OK OK!!Here’s Leslie Guests With Dikki Du at Slim’s Y Kiki. Aloha yall
Hi again . My 96 year old dad, who turns 97 in December, has been dealing with my brother about things that got left out of his 600 page memoir. Here's an excerpt from one of those emails I thought I might share with you that came by yesterday
97 years old in a month and still clear as a bell. He types these himself. He was the first person I ever knew with his own computer. I'm betting he'll be at least runner up to the Oldest Living WWII Veteran if not the winner. An amazing, amazing guy, been all over the world, every continent, with a lifetime of stories. You may think of me as a world traveler but I'm just trying to keep up with my dad and son, both of whom have spent more time out of the country than I have. I am very very lucky about who i was given for parents.
(Esther is a friend of his)
.......Just when you think you know a little about most things and a lot about a few things,something new comes along. A VM resident and friend, Esther Woll, has brought to us her "Escape" map of that part of China centered around Harbin. I've been in Harbin several times, flying in on old Tupolevs. - always very cold - I still have the bearskin hat I usually wore there.
.........
Meanwhile, Esther, then 14, and her family had escaped from European refugee camps and and made their way across the USSR into northern China. With the help of "Escape" maps, they were trying to get from Harbin to Shanghai, then occupied by British and U.S. forces. But, In November, 1941, British and U.S. forces had left Shanghai with flags flying and bands playing. On Dec 8th, the Japanese walked in and invested all the highly developed industry and marine facilities in Shanghai.
So what are "Escape" maps? In 1939, the Germans had surprised the British and French with its fast-moving blitzkrieg (lightning war) in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers were taken prisoner and locked in to P.O.W. camps. Very quickly many prisoners tried to escape and the British began to assist these escapees by dropping thousands of maps of the areas surrounding prisoner stockades . These maps had to be light, easily folded inside a shirt or pants. waterproof and printed on very fine silk both sides; when silk was no longer available, a very fine acetate was used - at least 100 x100 per inch. When Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war, we began to add to the British practice in Europe and extended it to the war in Asia. Such maps were of enormous help to refugees trying to escape Japanese occupation (just about everywhere - Korea, Taiwan, China, Philippines, Burma, Thailand, etc.) And this is how Esthers refugee family was using them.........
Me, my dad and my son at Dan's graduation from Monterey Bay State U, 2005. We're all graduates of Fort Ord--dad graduated from basic training there, I graduated from basic and infantry training there and Dan graduated from MBSU , which is on the old long deactivated Fort Ord grounds.