Louise Bremner wrote:
> Kevin Wayne Williams <kww.nihongo@verizon.nut> wrote:

> > The Americans were still a quasi-occupying force at the time, so they were
> > given significant deference by the Japanese government. US military
> > personnel didn't require passports at all.
>
> UK military personnel neither. Which leads to some bizarre situations
> where people who have been in Britain's armed forces for all of their
> adult lives retire and apply for a passport, then find they have to
> prove they are British citizens first. The simplest way to do that is,
> apparently, to prove that your paternal grandfather was born in
> Britain--but in military families that is often not the case.

Spike Milligan immediately comes to mind. Born in India but for the
most part raised in London. I don't think he served except during the
war itself ("How long were you in the army Spike?" "5 feet 10" etc) but
he found himself stateless. He was going to migrate to Woy Woy but
during the interview with the Australian bureaucrats answered "Yes" to
the question regarding mental problems ("... but only when I think of
Margaret Thatcher"). Ireland had no such problem.

> I met a Briton here in Japan who had difficulty registering his children
> at the British Embassy because he was born when his family was stationed
> in Germany, his father was born in (I think) Hong Kong, and his
> grandfather maybe in India. Neither his father nor his grandfather had
> ever needed to prove they were British, nor had they needed a passport.
> When he himself had applied for a passport, the rules weren't so strict.
>
> >
> > When I moved to the Antilles, there was all kinds of trouble with my
> > birth certificate. The Antilleans wanted an apostilled copy of my birth
> > certificate.
>
> Oooooo.... New word--"apostilled"!
>
> > What I have is a Foreign Service FS-240, "Report of Live
> > Birth Abroad."  There are only three copies of my FS-240: one at the
> > Tokyo Consulate, one at the State Department, and one in my hands. It is
> > illegal to copy it, and the State Department will *not* apostille it.
> > They say that you can only apostille a copy, and all three that exist
> > are originals. In the 1980s the State Department came up with a new form
> > that they would apostille. In order for me to emigrate, the State
> > Department made me a new birth certificate using the later form, and
> > then apostilled it as genuine. They weren't very good at it ... the
> > first one was missing a signature and had my name spelled incorrectly.
>
> *wince*
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
>                    Louise Bremner (log at gol dot com)
>    If you want a reply by e-mail, don't write to my Yahoo address!