I am sad today.

A friend’s mother-in-law (she’s full Chinese, British born, and 90 years old) wanted me to find the marriage certificate to her first love, her first husband who disappeared, in 1946, a year after they got married. All these years none of her friends believed that she had ever got married, and believed she was an unmarried mother and she was badly treated as such.

So, my friend’s husband, her son, was brought up by his Grandmother (because his mother had to work in her father’s food business) and he has always resented this, even now at over the age of 70 years. And he still resents not knowing his natural father and all his life believes that his father had deserted him and his mother, and blames his mother for this.

I managed to find the marriage certificate, and I have a copy of it now. I was pleased because it will make a very old lady happy.

Then with more research I unearthed a very sad story.

I found a passenger list with her first husband’s name on it the year he went missing. But it said ‘deportees’. So I scrolled to the beginning of it and found there were many of these Chinese deportees under the list of...
“List of Chinese Repatriates for Shanghai.

The address of her husband was right and his age was right so I knew I had the right guy. And the year he went missing was correct.

So, all these years her and her son thought they had been abandoned. All she knew was that her first husband never came home one day after work.

I then did some research online and came up with this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-33200325

This 90 year old Chinese lady was British born, married with a young son, yet her husband was rounded up and deported as a bit of trash in 1946, even though he had British Nationality. She doesn’t know of this bbc news article.

Then I found some more, but this next one is a much longer read:

http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2118142/why-did-300-chinese-fathers-vanish-liverpool-1946

So I was really sad on reading this.

Basically the British Government wanted rid of the Chinese Seamen who they had employed during the war by any means possible once the Second World War was over. Apparently they had done this after the First World War too.

However I had a gut feeling there was more to be found on this 90 year old Chinese lady’s first husband.

I found it.

Same name, correct age, and the exact same occupation in his job as a Merchant Seaman (as was described on the marriage certificate). And the ironical thing is on this ship’s Chinese crew is that half are of Chinese Nationality, and the rest of the ship’s Chinese crew are British Nationality. He is in the British Nationality half. They were passengers on this ship and the manifest says they were to join another ship to be a crew on that. So this was in 1948, two years later.

So, what happened?

Did he travel back halfway across the world in 1948 to try and find his wife and son?

Did he find her, but realised she was with someone else by now, so quietly, courteously left.

Was there some threat to him if he did come back contact his wife and son after he had been deported in 1946.

Did he stay in this country? So far I can find no evidence of that.

Did he go back to Shanghai ultimately?

Because now, I have a problem. The 70 year old son. He already believes his father was a good for nothing who abandoned him as a tiny child. The 1946 passenger lists virtually explains he was forced to leave. He had no choice in the matter. So that would explain to him why his father was forced to leave. It would be good for him to see this, and know that his father did not desert him and his mother.

But what about the 1948 crew which was to join another ship. This means he has been ‘abandoned’ twice by his father. I don’t know how he is going to view that, and knowing him as a person it will not sit well at all that it appears his father did not try to contact him or his mother in 1948.

I am happy handing my friend the marriage certificate and the 1946 passenger list which explains a lot.

But I am not happy handing my friend the passenger list of the 1948 ship. Will this then become pressure on her (like it is on me now) if my friend doesn’t want her husband to know that his father was in Liverpool in 1948 and apparently didn’t contact him.

I don’t know what to do, and yet I want the old lady to have this 1948 passenger’s list of the ship crew to join another ship, because it will lay some ghosts for her, because why else would she have asked me to do some research on all this.