h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

this is *not* a good subject to get me started on! although i was an unfertilised ova for more than thirty years after the war ended, most of my family members lived through the days of world war ii... and almost every one of them is a storyteller of extraordinary endurance. (hint hint)

my grandfather was an air-raid warden during the japanese occupation in malaysia - needless to say, he was witness to a great deal of action. (he actually saw one famous buddhist temple get blown up to bits by a mosquito. the plane, not the insect) he had a *lot* to tell about the japanese which, in contrary to the war stories you usually hear about them, portrayed them in a wholly different light:

during the occupation, all the government servants were required to learn japanese. the japanese, to their credit, encouraged this learning process by offering pay rises to those who passed the proficiency tests (there were, what, five or so levels?). grandad (who was a clerk), of course, did very well - heck, he'd been learning tamil and arabic from his friends for yoinks - and mind you, a $100 raise meant a lot back then than it does today; needless to say, he got along pretty well with his employers. there was this one time when one of the japanese accountants, after watching grandad at work for some time, challenged him to a friendly math competition where they added up whole columns of figures using an abacus. grandad won both the contest and the guy's abacus (which, if i remember correctly, was made of good wood and gold). they would later become friends... i'm not sure if grandad won anything else off him.

also, during that time a lot of japanese moved into my grandfather's neighbourhood - one of whom was this guy living in the house right next to theirs who had a fondness for children, and who apparently stopped by the house almost every evening to visit my grandad's family and take my mum out for a walk (my mum was an infant at the time. i assume he had to carry her).

of course, having spent my childhood listening to stories like these, i'd never really thought of the japs as actual *enemies*. it wasn't until i read history books that i found out just what they'd been doing in nanking etc. i guess it all depends on who your neighbours are...

(shall i go on? i've got loads more stories. and i'm just as inexhaustible when it comes to telling 'em!)

Please do

oh, here's a little bit of aside first:

my best friend's grandfather was involved in the resistance in malaya (what is now known as peninsular malaysia). he was afraid that the japanese would catch on to his er, double life, however, and one night decided to bury his uniform in what once was a jungle but is now part of the university of malaya campus. we're sort of wondering if it's still there... heritage, heritage.

My grandfather also fought the Japanese in a slightly unusual way. An avid sailer from Melbourne, at the age of sixteen he tried to join the Royal Australian Navy but was turned down on account of his colour blindness (which I have inherited) - so he turned to the Army who used his skills to ferry weapons and supplies to the native 'Fuzzie' resistance in Papua New Guinea. I know he saw actual combat several times and on one ocassion lost a fair few of his teeth to a Jap bullet. He skippered a junk crewed by Papuan natives and on which he was the only white man and was ferrying supplies and men between Darwin and Bouganville long before the Australian forces recaptured ground in Papua, I've overheard him talking to my mother on rare occasions when the whole family's been together about some of the stuff he saw in the war and it's pretty dreadful. He was discharged in 1947 at the marine base in Port Moresby.