War brides, grooms and babiesWar brides, grooms and babies 

World War II split families apart and threw people together across oceans and cultures. Some relationships blossomed into marriage, others were casual affairs, and some withered with the war’s end. These are some of their stories.

Camp Murphy, a military ‘tent city’ set up on the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1942, was home to thousands of US servicemen arriving in Australia or returning from the front lines on leave.

Melbournians were encouraged to be hospitable, inviting lonely men to join their family for a home-cooked meal. Special services clubs, as well as established ballrooms, dance halls and night clubs, became places to meet and fall in love.

Donna Griggs met and dated American soldier Finus ‘Joe’ Caldwell in Melbourne, ‘going out with a ‘Yank’’, for a year to dances, the Trocadero, the 651 Club and swimming at St Kilda.

They were married in a clergy’s house in Hawthorn and both returned to work the same day. Soon after, Joe was sent to New Guinea.

Donna shipped out along with baby son Sterling to a new life in Nashville, Tennessee, in June 1945.

On arriving, local Nashville papers reported that Donna was ‘Nashville’s first war bride".

When war bride Audrey Capuano arrived in San Francisco on the SS Monterey wearing her patriotic jumper, newspapers hailed her as the ‘Aussie Betsy Ross’.

Ross is said to have sewn the first American ‘star-spangled banner’ flag in 1776.

Audrey recalled, ‘The jumper has only 18 instead of 48 stars – quite enough, as it took me two days to put them on.’

Audrey Wesley was born in Strathalbyn, South Australia. 

At the age of 18 she met American Private First Class Angelo ‘Bob’ Capuano (32nd Division Reconstruction Corps, US Army) at one of the weekly dances held in her home town. 

In 1942 he arrived in South Australia after his convoy had been diverted to the battle of the Coral Sea, en route to New Guinea. They married at St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, in August 1944, with Audrey having to wait until April 1946 for her passage to the USA on SS Monterey. 

Audrey and Bob settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she retained strong links with other Australian war brides, setting up the Australian Wives’ Club there.

Renowned as Australia’s first female photojournalist, Adelie Hurley broke new ground. 

She famously took extreme risks to capture news photos, even hitchhiking solo to Darwin to document the movements of Australian troops.

She earnt the nickname ‘front page Hurley’.

In 1942 Hurley was introduced by a friend to American naval officer Ed McGinty. The two first met at Proud’s Corner in Sydney, a popular place for Australian women and American servicemen to mingle during the war.

For him, it was love at first sight; for her, it took a little longer. They married in Sydney on 16 October 1943.

While Ed was still on active duty, Adelie sailed to San Francisco as part of Operation War Brides.

Money was tight when Ed left the Navy. Adelie was photographing customers in a San Franciso nightclub to make ends meet, and she could see ‘it was going to be a bit of a grind’.

Life back in Australia, with the potential for a flourishing career in photojournalism, had strong appeal. She told Radio National: ‘I had jobs to come back to and a jolly good life. And anyhow my father … he sent me the airfare to come home. Now, I’d have never got back if he hadn’t done that.’

Adelie returned in May 1948 and in July Ed followed her to Sydney. He gained a new job, but their marriage ended a few years later.

Sadako Kikuchi was a department store seamstress in Kure, a port city located in Hiroshima Prefecture, when she met Australian John Morris. John was a signalman serving with the British Commonwealth Occupation force (BCOF) after the surrender of Japan in 1945.

They met under a cloud of public suspicion and bitterness between the occupied and the occupiers. ‘Morrisan’, as she called him, and Sadako had to keep their relationship quiet, using Sadako’s brother Yasuo as a go-between. 

When her family discovered that she was secretly seeing John, they threatened to disown her. Sadako and John moved into an apartment together. 

The Australian government also discouraged relationships between Australian soldiers and Japanese women, with marriage prohibited. Under the White Australia Policy then in force, non-European immigration to Australia, including from Japan, was strictly controlled. But romantic attachments developed regardless of official disapproval, and the men who had fallen in love began to lobby the government for change. 

Thanks to their efforts, in 1952 permission was granted for soldiers to marry Japanese nationals. Sadako and John married on 2 April 1953, and despite their earlier opposition, most of Sadako’s family attended.

Sadako was eventually granted permission to migrate to Australia, and in December 1953 she and her two baby daughters boarded SS Changte bound for Adelaide. They were among the first group of non-Europeans officially permitted into Australia.

More than 650 Japanese women migrated to Australia as war brides in the wake of World War II.