The following true story is for Memorial Day and V-J Day, is published on the Red Room.

Lest you forget, my father fought in Burma
by Chima Michael Ekenyerengozi

May 26, 2011, 3:41 pm

(In memory of my father Sunday Eke, who fought and survived the World War II in Burma)

I have kept my father's identity card of Royal West African Frontier Force. But I have forgotten everything he told me about the role he and other thousands of Nigerians played as soldiers who fought for the British Empire and the allies in World War II. I do not know if my father won the coveted Burma Star. Marshall Kebby wrote about their exploits in Burma before he passed away over a decade ago. My father never kept a diary and it was after he died on November 19, 1983, that I knew that keeping a diary like Mr. Kebby would have helped me to know more about his past life as a soldier and ambulance driver before I was born.

Every Memorial Day reminds me of my father and the other unsung African heroes of the Whiteman's war that the Blackman was forced to fight against Adolf Hitler's Germany and Japan. No war film on World War Two has ever included them, except in 2009 when the BBC News reported about a documentary that revealed that only two in 10 of the soldiers who fought in Burma were white!


http://www.redroom.com/blog/orikinla/lest-you-forget-my-father-fought-burma