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Signing up to 'serve the empire in uniform'

Juanita Anderson WD-RCAF Aunt Nena was a firecracker.  She always had an enthusiasm for travel and adventure.  Her full name was Juanita Maria Anderson but we knew her as Aunt Nena. Before the war broke out, she was a teenager attending high school in New Orleans.  She was 15 years old  when she arrived in New Orleans on August 18, 1939 to start the fall term.  When Britain declared war on Germany on September 3rd, 1939, her  mother (my grandmother Henrietta Maria Orio) brought her back to Belize because she did not know if the estate money that she was receiving from England would be able to reach her in Belize due to the war, money that she would need to pay for Nena's education in New Orleans. Henrietta was a widow at that time with 5 children, one of whom was my father,  Charles "Buster" Anderson.  Although Nena continued her high school education in Belize, she never graduated and was eager to join her older brother (my father) in t...