Third Culture Kids and War

Far Eastern Academy administration/classroom building, Singapore. I did all my high school here. Photo by Randall Jones.

On our Facebook group for Far Eastern Academy (Shanghai and later Singapore; now closed) alumni a couple of weeks ago, one of my third culture kid friends whom I'll call DeAnna posted the following question:

This week I've been thinking about how growing up overseas has shaped my life, and just woke up from a dream about the 1971 war between Pakistan and India. It's neat to be able to research that war online and find out more about what was going on politically at the time (as I was only 8). I'm curious about how many of you directly experienced war while an MK/missionary. Would you mind sharing the year(s), location(s), and a few thoughts about your experience?

A fascinating discussion-starter, I thought. And indeed, it proved to be so. So let me share with you the responses (using pseudonyms), and let them speak for themselves:

• DeAnna: I do remember seeing the bombed oil storage tanks when we returned, but didn't know that the attack on Karachi was called Operation Trident! And then there was Operation Python...
• Cindy: I lived in Vietnam from 1968 to 1971. It was an experience most don't get to have. I got shot at, had hand grenade thrown at me, had the Vietcong try to kidnap me, was in an area that was being bombed and had soldiers die in my arms. It certainly gave me a perspective unlike anyone else unless they lived in war. I also had some fabulous times there as well - like hitchhiking on helicopter's to go to the gorgeous beach's, riding a tank just for the fun of it on an army base being the only woman with all those GI's, etc. Brings back many many memories of being a teenager in Vietnam.
• Connie: We were in Saigon, too, 1974-75. The GIs were gone, only Marines left to guard the embassy. Tense inside the city - I remember going up to the roof of the hospital to watch the bombing around the perimeter. A most beautiful country, weary from decades of war. Made me a pacifist for life.
• Margaret: We evacuated from Korea in the middle of the night, June 25,1950. It is a very vivid memory for me. 700 women and children transported from Inchon, Korea to Sasebo, Japan in the hold of a merchant ship. We were 3 days on the ocean. We spent a few days at the Navy Hospital and were taken by train to northern Japan. Our fathers flew out of Korea the next day and found us in northern Japan. We were the first foreign children to arrive back in Korea 1954.
• Lynette: I was at FEA '62 to '66. If you've ever seen the Linda Hunt movie called the year of living dangerously, that's what Indonesia and Singapore were like during that time. It wasn't exactly war, but Singapore went through independence while I was at FEA, and we experienced riots, lockdowns, and a lot of fear because the British evacuated their own citizens, but the Americans had no plan. Our biggest fear was the Communists that were infiltrating through beach landings every night. When we went on our 30 mile jungle hike, we came across many communist hiding places. I thought it was very exciting, but it was also quite unsettled and dangerous also. I also  lived on a Okinawa from 1950 - 1960, and the Korean War was being supplied militarily from Okinawa. We experienced blackouts and air raids drills daily, and as a child growing up, I thought we were at war. We had fighter jets screaming overhead, practice bombing runs and anti-aircraft drills etc. and the beaches were covered with soldiers drilling with aircraft carriers off shore. I still have some fear of the dark because of all the night time drama. And of course we were living in a village surrounded by all the remnants of the bloodiest battles ever fought.
• Vickie: Vietnam war was going on when I went to FEA. The furloughed soldiers would come to port for a little R&R. My cousin came one day. While kids were at home in the good old USA burning our flag in demonstration....we knew what they obviously did not know....how precious it is to live in the land of the free and the brave....how beautiful to see our flag flying her colors high...how our soldiers throughout history have fought to keep it that way...even when it was a ridiculous war to begin with.
• Patrice:  I was over there during the Vietnam war....we couldn't go camping at one place because the soldiers were fighting there that weekend. I was rather mad about it! I remember all the soldiers coming in for R&R in Singapore and us going out to see the ships.
