We have asked people from around the world to share their thoughts on the importance of Oral History. Here are some of their comments. If you would like to add your own perspective to these, please send us an e-mail message and be sure to indicate your nationality or ethnic background.
My understanding of WWII had evolved around the atomic bombs until I first came to the United States back in 1990 as an exchange student. I took a U.S. History class in which I first came to know what they didn't teach in Japan. I was struck to see how WWII was taught so differently. When I went back to Japan, I started reading about what schools were not supposed to teach. Horrible things that Japan did. My one-sided view--"WWII was about how the US dropped the bombs"--collapsed.
In 1995, I was in a small guesthouse in Pagan, Burma, when this elderly man came to see the "Japanese" (me) to sing a Japanese military song. He also uttered some Japanese sentences, which I was shocked to realize were in the way a military personnel would talk. No one in Japan talks like that anymore. He carried the moments from the war, with which for the first time in my life the war in the past felt real to me. Yes, it was, for me, "the war in the past" but for him, I don't think it was a thing of the past. He wasn't at all trying to be mean to me by showing that, but the whole thing stabbed my heart and made my eyes water.
Then I was in Kanchanabri, Thailand, where there is River Quay. That's where the Japanese military forced the local people and POWs from other countries to work for the construction of this railroad. I was at this museum where they show how Japanese did what it did to other people. There I met some Australian travelors who agressively asked me why Japan did what it did and how I felt about it (many Australian POWs died there as well). Nothing came out my mouth. I guess their anger couldn't go anywhere else but a Japanese who happened to be there. The war felt real again. At the same time, I was saddened because before we interacted as individuals, there was the barrier of the label "Japanese."
Really, when we are born, we are born with no fixed prejudice, hate, agression, superiority, whatever, toward other people. As we grow, we get "inputs" like history classes, interaction and communication with other people, propaganda, TV news, etc., which then we form our understanding about the world with. "Labels" are such inputs too. We also get "inputs" as to how to deal with "inputs." And "inputs" coupled with a negative energy input create more suffering and destruction.
We are at the same time not born with "love" or "compassion"--do you disagree with this?--and I believe if we are to make a more just, humane and peaceful world, we need to learn to love and to be compassionate. We need to learn how to couple various "inputs" with an input of love, and try to create more positive energy and solutions that lead to peace, thus less suffering and destruction. I agree that we need to have "critical eye" for the input, but I think we have to first face and deal with it with love and compassion.
Even I say this, I sometimes find it difficult to love and to be compassionate. I sometimes get angry with little things. I sometimes cannot be "peaceful" at my individual level, and I see contradiction in myself wishing for peace at the macro level when I can't be "peaceful" myself.
That's why I guess I was drawn to Sarvodaya philosophy, which talks about the "two-fold awakening" that takes place both at the individual and the community level ("community" including family, village, country, and the world). It's easy to talk about "peace" on the macro level...Don't we do it everyday? But I think I need to reflect on the micro level: the peace within me and around me.... I try to make peace within me and around me daily.
What you are doing through your website is wonderful. Oral history taps the innermost something in people, I think. It's sometimes therapeutic, and sometimes empowering. I see a great possibility of the use of oral history in the day-centers/home for the elderly in Japan.
After my father's death, my mom continued to live in their home on the desert (Joshua Tree, CA, about 250 miles from where I lived). Unfortunately, my mother was well into her 80s before I realized that I should get her life story down on paper. I had never even considered it when my father was alive because his childhood and young adulthood was so filled with tragedy I was afraid to rekindle the memories for him. Well, every time I went out to see my mom, I would take a little more of her history. I got her through her childhood, high school, and courting years when she met my dad. The next time I arrived all ready for another installment, she could no longer remember anything at all! It was gone...just like that. She was about 86 years old. There were still things that I wanted to know and that I still wonder about. My mother is still alive and is now 93. She doesn't have Alzhiemers, but she does have a form of dementia, probably due to mini-strokes. I miss her so much, which seems strange to say when she is still alive. She just isn't there for me to connect with anymore and I miss that comraderie.
My family is Native Canadian. Our history is an oral one. Our legends and stories are passed on from generation to generation, from mother to daughter, from father to son. We learn about our culture through the spoken word.
