The First Clues 1950

“You don’t look like a Chinaman!” the kids would say, when I told them my family was born in Hong Kong. I was about five years old and we’d just moved into our home on Inverness Street in Vancouver. 

“I’m not!” I’d answer, indignantly “I’m English!”

“Where were you born?” was their usual next question.

“California.” I’d say, “Los Angeles, California.”

“Then you’re a Yankee!” they’d taunt.

“I am not!”

“Well you’re not a Canadian”, they’d say, and they were right about that! At least back then I wasn’t.

I was born in Los Angeles in 1945.  We lived with my mother’s sister Nora, in a small top-floor apartment in the hills of Hollywood until March of 1947.  My mother and her sister had come to the states in 1941 and became marooned when the US entered WW2 following the Japanese bombing of the US Navy base in Honolulu. They both obtained work permits due to the extreme shortages of workforce, and these permits were renewed each 3 months until the end of the war but once it was over, my mother was unable to obtain permanent resident status in the US. This left her little choice as the US Immigration Office said she needed to leave before April so a hasty departure was arranged. There were friends and family in the UK so after a trip across the country to New York by train we boarded the Cunard Lines, “Queen Elizabeth” bound for England.

Leaving Glendale, CA train station for New York. My grandfather Tobias Hunter at was visiting at the time so he came to the station to see us off.