• Marie: There was never war where we lived in Malaysia, but I remember being somewhat fearful because I'd heard the adults talk about the Domino Theory: Vietnam was falling Communists, so Laos and Cambodia would be next, then Thailand, then Malaysia, and that was us. There was Communist guerilla activity in the highlands and jungles of southern Thailand and Malaysia, and at times they interfered with travelers. I remember hearing that a farang (foreigner) family had been pulled over, going through the mountains at night in the south part of Thailand, and everyone was made to get out of the van, and they were robbed and then shot. We traveled through those mountains one night not much later, on our way to Phuket, and I was really frightened and did a lot of praying, bedded down in the back seat of the VW van.
  In another vein, there were times when the race tensions got hot in Malaysia. At one point race riots erupted in Penang between the Chinese and the Malays, and one of our friends, a Chinese lab technician, was stoned to death as he rode his motorcycle home from a shift at work, passing through a Malay kampong near the beach. The word went out during a week-long, 24-hour curfew that if you stuck your nose out of your house, the police would shoot it off. I was unhappy because my parents made us go to school during that time, saying that the curfew didn't apply on the hospital compound where we lived and went to school. They just didn't want people out on the public streets, my parents said. I was imagining going down the back steps of our house on stilts, and the whizz of a bullet as my nose would fly off my face. Not such a comforting thought. I have not, by the way, been able to find anything in a cursory search for historical notes online about those race riots.
• Tim: We were in South Korea at the beach one summer when a North Korean submarine attached the US missile base about 5 miles from where we were staying. The next morning solders were digging fox holes in our front yard and scouring the country side looking for North Korean solders that may have gotten to shore.
• Eric: Tim, remember all the gun emplacements at the bridges and the further you got out into the country the more check points and military pill boxes. I remember one time when some north Koreans came down and we had troops running through our back yard and all through the woods around the house. A big concern for my parents was always that the North Koreans would come down when we were scattered all over Korea and they would not be able to find us. I guess it was as not to great of a concern because we stayed for quite a few years and us kids never worried about it.
• Michelle: I lived in Pakistan during that same Pakistan and India war that you did, DeAnna. We were at our school, Pakistan Adventist Seminary, about an hour from Lahore. One day we heard a plane fly over and then there was a huge explosion. It was so loud that we thought a bomb had fallen. But we found out later that a plane had been shot down by another plane and the impact of the sound, tore locks our of doors and broke windows on our campus. Every night we had a blackout and weren't allowed to turn on any lights or use head lights on cars. It was a very scary time for me. We would dive under the table every time we heard a plane go over. To this day, I startle easily at loud noises!
• Laila: Uganda post independence - civil war between mountain tribes and lowlands tribes - father the political go-between - never knew if he would return or not. That was 1964-1968. Then post independence in Belgian Congo - barely in control gun toting thugs everywhere - us behind high fences with guard dogs - saw some pretty scary things from a child's point of view - that was 1969-ish onwards...my mother will undoubtably have different adult recollections different to mine.
• Rhonda:  I lived on Guam from 1967 to 1972 during Vietnam War. The bombers left Guam at 3-ish a.m. on their bombing runs to Vietnam. Remember seeing them returning in the late afternoons. Whenever there was a typhoon, you always knew they would be closing the schools when they evacuated the planes. When I moved to S Korea in 1972, there were real air ease drills ever month. We grew up in some strange times and places. In S Korea, every winter there was talk of the north invading the south. There were machine gun nests on top of every police box, and they were at every major street corner. All the major bridges and road were built with explosives slready in them to be exploded if the north came south, and out in the country were miles and miles of tank traps--looked like dominoes marching across the land. Basically, I had an amazing childhood! Saw things and went places you don't even know to dream about, and my younger kids have grown up all in one place.
• Margaret: Thanks, DeAnna, for jogging our memories from our unusual childhoods. Does anyone have PTSD from all this?
• Connie: I think my brother has struggled with it for years.