I didn't get a chance to meet my grandmother on my mother's side. She died while I was one year old and my parents and I were still in Europe. I didn't get a chance to hear my grandmother's stories. I missed out on the oral history that only her voice could provide. In some sense my mother's stories pass on her mother's stories. This is as it always has been. But something is inevitably lost in the translation. My mother's voice overpowers that of her own mother's. Her stories are not quite the same as her mother's. In this sense, I know I have lost out.
All individuals are more than the sum of their documents. Their stories are hidden within their personal histories, revealed through dialogue, dialectic, and discourse. Our modern reliance on documents both paper and electronic, their very abundance, deludes us into believing that our stories, and those of our relations, are neatly laid out, recorded by our 'official' histories.
Our families, and the very fabric of our culture, depend upon the oral histories of individuals. There can be few more worthy goals than the faithful recording of these histories, for posterity, for our children, and for ourselves.
I still have a second-generation immigrant's fascination for the old country (China), and still have relatives (on my mother's side) in Singapore. We hope to pass that sense of family history on to our children. And to show them that the American way is not the only way to live.
The best way to accomplish either one, of course, is though stories. Tell your own; listen to others. As a society, Americans seem to have lost the habit, preferring to substitute the canned plotlines available on television to the real ones that constitute our lives. For example, our son was born so prematurely that his ears were not yet formed. His hands were such tiny things that my wedding ring fit over his wrist. Every once in a while, we tell ourselves this story, to remind both him and us that life may start small and grow wonderfully.
But we need to hear the sad stories too, the ones without happy endings. At my maternal grandmother's funeral, her daughters stood one by one to tell what they remembered of their youth during the Japanese occupation: the killings of their father and grandfather, the scarcity of food, the long walk from their home village to the city. These were stories that no one in my generation had ever heard before. They'd protected us from them, as one aunt put it, "Because such things were not fun." And yet we were all grateful to hear them. Stunned perhaps, pained certainly, but uplifted too. We knew ourselves better somehow.
When my father was young he served in the British Navy. He was part of a submarine crew. When I first heard this I was fascinated because I tried to imagine living with other people for a long period of time in such a small space. I wanted to get more of a picture of the situation from him. I wanted to ask him something about it to draw more information out of him, but I couldn't think of anything. I never have found out anything more about it.
Regarding other stories of his past, Dad has protested that my brothers and I aren't interested in hearing about them. That's not true. It's just difficult to set-up the situation in a way he would find sincere. I take after my dad, and therefore there are many things I could learn from his experience, let alone just trying to understand him.
As human beings, no matter how different our lifestyles are, we all share the same fundamental emotions and experience. Yet, because none of our lives are the same, we all have something to teach, and something to learn. As a part of our collective history, our family and our personal histories, everyone's story is valuable.
Maybe what you do is not all that great, but your life contains stories and riches that only you experience. No one in the world lives twice, and no two people experience and feel the same things as you do, so I see the importance of recording your life's story. Life passes all to quickly, but words live on forever.
I had never thought much about my own family history until I saw a photograph of my grandfather (whom I had never met) staring up, his forehead at the camera, dressed in authentic newsy knickerbockers. It was Olde New York, just like the gangster movies, except I knew this mug, sort of; he looked like me. That print and a Lithuanian birth certificate are all I've known of him, a private man like most who escaped the holocaust. History and scholarship aside, this feeling of personal connection is the strongest reason for anyone to record oral history -- it disappears all too quickly. Most of us will never uncover an obscured royal lineage, long lost estate or famous turncoat in the family. But that's not the point. Understanding "now" isn't possible without a knowledge of what happened until now. Listening to rambling family yarns isn't an act of charity for the elderly -- it's one of those paradoxical moments of noble selfishness (one of the few we have left). It's figuring out where you come from and who you are -- getting rich by paying your dues to the past. I don't mind reading about Great Men; I'd rather read about my grandfather.
I have an autobiography of a man who headed up an organization that I served in for the final months of World War II. He had a life of change and achievement which provided more than enough material for such a memoir. But the book was completed and published when he was well into his eighties and it seems unlikely that he had no help. His family had been asking for such a history for years and its publication was welcomed by many others who had been associated with him. He was a remarkable man who led a remarkable life. But in most families there are remarkable men and women whose stories deserve to be fully told. Children in particular are tremendously curious about their ancestors and elders and tremendously excited to find them special.
