Uncovering the Untold Survivor Stories w/Jenny Chan

0:04 Hey everyone, this is Randy Kim from the Banh Mi Chronicles podcast, and today I am joined with Jenny Chan. And Jenny has reached out to me, and I wanted to bring this topic up, or the several topics that we will be laying out here. And so there is a trigger warning that there will be mentions of gender-based violence, genocide, and other past historical trauma that's involved, Asian and Asian American communities. And so Jenny is the executive director of Pacific Atrocities Education, PAE, and it was established in 2014.

0:48 And its goal is to aim, its aim is to broaden public awareness of the history and impact of the Pacific front of World War II, in which an estimated estimated 30 million lives were lost. And its mission is to increase the awareness about the atrocities committed in the Asia-Pacific theater of World War II through public history projects. It is essential for future generations to learn about, understand, and share with others this devastating chapter of our world's stories. So PAE has been devoted to doing a number of research work through archiving, interviewing elders, publishing books, creating educational resources.

1:34 And these topics include the Korean and Chinese comfort women, the Bataan Death March, Unit 731, and the Nanjing Massacre to help elevate the stories of survivors and to support them in their healing journey. And I think this is a very important topic to uncover because it is a part of history that oftentimes gets left behind. And because of that, it creates consequences for future generations when you don't know the history and both in America or back in the Asian homeland, there are many atrocities that we have not been able to talk about and how it's actually very relevant to today's current issues with ICE raids that are happening.

2:26 targeting Asian Americans, especially in the Southeast Asian communities in Minnesota, what's happening in Palestine, what's happening in other places around the world that's fighting a lot of oppression and sexual violence. And so, Jenny, I want to say thank you so much for being here and for really being able to open up this dialogue. I think this is a topic that is very difficult to navigate through, but I also hope that for listeners that you'll be able to give yourself some time and breaks and also hopefully as a way to be informed and to use that knowledge to find ways to support folks who have gone through traumatic experiences.

3:16 So welcome, Jenny. Thank you so much for having me. And I really love your podcast. I think it's so informative. I think it's also very cute, your logo. I just saw your Instagram thing about cilantro. It was so cute. Yeah. And yeah, so I think I want to talk about like... I think immigration is very political because if you think about it, in 1882, there was the Chinese Exclusionary Act. America basically said that we want your labor, but just not your citizenship.

4:01 In the 1800s, everyone can come to America, but you just cannot be Chinese. And so they had Chinese Exclusionary Act. So even though that those people were working for Gold Rush and, you know, doing the railroad, they were then massacred. Like, in fact, the biggest massacre in L.A., the biggest lynching event was toward the Chinese people in 1871. And like 18 people were lynched. And It's very shocking that we don't talk about that in mainstream U.S. history. You can probably learn about it in Asian American Studies class.

4:42 And when I learned about that, I think that really stayed with me. Because, and then like right after 1882, between 1882 and 1945, no, 1941, when Pearl Harbor happened, then immediately China is our best friend, is our best ally. So a lot of these like, you know, immigration policy is really, you know, they can just do whatever decision, 180 decision. Just based on the political atmosphere and the political environment of what's happening.

5:24 Yeah, I really appreciate you bringing up the 1800s part of immigration and that history, because obviously this was during time of U.S. enslavement and then Jim Crow laws that came after that and then the the erasure of indigenous people. And so what's very interesting and what I think is very important to note that, yes, the lynching happened of 1871 was very significant to what would end up happening with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. And also there was a lynching that happened in Seattle that also is forgotten. So there were many situations where Chinese and other Asian folks were endangered and were not immune from white supremacy.

6:12 And I feel like it's not just one incident, right? It's almost like this explosion of racial fear and economic resentment and also dehumanization of people who look like you and me. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's also very interesting to know how U.S. media portrayed Chinese people, Japanese and typically Asian people. You see the caricatures, you see like the typical Chinese fonts that are, you know. that are very visible. And it's done not in an endearing way.

6:52 It's done in a very dehumanizing and kind of like an exoticized way. And it created this narrative that you saw what happened with the Japanese Americans with the incarceration of World War during World War II after Pearl Harbor. I'm very curious about what the climate was like from what you have learned of Asian Americans during that particular period before World War II. Yeah, so a lot of people, I was actually surprised to hear that everyone has heard about Ellis Island. It's almost like a symbol of hope when people go to Ellis Island of this immigration story, right?

