A Memoir Biography Sample

December 8, 1941, started like any other Monday for J. The 5-and-a-half-year-old had just got out of her house on Prince Edward Road in Kowloon to walk to her local kindergarten with a servant. She  had gone down about 3 steps when she heard a siren. It was a loud racket and J had no idea what it was. But she remembers her mother ripping open the door and pulling her into the house. “That’s the last time I ever stepped out to go to school until World War II was over,” J said. 

The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour the day before but no one had any idea the war was coming to Hong Kong, a British territory. That Monday changed J’s life for the next four years. In her words: “I remember after that nothing was normal.”

J’s parents J and J protected the children from any war news, even though it was happening far away on other continents. “I was a kid, I didn’t hear anything,” she said. “I didn’t remember anything about the political situation, I was barely learning the alphabet at the time.” In that era, children were seen and not heard. “When we asked anything we got that look that parents give,” she said. But she was curious so she would run to the balcony in their home that overlooked the main road and see army trucks rumble by, trying to squeeze her little body between the long legs of the adults who were also watching.

A few days after December 8, J isn’t sure exactly when, the family had to move. The Japanese had turned off water and gas in their apartment and the household of two parents, four children between the ages of 6 months and almost 6 years, and staff couldn’t live there anymore. So they all set off on foot, walking towards the mainland. J’s mom carried the youngest sibling F and a big bag filled with cans of evaporated milk, while J, her younger sister N and younger brother J walked with servants. There were many other people walking on the street in the same direction.