Mary Hodgkin was living in Malaya at the time of the Japanese invasion during World War II. She escaped via Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and made a home for herself and her four children in Perth. Hodgkin's husband, Ernest Hodgkin, was interned at Changi and, after the war, joined his wife and family in Perth.
Hodgkin survived the war years financially by taking a teaching position in Perth and subsequently established a career as an academic at the University of Western Australia.
