https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
By John Pilger
Information Clearing House
www.johnpilger.com
April 22, 2011
The street where I grew up in Sydney was a war street. There were long silences, then the smashing of glass and screams. Pete and I played Aussies-and-Japs. Pete’s father was an object of awe. He weighed barely 100 pounds and shook with malaria and was frequently demented. He would sit in a cane chair, drunk, scything the air with the sword of a Japanese soldier he said he had killed. There was a woman who flitted from room to room, always red-eyed and fearful, it seemed. She was like many mothers in the street. Wally, another mate, lived in a house that was always dark because the black-out blinds had not been taken down. His father had been “killed by the Japs”. Once, when Wally’s mother came home, she found he had got a gun, put it in his mouth and blown his head off. It was a war street.