996 22:29:07 +1100
My Australian father-in-law was a prisoner of the Japanese. As such he
suffered tremenduous deprivation and torture. He came back with a deep
seated hatred towards the whole Japanese nation.
His son Maury, my future husband joined the Australian army near the end of
the war at eighteen years of age, missed all the fighting and was stationed
in Japan as part of the occupation force. He saw the damage done to
Hiroshima by the atomic bomb he also visited a museum which showed the
mutations done to embryos caused by the fallout. He liked the Japanese
people and when he came back to Melbourne he told his father that he had
a Japanese girl friend and that he was considering marrying her. His father
told him that if he did this it would break his heart and Maury broke off
the relationship with the Japanese girl.
Years later I met Maury and he took me home to meet his father who welcomed
me with open arms as his future daughter-in-law. Now he knew that I was
a Viennese, a native of Austria, a country which was allied with Germany and
Japan. And what's more Hitler the main instigator of the horrors of WWII
was my country man. But because his sufferings during his prison years
were not inflicted on him by Germans he saw them through different eyes.
Lotte Evans