JENSEN BEACH, Fla. — An often forgotten part of our country’s history is being revealed through our WPTV Let’s Hear It meet-ups.
At the Jensen Beach Let’s Hear It, Emily McHugh of Fort Pierce told me about her 103-year-old Jamaican father’s work to save an American farm during World War II.
It was all part of a program sponsored by the U.S. government to help farms left unmanned when American men went overseas to fight.
I met John McHugh at his Fort Pierce home to listen to his account of his service.
Through the U.S. government program, McHugh left his home in Jamaica and boarded a ship with approximately 1,000 men in 1944. The ship brought the men to Virginia and at the time, McHugh considered it a dangerous journey.
“Lucky thing we got safely to America because cruisers went with us, to see us, with so much submarines raging,” McHugh said.
Through diary entries, McHugh recalled that the ship arrived stateside in Newport News, Virginia in June 1944. Form there, McHugh was contracted and paid to work at an onion farm in the upstate New York town of Elba.
He immediately recognized the help was needed.
“And when I see the amount of onions and nobody to collect it. We were doing a great job,” McHugh said.
McHugh worked that farm for five months and then worked factories for another 10 months before returning to Jamaica.
McHugh, proud of his Jamaican heritage said, “Jamaica during that period, to do a situation, that has helped the world.”
McHugh’s family turned his story into a book called “The Forgotten Reapers of World War Two”, all told through his diary entries and things he kept like pay stubs, pictures and signed work contracts.
It’s a story the family feels isn’t heard enough.
“It’s a history of not only history in general but also of diligence to take the time to document and keep," McHugh’s daughter, Emily, said. "Sometimes you wonder, what is the purpose of keeping a diary, why keep an old pay stub? Well this is a good reason right here.”
When McHugh returned to Jamaica, he returned to his profession as a printer. He then moved to England, then back to the United States.
McHugh turns 104 in August.
"The Forgotten Reapers of World War Two” is available on Amazon.
