Viktoras Kuciauskas (1929-2008): Not All Stayed, by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 5 December 2023.

A small number of the First Transporters moved to third countries after their initial settlement in Australia.  Broadly, their reasons for leaving were reunion with family who had settled successfully elsewhere or being able to practise their professions when this was denied to them without "retraining" in Australia.

One who left was Viktoras Kuciauskas.  He stayed in Australia long enough to obtain citizenship here in 1953.  He was the only recipient of citizenship at his ceremony in Burnie, Tasmania, on 17 July, but the event was seen as so important that he had to listen politely to at least 6 speeches.  He was surrounded by around 20 very important people, according to the local newspaper.

In 1954, the Burnie Advocate newspaper carried a photograph of him as the radiographer in charge of a mobile X-ray unit (part of the then national campaign against tuberculosis).  A short article in the local Lithuanian newspaper, Mūsų Pastogė, reports that he was deputy chairman of the Lithuanian community in Hobart in early 1956 as well as the rapporteur for its audit committee.  

Victor Kuciauskas as radiographer in charge of a mobile Xray unit
in Burnie, Tasmania, October 1954

Source: Burnie Advocate, 20 October 1954

Yet only one year later, he was entering the United States via Canada, to reside there for the rest of his life.  

Born in Marijampolė County on 8 April 1929, he was only 18 when he arrived in Australia.  This age makes it unlikely that he had qualified as a radiographer already, but perhaps he had undertaken some relevant studies which made qualifying here easier.  His Bonegilla card records his English as 'fair':  it must have quickly become good enough for him to complete technical studies successfully maybe less than 5 years later.

Bonegilla card for Viktoras Kuciauskas

Source:  NAA

The Bonegilla card shows that he stayed in the camp until 28 January 1948, so he had nearly 2 months there to attend English classes and improve his language skills.  On 28 January, he and others were sent to HE Pickworth in Ardmona in Victoria to pick fruit.  He spent more than 2 months there, returning to the camp at the end of the fruit-picking on 1 March.  Only 4 days later, on 5 March, he was part of a group sent as labourers to the Electrolytic Zinc Company in Rosebery, Tasmania.

Viktoras Kuciauskas is third from the left in the front row in this photograph
taken at the burial of Aleksandras Vasilauskas in Albury's Pioneer Cemetery, 5 January 1948

Source: Collection of Endrius Jankus

Rosebery was the site of the Electrolytic Zinc Company's mine.  Mining is skilled work, so it is unlikely that the group of recent arrivals sent from Bonegilla were employed to do that.  The general labouring that they probably did still would have been very hard work, especially for young men who had been not particularly well fed during their 3 years in Germany.  Viktoras and the others would have been very relieved when notified in September 1949 that they were no longer required to work in Australia.  They had been free to leave their employers at any time so long as they sought the assistance of the Commonwealth Employment Service to find 'other work as directed', but the 2 years of employment in Australia often got interpreted as 2 years with only one employer.

Records digitised by Ancestry.com show that Viktoras travelled to the United States in 1955. He was on the RMS Orion, an Orient Line ship which berthed in San Francisco on 18 April 1955. By this time, his father was living in the US, in New York, while his mother was somewhat closer to San Francisco, in Omaha, Nebraska. His daughter, Victoria Siliunas, has advised that while visiting his mother, he went on a blind date with the woman who was to become his wife. 

His application for US citizenship shows that he arrived in the US again on 7 February 1957. This time, he had travelled from Sydney to Vancouver on another Orient Line ship, the SS Oronsay. His date of arrival in Vancouver is not yet public, but he reached Honolulu en route on 30 July 1956. 

Modern cruise ships take 9 to 13 days to travel from Honolulu to Vancouver, so Viktoras probably arrived in Vancouver before the end of August 1956. Between September and January 1957, did he stay in Vancouver with his sister, Stase, or did he drop into the US on visits to the special new woman in his life? If those records have been kept, they are not yet public. 

Less than one year after his second arrival, on 25 January 1958, he married Regina Parulis (Parulyte in Lithuanian), who had been born in Tauragė, Lithuania. By the time of the citizenship application they had a son, born in December 1959, and were to have another child, their daughter Victoria.

Based on decades of prior experience as a country of mass immigration, the US naturalization application form provided for applicants to change their name at this point in their lives.  Viktoras made use of this opportunity:  henceforward, he wished to be known as Victor Kucas.  

Victor's occupation is recorded as 'X-ray' on the application form.  An obituary written by a friend since school days, Edvardas Šulaitis, says that Victor obtained an additional nuclear medicine technician's qualification in the US.  Victor became the head radiographer in the Frank Cuneo Memorial Hospital, Chicago, for the more than 30 years that this hospital operated from 1957.

Ancestry.com has collected some information about Victor Kucas' life in the United States, mainly in the form of addresses from 1996 onwards.  They reveal that he was living in Lockport, Illinois, a city some 50 Km southwest of Chicago.

More is revealed in the Šulaitis obituary, published in Draugas, a Chicago-based newspaper which has been the only Lithuanian-language daily published outside Lithuania.  Having been a scout in childhood, Victor led the Lithuanian scout troop Lituanicas in Chicago and, during 1960-1963, was a member of the Council of the Lithuanian Scouts Union.  He edited the children's magazine, Eglutė, during 1994-2003, and for six years edited the Pasaulio lietuvio magazine.  He was active in a number of other organisations.

Edvardas Šulaitis described his friend as 'hard-working, calm-mannered' and added that 'Viktor remained in my memory as a quiet but accomplished person who paid tribute not only to his family, but also to the entire Lithuanian community.'

