Paper short abstract:

The topic is children evacuated during the WWII from Finland to Sweden, their memories recalled three to six decades after the war. The reminiscences are connected with the approaches Finnish society adopted to these children, and how the transferring operation has been presented in public discourse.

Paper long abstract:

During the WWII about 70 000 Finnish children were transferred to safety, mostly to Sweden. Transferring was not an exceptional phenomenon; similar operations were carried out around Europe during the Second World War. In proportion to population, Finland transferred more children than any other country. Transfers were not only evacuations from war front action and bombing areas but were planned and related to "bettering" the surviving conditions on the home front.

The transfer operation was a turning point in the lives of the people who were war children during the WWII, and has affected their course of life. The main question in my studies has been how they as adults reminisce the events and places they lived in, and how themes of separation and identification are present in their memories. They experienced the separation twice: at first when they were separated from their parents, and again when they had to return to Finland and leave their Swedish home and foster parents. In Sweden they encountered a foreign language and a different culture. When they returned to Finland the youngest ones had forgotten Finnish, their mother tongue. After the war the standard of living in Finland was different from what they had accustomed to in Sweden. Further, their feeling was that their parents, sisters and brothers were like foreigners. The materials analyzed are in addition to interviews and written reminiscences of transferred persons collected during the 1970s and 2000s, public debate presented in newspapers during the war and afterwards, and historical and psychological studies.