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鈥淚t was a very big day in my life.鈥�

On VE Day, Michael was at the Barbazon Plaza Hotel in New York. He was one of over three thousandchildren who had been evacuated to the United States in the summer of 1940.

He had been at school in America for five years and was now 13. Although he鈥檇 seen his father once during the war, he hadn鈥檛 seen his mother at all. On VE Day he was about to board the aircraft carrier HMS Patroller for a transatlantic journey home.

Michael had left England in August 1940 as part of a government evacuation programme. The same year a Gallup poll claimed that 5 million American families would welcome British children. Although 13,000 children left for other nations, just over 3,000 crossed the Atlantic. The evacuation scheme came to an end when over 77 evacuee children died when the City of Benares sank in September 1940.

Michael and his brother stayed with an American family (the Hinchmans) in Connecticut for five years. He later lived in America and continues to have a connection with his American school.

Image: Michael Henderson

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