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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Morwenna Nadar of CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ LONDON on behalf of Harriet and Modube and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

We are sisters and were 16 (Modube) and 13 (Harriet) when the war ended so we remember quite a lot about what it was like living in Lagos when the war was on.

We went to the Methodist Girls’ School which was situated on the corner of Marina and Campos Streets on a kind of island. The school was moved further inland to Yaba as it was felt that it was not really safe for it to be right on the edge of the coast where bombs were likely to be dropped. When the British Army arrived in Lagos the soldiers were billeted in our empty school buildings so we would probably have had to move anyway. We moved back after the war.

Many people don’t realise that in Lagos we had the same sort of conditions that Europe had. We had frequent air-raids and always had to have blackout curtains up whenever the lights were on. The wardens did their rounds regularly and were very strict. If they saw even a chink of light showing, they would knock on the door and tell us off. One day I (Harriet) was shopping for a pair of shoes when the air-raid sirens went off. We all ran like hell and I ended up in the gutter! We’d been told that was the safest place to be in if we were caught in the town during a raid., but it didn’t feel very safe to me at the time, and it was also very wet and dirty. Just like in Britain, food was short and became even more scarce when huge amounts were sent overseas to feed the soldiers.

Young Nigerian lads of 17 were conscripted from the boys’ school, Kings College. More of our men were called up when Japan entered the war. The older men were asked to volunteer to join the army when more troops were needed to go to India and Burma. An older neighbour of ours went to Burma and we all thought he had been killed as he didn’t come back. His wife was told he was ‘missing, believed killed’ so none of us thought we would see him again. Three years after the war ended, this man arrived home! He had got separated from his group and had eventually met up with other lost soldiers. They had been wandering about since the end of the war and somehow he had ended up in Egypt where he was found by the authorities and sent home. We never heard the details of his wanderings but he certainly gave all of us, including his wife, a shock when he turned up again in Lagos.

Huge celebrations took place in Lagos for both VE Day and VJ Day. There were fancy-dress parades, street parties, music, dancing, big meals, lots of special fireworks, and, of course, all the lights were put on after dark so the whole town was lit up and bright. No more need for those horrid blackout curtains! We had great fun and we will never forget how happy people were, even those who had lost family in the war.

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