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| Imperial War Museum London |
Yesterday I visited the Imperial War Museum London to research its entry for my Guide to Black London. I didn’t expect to find something that felt quite so personal.
In the Second World War Galleries, in the Witnesses to War section, I came across Thomas Andi.
Thomas was a Nigerian seaman in the British Merchant Navy - a civilian working on ships transporting commercial goods during wartime. On 18 December 1940, German raiders attacked his ship in the Atlantic. He was captured and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.
Displayed in the gallery is his thermos flask and a log book filled with photographs of fellow prisoners: small, human fragments of endurance and solidarity. The caption explains that 5,720 merchant seamen were captured during the war. Thomas was one of them.
Standing there, I felt an unexpected jolt of connection.
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| Michael N. Ohajuru (1924 - 1995) Pier Head Liverpool |
My Dad - Michael N. Ohajuru (1924 - 1995) - was also a merchant seaman during the war . I still have Dad's National Union of Seamen membership contribution card. Dad enrolled on 29 September 1943, in the Catering Department. He told me stores of being part of convoys in the Atlantic, just like Thomas but Dad's ships were never attacked and he survived the war.
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| Michael N. Ohajuru National Seaman's Union Card |
Seeing Thomas Andi’s story in the museum - publicly acknowledged, faithfully preserved - reminded me how wide and varied the Black presence in Britain’s wartime history truly was. Dad & Thomas were not marginal figures. They were part of the machinery, the risk, the sacrifice - we are here today thanks to them.
For me, the display wasn’t just historical research.
It was family.
