I love Yorùbá people, because they have proved to be more faithful and grateful to me and my family since my great father, Sunday Eke was brought to Lagos city from Umuahia in Abia state of eastern Nigeria in 1930. He was only a 9-year-old boy who had just lost his father in a bloody land dispute and his own life was threatened being the oldest son. To save him, his uncle who was a police officer brought him to Lagos.
After primary school of standard 6 of those colonial days, he learned how to drive and with his driver's license he later joined the Royal West African Frontier Force and fought in Burma during the Second Chindits operation of 1944.
My uncles told me how my father returned as a hero, because he was one of the two soldiers from Ohuhu in Umuahia who fought during the Burma Campaign of World War II in 1943–1944. They said two of them would visit each other, marching in their uniform and blowing their bugles aloud to the administration of the villagers.
They were proud of them.
The last Chindit left Burma on August 27, 1944. Annually, August 15 is celebrated as V- J Day anniversary of Victory over Japan Day, because Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945; because of time zone differences,
on August 14, 1945 (when it was announced in the United States and the rest of the Americas and Eastern Pacific Islands) – as well as to September 2, 1945, when the signing of the surrender document occurred, officially ending World War II.
Read more in Bugles and a Tiger: My life in the Gurkhas (Cassell Military Paperbacks).
Click here to read "Remembering Nigeria’s ‘Burma Boys’" published by Nsibidi Institute.
