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Some evacuees made their own arrangements outside the official scheme if they could afford lodgings in areas regarded as safe, or had friends or family to stay with. My mother had given me a parcel of sardine sandwiches to eat on the train, but I had hardly touched them. When I arrived at my new home I stuffed them in the wardrobe and forgot about them. Some time later Mrs Mobbs noticed a peculiar smell in the bedroom and when she tracked it down found a mouldy parcel of ‘sardine sandwiches’ smelling to high heaven! It was to become a family joke for 50 years and was spoken of in a letter I had from Jessie on the 1st September 1989.
I was evacuated with my school and about 80% of the pupils went. The others stayed at home and had whatever education could be provided for them, the school remained partially open with very few staff staying behind. Most of the London children went with their schools and had their teachers to take care of them on the journey. Eight years ago Tetsuji Sakuma was powerless to prevent the destruction of the dairy farm his grandfather had built just after the second world war.
Evacuees' stories
The WVS provided practical assistance, looking after tired and apprehensive evacuees at railway stations and providing refreshments in reception areas and billeting halls. Sometimes children observed their parents afresh and found their way of life different from what they had grown used to with foster parents. John Mare, who had been evacuated to Canada aged seven, was horrified, as only a child can be, by what he found on his return to Bath. Fear that German bombing would cause civilian deaths prompted the government to evacuate children, mothers with infants and the infirm from British towns and cities during the Second World War.
Workers at Fukushima Daiichi are battling with huge quantities of radioactive water, while decommissioning the plant is expected to take at least four decades. Not one of the 250 children was late at Mandeville Street School, Lower Clapton. Once inside their buses they talked happily with their parents through the windows.
Why were civilians evacuated during the Second World War?
During the Second World War, thousands of children were evacuated, , to the countryside. There, they were often better fed, as fresh fruit and vegetables and dairy products were more freely available. The evacuation of some three million people to rural locations beyond the reach of German air attacks deeply affected the nation. … Following selection, a host was compelled to take an evacuee; those who refused faced the threat of a fine. In return, hosts could expect to receive payment via the post office. Local billeting officers were appointed to find suitable homes for evacuees and they set about interviewing possible hosts.
Many evacuees from inner-city areas had never seen farm animals before or eaten vegetables. In many instances a child's upbringing in urban poverty was misinterpreted as parental neglect. Equally, some city dwellers were bored by the countryside, or were even used for tiring agricultural work.
What was written on an evacuee tag?
After a very long wait we boarded a train, no-one knew where we were going. We were allowed to take one small suitcase and had to carry our gas masks, also in a small box with a strap. Each child had a large label with his/her name on it and the name of the school. We set off on the train which was constantly being shunted into the siding so that the troop trains and goods trains could pass.
Over a million were evacuated from towns and cities and had to adjust to separation from family and friends. Here are 11 ways children were affected by the Second World War. Even though the bombing of Britain never occurred on the scale that many feared in the 1930s, some 110,000 children were evacuated to Wales over the course of the Second World War. This number included children who were evacuated from Welsh urban areas to Welsh rural areas. … This involved local children using the classrooms in the morning while the evacuees would attend school in the afternoon.
Why were children evacuated from Britain in the 1940’s and which countries took these evacuees?
On the other hand, some were very nice families and had awful children who behaved badly and did all sorts of damage. These were sent back to the billeting officer to re-house which caused quite a few headaches. Evacuation day was inevitably a deeply emotional and, often, traumatic experience for all involved and full of uncertainty and tearful goodbyes. Yet, evacuation was not compulsory and some parents were understandably reluctant to take part, despite propaganda posters which encouraged co-operation. … Yet, evacuation was not compulsory and some parents were understandably reluctant to take part, despite propaganda posters which encouraged co-operation.
My school was very close to Euston Station so that was our departure point, together with hundreds of other children. We gathered together early in the morning and at the set time we all walked to the station. When we arrived at the station there were hundreds of children as far as the eye could see — all waiting for trains to take them away to the country side and to safety. There were also many mothers behind a barrier, weeping and crying .
It was a brave little regiment, marching in step, which left Ashburnham School, Lots Road, Chelsea, for Walham Green Station where they entrained for Wimbledon. One thousand children are being evacuated from the Chelsea area. While waiting to be taken away - they did not know where they were going, except 'to the country for a holiday' - the children had community singing. As dawn was breaking the children marched to Aldgate Metropolitan Station, where they entrained.
It took six to seven hours to travel a journey which would have normally taken one and a half hours and we seemed to go through every county to get there. We eventually arrived at Kettering in Northamptonshire though we all thought we must surely be in Scotland after all that time. The government at that time was very worried about children’s safety because they expected air raids to start immediately, but in fact they started about two years later. The first came on 1 September 1939 – the day Germany invaded Poland and two days before the British declaration of war.
From then on, the authorities will end housing support to evacuees on the grounds that certain areas have been decontaminated. Trees and bushes have been cut down and radiation levels have sometimes fallen by two thirds in some areas but not everywhere. Most of those who have returned are pensioners who don't want to take the risk of starting anew elsewhere. "It's so sad that we don't hear children's voices here any more," says Keiko Shirai, 64, with tears in her eyes. However, she won't insist on her daughter and two grandchildren coming back.
One in five schools was damaged by bombing, and air raids frequently stopped lessons for hours, leading to a decline in attendance. So Endo wants to create a new infrastructure to attract other evacuees to Kawauchi. He rejects the straightforward solution which would be for operations to resume at the Fukushima Daini plant 12 kilometers south of the Daiichi reactors. "If we produce nuclear energy here again the whole world will laugh at us," he says. "We have to learn a lesson from this disaster otherwise it won't have meant a thing." The Second World War was a time of major upheaval for children in Britain.
However, it was possible to plant rice again this year and the head of the farmers' committee Kazuo Watanabe is relieved. "Finally, the younger farmers have a reason to return," he says. The fact that the government has agreed to buy up the whole harvest allays fears that nobody will buy rice from this region."
The process of being evacuated was humiliating for the children. "There is fear of radiation, the broken reactors are still not under control and on top of that, Kawauchi doesn't have the comforts of a big city," Endo names as the reasons. A quarter of Kawauchi's 2,800 inhabitants refuse to come back for now. Some 500 have returned and 700 come here to work everyday. Two years ago, an earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, 20 kilometers away.
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