Lillie's Treasures

Ann Doon Heather Smith was born on December 7, 1934 in Canton, China. Youngest of four siblings, her father was an American of Scotch Irish descent, her mother a Eurasian from Shanghai. By the time she was four she had traveled from Canton to Shanghai, to Manila, then back to Shanghai where she then lived continuously with her maternal grandparents and aunt until the advent of World War II. Caught in Japanese occupied Shanghai on December 7, 1941, she and her siblings were subsequently interned by the Japanese in Chapei as non-combatant civilians in early 1943. At the time her sister was 14, brothers 12 and 10, and she was eight years old. Alone in camp, the three youngest children were in charge of only their eldest sister. On September 18, 1943, her sister’s fifteenth birthday, the four children, along with 1500 fellow inmates, were repatriated to the United States, a country they did not know, as exchange prisoners of war. Transported on the Japanese ship Tia Maru, they were taken to Goa, India, a Portuguese colony. There they were exchanged for Japanese non-combatants from the United States. At Goa they boarded the Swedish liner HMS Gripsholm. It took them to Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Rio de Janeiro and New York City. Thene they went by rail on the Super Chief to Los Angeles where they met their mother for the first time in five years.