During World War II, the British government implemented a massive evacuation plan known as Operation Pied Piper. The plan aims to move children, pregnant women, the disabled and the elderly from cities targeted by anticipatory airstrikes to safer rural areas or overseas. The operation took place at the beginning of the war, between 1939 and 1945, and lasted six years, and some 3.5 million people, most of them children, were evacuated. This initiative has played an important role in protecting these populations, although it has encountered many challenges in its implementation.
Around September 1940, children in the eastern suburbs of London, homeless by random bombing by German night bombing, waited outside the ruins of their former home.
To prevent children from going through bomb attacks or worse, Operation Piper was born.
One of the most painful and difficult decisions made by the British government during World War II was the decision to move children from urban centers to places where there was little or no risk of being attacked by German bombers.
The operation, known as Operation Piper, saw millions of people, mostly children, transported to rural areas in the United Kingdom to overseas Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
In the first four days of the operation, nearly 3 million people were evacuated, making it the largest and most concentrated migration in British history.
This relocation program began in the summer of 1938, before the war, and according to the risk of being bombed, the entire country was divided into "evacuation zones", "medium risk de-to-", "receiving areas", and a list of available housing was compiled. By the summer of 1939, the County of London had begun requisitioning buses and trains for evacuation.
With Britain increasingly involved in war, the Workers' Party's Mayor of London, Herbert Morrison, wanted to start implementing evacuation plans in August, but was rejected by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's government, which feared the action would cause panic among the population.
Children evacuated during Operation Piper. In the end, 3.5 million people were evacuated.
When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, London Mayor Morrison was talking to Prime Minister Chamberlain's aide, Sir Horace Wilson, about evacuating children at 10 Downing Street. Wilson protested: "But we're not at war yet, and we don't want to do anything that could disrupt the delicate negotiations, right?" ”
Morrison roared in his thick East End accent: "You look, Olas, go in and tell Vail (Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain) that this is my message to him: if I didn't get an order to evacuate London's children this morning, I'll give it myself – and tell the newspaper why I did it." What will he think? What do you think? ”
Half an hour later, Morrison got the paperwork. The evacuation began that afternoon.
Since then, in London and other big cities, adults have often seen long lines of children, led by teachers or other officials, walking towards bus or train stations and scattering to different parts of the country.
Each child had a small square cardboard box with a gas mask around his neck, and each child had a name card pinned to his coat. The siblings clasped each other's hands.
"Refuse to be separated as if facing death".
A mother in London watched her two children leave, then saw two others leave the line and rush to a police officer standing in the middle of the intersection. Police had been directing traffic before the children came over. "Goodbye, Daddy," the children said to the police. The policeman looked down at the child and said with a smile: "Children, you have to behave now." Then the children returned to the evacuated ranks.
When all this happened, the mother looked at the tears left on the policeman's face.
A poster put up by the British government's Department of Health in the London Underground during World War II promoting the need for civilians to be evacuated during the war
The first, the largest, lasted four days, while other, smaller evacuations lasted until September 1944, eventually relocating more than 3.5 million people.
For children, changing to a new home is a painful and helpless experience. Usually the officials in charge of placement would line the newly arrived children against the wall or on the stage of the village hall, and invited potential host families to pick them. The phrase "I choose that" is deeply engraved in the memories of countless children. (Black Americans: You white people have today!) ）
Many U.S. companies and nonprofits have also accepted thousands of children to the United States. Employees of the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Company in Canton, Ohio, and the East Man Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, voluntarily accept the children of employees of their UK subsidiaries.
On September 10, 1940, in New York City, a radio program interviewing six evacuated children living in the United States aired in Britain. According to a New York Times article, "Baseball is recognized despite reservations compared to cricket. ”
Because of the large number of people involved and the different social classes, everyone's experience is not always good, and some people are bad.
On December 6, 1941, Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna Freud, submitted a report on the results of a 12-month study she had authorized. It concludes that "for children, separation from their parents is more severe than being bombarded".
In a 2003 BBC Radio 4 documentary Evacuation: A True Story, Steve Davies, a clinical psychologist who specializes in the trauma of war, said it might be the worst option, "which is tantamount to giving the green light to pedophiles." ”
In 1940, child evacuees from Bristol walked out of the carriage after arriving at London Brent Station with duffel bags, suitcases and gas masks.
In 1940, child evacuees from Bristol walked out of the carriage after arriving at London Brent Station with duffel bags, suitcases and gas masks. Afterwards, they continue to Kingsbridge, England. Later, Bristol was hit by a serious air raid by the Luftwaffe.
The evacuees were allowed to return to London in June 1945, but some began to return to England as early as 1944. The evacuation operation officially ended in March 1946.
There are many videos on YouTube sites about the Piper evacuation action, and in one video, a young female student interviewed her grandmother about her evacuation experience as part of her classroom project. In this video, the grandmother says that her host family is "not very friendly."