• DeAnna: It's been so interesting to read all these accounts of what was just "normal life" for us all. I remember vividly the blackouts leading up to the war, the bomb shelter we built with mattresses and 50 gallon drums in my sister's and my bedroom, dad sneaking out to listen to the BBC and us waiting anxiously for him to return, my baby sister refusing to let go of Mom's neck or take her shoes off, seeing the flares in our yard, etc. I remember the day we found out we were going to be evacuated and my sister had taken some diapers to hang out on the roof when the air raid sirens went off. Mom and Dad charged up the stairs to get my older sister and younger sister  (who had crawled up after her); they got back down just as two Indian and two Pakistani fighter planes shot at each other at treetop level over our house. I remember being crouched behind a door; we all thought the house was exploding. Mom and Dad still have the shrapnel we picked up from our roof and yard. When we left, my favorite doll (Raggedy Ann) was in the closet behind the bomb shelter so I couldn't get to her. When we returned six months later, the first thing I did was run to the closet and Dad helped me move the bomb shelter so I could get her out. She now lives in box of treasures I've hauled all over the world - you all know how that goes. After Pakistan, we moved to Okinawa. I remember the stories of Desmond Doss (http://www.homeofheroes.com/profiles/profiles_doss2.html) and often visiting the escarpment where he saved 75 fellow soldiers. There was a monument marker located in the yard of our school that honored his life and sacrifice. Live ammunition was often found in the caves all over the island. The island was home to several military bases. Every morning we would hear the sonic boom of the SR-71 taking off, and I can still see it as it would glide in low over our school during recess in the afternoon when coming in for a landing. We all share such amazing and unique histories! People often ask me what it was like to grow up all over the world, and I always respond that, as a kid I didn't know anything different so it was just life. How valuable to have had those experiences; to have been exposed to the world and to appreciate that we are part of something much bigger than where we were born! There is no doubt that we were all affected and shaped by the things that were "normal life" for us as kids (as were our parents). I wouldn't trade it for anything!
• Rhonda: The SR-71 was my favorite plane! After it was declassified, they used to bring it to air shows and I went to every one. I got to talk with s couple of the pilots once. Still the most amazing plane.
  I know I had an amazing childhood that my own kids don't understand--when I moved back to the states I didn't want to go anywhere because we would "drive"--I was used to flying if we had to go somewhere.
• DeAnna: Rhonda, I agree! We had a friend who was a mechanic on the SR-71 and when it would take off on weekends or evenings they would invite us over for "hamburgers" at a particular hour and we knew that was the clue to go to Kadena and watch it blast off. It was so neat to see!
• Rhonda: By the by--this has been fascinating to read other similar stories--we all relate cuz we were in similar situations. My husband has no clue so never talk to him about it.
• Suzy: It's fascinating to read all this and know that my father was fighting as a soldier in Vietnam at the same time as the parents of my friends were going in as doctors to the same place. I love reading the history and the stories. Keep them coming!
• Margaret:  There isn't much wrong with the USA....All us third culture kids know what wrong looks like.
• Lena: We got to Bangladesh towards the end of their war, (or the war aftermath). We saw terrible things, truck loads of dead bodies going by the school. Street side executions.... There were also armed robbers that came to our school. Multiple times my parents would put us in the hall and put a mattress on each end of the hall. The missionary just before us, Pastor H. was shot and killed there, so that made it feel very real. The robbers stole the transformer that sent electricity to our school, so we were without electricity for about 9 months. We cooked on bricks outside and used kerosene lamps at night. Also, around the same time there was a famine in the country probably related to the war. You could have all the money in the world but there wasn't enough food. My dad lost about 40 lbs and my mom was about 100 lbs. When we went on furlough my siblings and I all grew about 3 inches in 3 months. The missionaries in Dhaka did better. They could get to the ration lines. My mom finally went to India to get us some food. Part of it was stolen in customs. Poor people; they were hungry too.
  Bangladesh was a pretty rough place, I really enjoyed getting away to FEA. I find I don't talk about it very much, and when I do it's just kind of matter of fact like...God got us through some tough stuff.