I myself had four unusual grandparents and two brave parents about whom I still know less than I'd like to know. I would have treasured Oral Histories about any of them.
I really got to know my father about two years ago during a trip back to the U.S. I had heard only snippets about the war from my mother. I had always wanted to know more, but I never broached the subject with my father. Unfortunately, when my mother died, my information pipeline was cut off. Shortly before my trip home, I had finished a particular writing course that gave me the impetus to crave more information. That night, I called my father and asked him if it was all right to take a few hours of his time to interview him about the war. He agreed.
The interview ended up lasting several hours, as I went through tape after tape while taking notes. During the interview itself, a lot of the information was lost on me because I was concentrating too hard on my notes. However, I sat down one morning and listened to the entire interview. It was marvelous. All the affinities he has to certain foods or kinds of people all came clear to me. Likewise, the little aversions he has to certain situations became understandable.
Oral History is important to both families and society. Think of all the tales, jokes, triumphs and tragedies that die along with every person who never had a chance to share them. Think of all the memories lost when a person is lost. Of course, photographs are great for memories, and we all know that a picture tells a thousand words. But are they the right words?
Ultimately, Oral History preserves the past, for us to learn from, remember, and cherish.
I think family memoirs are very important. My mother died in a car crash before I could get her story down on tape. I regret that very much. I wanted to get her story down to let her grandchildren read after she had passed away -- when they would wonder at her life and wish they knew more about her. Now, I will have to settle for things people say about her. The same thing goes for my father, who died in of a massive heart attack in his seventies.
Everything we do and everything we say and everybody we meet have meaning, which we should treasure. I want to leave something of me behind. If I leave my memoirs, I will never be forgotten. They will always remain for someone to read and bring to life again.
In almost every country and culture of the world there has been a deep-rooted tradition of oral teaching and the transmission of legend, fable and individual family customs from one generation to the next. We can see this in the great "Romans" and ballads of Europe. In the East, oral traditions have had as strong an influence as the written word. Japan's native "minwa" or folk tale genre, is traditionally handed down by "kuchi tsutae" -- literally, passing from mouth to mouth. In India, recitation of the scriptures and a continuing custom of story telling are typical of the culture there.
In every individual family, there are always certain moments and experiences in the lives of any one of its members, which could be recorded for its future generations. These need not necessarily have to be extremely significant, or have any of the qualities of what is commonly termed "greatness". Most of us lead totally ordinary lives, being led by circumstances, or people , at various points in our lives. What could be important for any given family is to know how that one individual countered, or lived within, those circumstances. A small act of kindness, a childhood friendship still constant, an accident or a disaster, long-hidden emotions -- these are a few incidents in a family history which they would know and treasure and probably use as examples in their own lives. Children very often get their grandparents to talk about their lives, but this passes with childhood. It is vital that in this nuclear age with families flung all around the globe, bonds are maintained and every family has a record about people whom they love and respect. When this comes directly from that individual, the message it carries is stronger -- the words reach across to make them sit back and take time for introspection. Memories fade, but a recorded history keeps them intact. Parents and their children would begin to have fresh insights into the meaning of a family.
We are all stars, all famous, in our own worlds, and therefore why should only a fraction of us who pass through this life be immortalized in ink or on tape? The fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol spoke of can be played out over centuries if we only keep some sort of record of the events that must personally affect each and every one of us. I know that my own life would, if presented well, prove to be a fascinating read, and I hope one day to map it out, if not for the greater public, then at least for those I am close to. I only wish I knew more of my own family, especially my father, who seems to have sprung from nowhere.
The political history of a time period is generally well documented, the deception and intrigues are usually recorded in minute detail. However, the effects of these political decisions are often neglected. The reaction of the individual, the family, and society form an entirely different area of history which is fascinating in its own right. It is my hope that every family somehow records the wealth of knowledge that each relative possesses before it is too late.
I wish my grandfather, who passed about a year ago, had recorded his rags to riches immigrant story. I know bits and pieces and my grandmother helps to fill in the gaps, but my grandfather had his own unique tough style of speaking that I miss hearing and I now wish I had his story on tape or recorded somehow. It saddens me to think that my children will probably only know the barest outline of what a wonderful man their great grandfather was.