World War II left millions of children wounded, homeless, hungry, impoverished and often orphaned in defeated and victorious countries alike, as the V-mail below attests. In the United States, the kids were, for the most part, all right, although the stress and dislocation of the war years left some homeless, as a youthful Maya Angelou discovers in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. But impoverished or not, universally, across the globe, children waited for their fathers to come home.
My sister Gretel was born within a fortnight of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and for most of her first four years my father was a soldier.
He was discharged from the Army in the fall of 1945 after five months in London, spent interrogating German POWs. He reunited with his tiny family at my grandmother’s house in Buffalo since the Army did not house dependents once soldiers were deployed overseas (which may explain why some kids ended up homeless). Removing his officer’s hat, he threw it on the floor, emphatically declaring, “I’m done with the Army!” at which point my sister burst into tears! In her mind his Army uniform was as much a part of him as his mustache.
V-Mail from London, June, 1945, from my father to my sister, describing a little girl in ragged clothing, hoping for some chewing gum from American soldiers
Children’s parade on V.E. Day (May 8, 1945) in San Antonio, TX. Gretel is pushing a baby carriage; the boy behind her rides a tricycle, and the child behind him carries a watering can; the boy in front carries the flag.