XVIII
Emigration
Figure: The wedding of Barbara and William Parkin, October 8, 1941
This photo and the one below both appeared in a local newspaper for an area near South Hetton because that was where we had journeyed after our release from Stanley Camp. It was the home of William Parkin.
The first was taken October 8, 1941 at the wedding ceremony for William Parkin and Barbara Cellerova. It was, for them, as the photo shows, a happy occasion. But the marriage was brief, for on the morning of December 25, 1941, William was executed by the Japanese at St Stephen’s College, one of the victims of the St. Stephen’s massacre.
I am sure the two were in love; however, the marriage also conveniently allowed my mother to use a British surname for me instead of the Russian name I carried, Shatokin. From her knowledge of the conflict between Russian and Japanese elements in Manchuria, she feared for my safety if the Japanese, whom everyone knew would soon be invading Hong Kong, knew me as a Russian child.
My mother and I had already fled from Kowloon to the Island – last boat to Victoria. Not only did Christmas day rob her of her husband and her freedom, but it resulted in her, along with other women, being forced to clean the blood and gore left by the torture and killings of that terrible Christmas event. While she and others may have cleaned the grisly evidence from the site, she could never remove it from her memory and it, along with all that had been lost to the war, haunted her dreams and tormented her thoughts for the rest of her life.
Figure: Our "Kitchen" - Stanley Camp, August, 1945: roasting coffee beans
In the lower photograph, my mother, Barbara Parkin at the time, is sitting at the open fire place made from stones where she roasted coffee beans. I am standing at the far left with two of my chums beside me. In the background are several of the men who lived in our bungalow. This was not the day we left, but the day that the Japanese relinquished control of the camp.
The photographer, a tall, lank and friendly man, took several pictures that included my mother and I. Later, he gave her glossy copies to keep. The above photo was reprinted from one of those copies in a newspaper in Britain after we had landed there. At the time we were staying with the family of Sgt. William Parkin, my mother's husband who had been killed Christmas day during the St Stephen's massacre and I presume this was one of the local newspapers.
My mother knew no one in Britain, except for David Bowie, whom she had met on the Empress of Australia, the ship that "liberated" us from Hong Kong and Stanley Camp. William Parkin's parents had wanted to adopt me, thinking that I was his son. My mother was terrified of losing me. Eventually we left the home of the Parkins and in time, my mother married Dave Bowie. I was never adopted as he had difficulty finding the record of my birth; however, I took on his surname and called him Dad.
In the years that followed, my mother developed a serious mental illness that saw her institutionalized. Her experiences in Stanley Camp, her losses of family, home, and husband had taken their toll. She also suffered from goiter problems and had had surgery to "fix" the problem. No doubt such problems did not help her state of mind. She spent the years from 1954 to 1961 in and out of mental hospitals. Sometime during a period at home she destroyed those photos along with other records of that painful time in her past.
Fortunately for me, I had already discovered the records of a divorce she had obtained from a man neither she, nor any one else, had ever mentioned - one named Valentin Shatokin. Curiously, the divorce document was dated September, 1939 in Shanghai. I was born nine months later. My mother's explanation was that they were still close, that she still loved him. "Why did he leave you?" I asked. "Because he did not want any children, " she replied. And I was left with the puzzle as to how my conception after their divorce could have prompted him to seek a divorce. In any case, he left for Vladivostok late in 1939, stopped in Manchuria to visit her family whom he knew, and then went on to his destination. My mother may not have heard from him again.
I had already tried without success to obtain that missing birth certificate myself, using the names Parkin and Ciller, my mother's family surname. I tried again, this time successfully, under the surname Shatokin. The year was 1956 and I was 16 when the document arrived. My mother was in the mental institution in North Bay. I still recall the awkwardness of sitting at the kitchen table one morning to tell my stepfather that my mother had had an earlier marriage about which he knew nothing.
I showed him the papers, my birth certificate and the divorce papers from Shanghai. He said nothing to me. On a later stay at home, my mother destroyed her papers. Perhaps... No, not perhaps. No doubt, words were exchanged about the secrets of the past, and she undertook to erase the remaining traces.
I lamented the loss of those photos when I discovered them missing. I blamed my mother for destroying something that I considered mine. I said nothing, however. Only later did I realize that my actions in exposing her secrets drove her to do it.
I kept the surname Bowie and my mother kept the rest of her secrets.
The Empress of Australia in 1945 off shore from Hong Kong. She stayed some distance from shore because of concerns about mines A corvette carried us out to her where we embarked on our futures. My mother's future husband was an R.A.F. medical sergeant who was posted to the vessel as it had served as a troop ship. |