Happiness in California

In California 727 Poles discovered a thing called happiness; and that children were meant to laugh. There was food, kindness and soap. The 727, wards of Poland's Government in Exile, found the barracks of Camp Santa Anita littered and marred by resentful Japanese, who had stayed there en route to relocation centers. To the Poles, fleeing horror since 1939, the dreary camp was a dream castle full of the miracles of plumbing. In gay groups the children crowded around the toilets, excitedly flushed them again & again & again.

On their way (via Russia, Persia, India) to a haven near Mexico City, these people still had fear in their nerves and panic in their hearts. The first night, not a light glimmered in their barracks until U.S. officers convinced them, after much persuasion, that they need not black out. Then, after the lights had gone on reluctantly, one by one, a transport airliner passed overhead; the lights vanished as if a master switch had been pulled. The Poles rushed out of the barracks, panic-stricken because they could find no bomb shelters.

For six days they were guests of the U.S. Army in California. More than 300 children in the group gulped anything edible, fell in love with U.S. Army band music and seven Walt Disney pictures, got 350 pairs of shoes from the good people of Los Angeles, respectfully saluted the U.S. flag with the only salute they knew--the Nazis' outstretched right arm.

Soldiers, serving the refugees in mess line, had no trouble cleaning the place. The Poles indulged in orgies of water and soap (1,600 cakes of soap disappeared in four days), scrubbed barracks clean as a hospital, didn't discard enough food to cover more than the bottom of one garbage can a day.

At sunrise, every morning, the refugees heard Mass under the eucalyptus trees. For the priest (no one in the group owned more clothes than he wore) soldiers found vestments at Monrovia and Pasadena.

The group left with an American Dream and a U.S. citizen: in Santa Anita, a baby was born.

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