A portrait of Victor in later life on display at his funeral

Source:  Draugas

Sadly, Victor's life had ended in 7 months of pain after an accident in his home in December 2007.  He died on 17 July 2008, aged 79 years old, but he did live long enough to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary earlier that year.  His ashes were buried in a Chicago cemetery under the names of both Kuciauskas and Kucas.

Victor Kucas is buried with his father and wife in the St Casimir Catholic Cemetery,
Chicago, Illinois

Source:  FindaGrave

His wife, Regina, born on 24 January 1929, died 7 years later on 9 December 2015, aged 86.  She is buried with Victor.

The original burial in this plot would have been that of Pranas Kuciauskas, Victor's father.  His name appears on a nominal roll of Displaced Persons Departing From Resettlement Repatriation and US Migration Center Butzbach on 6 May 1949, held by the Arolsen Archives.  The Archives also have digitised a record which shows that Pranas was in Hanau, Germany, with his two children.  Why then did the three of them settle in three different countries?  Was the absence of any next of kin on Victor's Bonegilla card an oversight, or was it deliberate?

Others who asked the selection team for the First Transport if their relatives could come too were assured that they could follow.  In at least one instance that I am aware of, the relative came on the Second Transport.  Why was Victor not declaring that he had family and arranging for them to join him in Australia?

Pranas at the time of his migration to the US was aged 52, his occupation was given as Caretaker and his marital status was signified with a D, presumably for Divorced.  Somehow he was travelling independently when everyone else on his page of the nominal roll had a sponsoring organisation.  He was headed for Henry Street in Kings Park, Suffolk County, on New York State's Long Island.  Who did he know there?

Born on 4 June 1897, Pranas died on 1 October 1962 aged 65.  He died in Cook County, Illinois, so he was living with or near his son in Lockport.

The simple answer to many of the questions raised above might be that the young Victor was as adventurous as any other 18-year-old, maybe even more so given his scouting background.  When he heard about the possibility of moving to Australia, it may have seemed also like a quick way out of the previous 7 years of war and deprivation. 

Viktoras Kuciauskas is third from the left in the front row of this 1944 photo
of the fifth form students of the Kybartai Gymnasium in Lithuania

Source:  Collection of Edvardas Šulaitis via Draugas

If there were other young people from the same refugee camp answering Australia's call, that would have added to the pull factor.

Victor clearly did well in Australia.  It's likely, however, that he realised that he needed Australian citizenship for the passport to travel to reconnect with family members who had resettled in North America.  He must have been earning enough money through his responsible job in Australia to make not one, but two trips to North America. 

Returning to the US was a wise personal decision for Victor, not only for marriage and children but he was able to achieve more qualifications and a job which probably gave give security and satisfaction for the rest of his working life.  His move was Australia's loss, though.

I thank Jonas Mockunas for drawing attention to Edvardas Šulaitis' Draugas obituary, which has filled in gaps in Victor's life in the US.

Sources

'Documents from AIDUKAS, ADOLFAS, born on May 20th, 1895, born in LAUCIUNISKE and from other persons', Arolsen Archives, DocID 78869128, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/78869128.

'Draugas' (1 February 2023), in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draugas, accessed 8 April 2023.

'Hobartas, Nauja apylinkės valdyba' (Hobart, New community board), Musu Pastogė, (Sydney, NSW), 8 February 1956, p 4, via Trove, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article259359765, accessed 31 March 2023.

Jankus, Endrius, personal communication, 25 September 2009.

'Migrant Culture Praised at Naturalisation Ceremony', Advocate (Burnie, Tas),  18 July 1953, p 6, via Trove,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article69481268, accessed 25 March 2023.   

National Archives of Australia: Department of Immigration, Central Office; A2571, Name Index Cards, Migrants Registration; Kuciauskas, Viktoras: Year of Birth - 1929: Nationality - LITHUANIAN: Travelled per - GEN. HEINTZELMAN: Number – 941; accessed 27 March 2023. 

'Naturalisation ceremony at Burnie on Friday ... ',  Advocate (Burnie, Tas), 20 July 1953, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article69481365, accessed 25 March 2023.   

[Pranas Kuciauskas], Arolsen Archives, Document ID: 81711918, Correspondence and nominal roles [sic], done at Butzbach: means of transport train, plane; Transit countries and emigration destinations: Australia, Italy, Canada, USA, https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/81711918.

Pranas Kuciauskas, in Cook County, Illinois, Death Index, 1908-1988, Ancestry.com, accessed 31 March 2023.

'Pranas Kuciauskas', Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/239782705/pranas-kuciauskas, accessed 25 March 2023.

'Regina T. Parulis Kucas', Petkus & Son Funeral Homes (Lemont, Illinois), [December 2015], https://www.petkusfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/Regina-T-Parulis-Kucas?obId=2585224, accessed 25 March 2023.  

'Regina Kucas', Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/239782753/regina-kucas, accessed 25 March 2023.

Siliunas, Victoria, 2023, personal communication, 17 April.

Šulaitis, Edvardas, 'Dar Viena Skaudi Netektis, Atsisveikinta Su A. A. Viktoru Kuču' (Another Painful Loss, Goodbye Said to Viktoras Kučas RIP), Draugas (Chicago, IL), 20 August 2008, p 8, https://www.draugas.org/key/2008_reg/2008-08-20-DRAUGASo.pdf.

'Viktoras Kucas', Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/239782738/viktoras-kucas, accessed 25 March 2023. 

'Victor Kuciauskas, in the California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959', Ancestry.com, accessed 31 March 2023.

'Victor Kuciauskas, in the Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., Arriving and Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1900-1959', Ancestry.com, accessed 31 March 2023.

'Viktoras Kuciauskas, in the Illinois, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1856-1991' Ancestry.com, accessed 31 March 2023.

'X-ray unit', Advocate (Burnie, Tas), 20 October 1954, p 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article69880102, accessed 25 March 2023.