My migration story: from Manchuria to Blackrock to California

I was born in Mukden, now Shenyang, in North-East China (Manchuria) in 1939, the second of twins. My father was from Limerick, a long-time resident of China in the 1920s and 30s, my mother Russian, brought up in Harbin, in Manchuria. They both worked in Shanghai but met during holidays in Tsingtao, a summer beach resort, and were married in 1934.

With the entry of Japan into the second World War, those of us with British passports were interned. My father had retained his British passport, rather than taking the passport of the Irish Free State (IFS), thinking the British Empire would be better able to protect our interests as the IFS had no diplomatic mission in China.

But his belief was misplaced, as it turned out. An IFS passport would have made us all neutrals and not subject to internment. My mother and the two of us children were exchanged on a neutral ship, the Swedish "Gripsholm", and ended up in California for the duration of the war. This was my first emigration experience. My father and his fellow interns were released following the Japanese surrender in 1945, and we went back to Shanghai.

Of course the end of the Chinese Civil War, of which I have memories, meant a second emigration from China, by RAF Sunderland flying boat to Hong Kong (“one small suitcase per person, go to the dock on the river at Zikawei at 6am” was all we were told). After that, we made slow progress to Ireland, with extended stops in Hong Kong, Calcutta, and Baghdad.

On arriving in Ireland, we were enrolled in Willow Park School in Booterstown and then Blackrock College. But in 1955, my father and mother realised the Irish economy and his skills were not compatible, and decided to leave on the liner “Liberte”, from Southampton to New York City and then on to the west coast of the US, where members of my mother’s family from China had established a family beach-head. That was the third emigration, the only one from Ireland, and the only one not due to enemy action.

I regret not being able to finish my secondary education at Blackrock, but that’s what happened. We wound up in Santa Cruz, south of San Francisco, a pleasant and then-small beach community, where I worked summers in the seaside amusement park, and put myself through the University of California at Berkeley.

I had some great times, running track and cross-country, and graduated in 1961 with a degree in history. I went on to law school in Berkeley, passed the California Bar in 1964, and then did an MA in Chinese history at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1965.

I then worked for a while as a lawyer in San Francisco, where there was and still is a large Irish community, before returning to Ireland for my first visit in 1966.

In 1968 I went to London, working for an American law firm, and spent my holidays in Ireland before going off on a motorcycle to India. I was headed for Australia, but was contacted en route by Santa Barbara City College, where I was offered a position teaching history. I did that for several years, during which time I met and married a young lady from Santa Barbara.

I was happy teaching but eventually decided that I wanted to practice law again, which I did thereafter from 1975 until retiring in 2008. My wife and I have two children, twin girls, one now a teacher in Napa, and the mother of our grandson, the other daughter an IT executive in Los Angeles.

I’ve been back several times to Ireland over the years, for short visits and family get-togethers. I was visiting again recently with my (youngest by two minutes) daughter, and spent time with several cousins who were kind enough to make time for family. I wanted to show Eileen some of her family history in Ireland. My older daughter Siobhan, who has visited a number of times and is in regular contact with cousins in England and Ireland, now has dual citizenship.

In Santa Barbara I’ve been president of the County Bar Association, a trustee of the community college, president and board member of city bodies and several official committees, a 40-year president of the Santa Barbara Athletic Association, the local running club (nobody else wanted the job, so we never bothered with elections), dean of a local law school, and acted in various theatrical productions, including 33 successive years in a local Christmas “Nutcracker”. I’ve also done a few stints as a tour guide/escort for groups in China and South and Southeast Asia, and lectured on cruise ships in that part of the world.

I am happy to be able to maintain contact with my cousins in Ireland, and enjoy my visits there, but I never have had any notions of returning to Ireland on a permanent basis. For me, and no matter why we emigrated to the US, it was the right move at the right time, and I have never regretted it.

My 60 years here have been satisfactory and fulfilling, and I have been able to do just about everything I ever sought to do. But I will always be proud to be of Irish descent.