7:35 But I would not say almost no one's heard of Angel Island because I feel like we've all, I have done a few trips there before when I was a kid. But I just recently talked to a friend who had no idea what Angel Island was. And that was happening for Asian immigrants that come through Pacific. And if you're coming through the Pacific, there is a high chance that the immigrant is Asian. And so in Ellis Island, you get through the processing. An immigrant would get through the processing within hours. And coming through the Pacific to Angel Island... Those folks from 1910 to 1940, they take at least, you know, months, if not years for interrogation, especially if they're a male immigrant.

8:24 They were like, okay, what are you going to do? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I even met this guy who actually retired from the post office. He told me that he was a part of the Angel Island immigrants, and he didn't speak English at the time, so he had no idea why his interrogation officer even removed his fingernail as a part of the interrogation processing. And so it's just kind of like, you can see in America, there's almost like a two-tier justice system. And so it depends on who you are. It's almost like it's a racial-based system.

9:07 And so it's almost like it depends on who you are, how you look, and then they're going to make that kind of judgment process. on how they're going to treat you. And what's also very fascinating is that people who are coming through the Pacific, they could also be the Philippines. And the destiny of Philippines was not dependent on the Filipinos' decisions. In fact, we're going to do an episode about that. It was decided between Spanish and Americans at the Treaty of Paris, where the Philippines was basically bought for $20 million.

9:50 And America said that they're fighting for freedom. They're fighting for liberty. But once they fought with the Spanish and the Spanish laws, America scrapped that idea and didn't give the Philippines freedom. And It's so telling to see that these decisions are made by two European powers. Basically, I'm going to call America European power because when you see the Treaty of Paris, it looks very European. It looks very Eurocentric.

10:30 And it's almost disturbing, too, because then, you know, the Philippines, the Filipinos living on their own land cannot make the decision themselves. And more Filipinos died fighting for freedom. Then Americans died on D-Day. And so when I hear that like America is going to spread freedom and whatnot, it's just like what you hear and what is happening are very different. I think this is such an important quick deep dive. I know that there's so much to gather through. And I'm also very curious about what Asian women and how Asian American children were being treated during that particular time in terms of education.

11:17 Because I think of lately there's been the unraveling of learning about how Native Americans were treated When they were growing up, they were forced to be assimilated into schools and that were very violent and and erasing their own culture. I'm very curious if you know what the situation was like for younger people. children and women living in America. Yes, definitely. And before I answer that question, I also want to say that there's, I recently read about these Navajo tribesmen who were fighting in World War Two at a time where there's still segregation.

11:59 And in like, American soldiers would, other white soldiers would tell them to go back to where they came from. But if you think about it, the Navajo tribes, tribesmen are from America. They have been here before everyone else. And so I think it's so, it's so shocking when I read that, right? And also I think I was reading about also how these Chinese children in Willy Wu, Is that the name? No, that's Gordon Lau Elementary School. And I think that they were pretty much just stuck in their own little like zone.

12:43 And when I was living in San Francisco, it's very fascinating because my landlord was like, 80 years old, right? She went through it and she was telling me that basically there were like, you know, three classes of citizens and she was trying to live in the more like white neighborhood and they tried to kick her out. So she was writing letters to like attorneys and to like city hall. even though that she had enough money to then buy, like, her family had, like, enough success because they have been, like, there for, like, two generations, that they still had to write these letters just to, like, live in the richer part of town.

13:26 And so segregation, it's, like, redlining. It was still so... If you think about it, it's not too long ago. It's like less than 100 years ago. And what's also very fascinating about the Philippines, too, is that when and this is like Philippines will stand under like Americans control for like so long. And when the Japanese came, they were like actually excited to see, you know, maybe the Japanese will liberate them. But once they saw how brutal the Japanese were, they were like, okay, never mind. We're going to go back to fight with the Americans.

14:10 And so it's almost like, you know, it's almost like, you know, you get to choose your own country. enemy seems like yeah wow and so it's like this power and i've been reading about like hegemony and the idea of hegemony is almost like bullying you know they're always it's almost sound like they're believing it believing and like they're so they're doing good things and they have like you know great um they have they just want to dominate you know the world and like make it so then it's more stable but then if you look at it what about people who are like living you know who are just trying to live and like where are their stories yeah where are their stories in this and and i say this because also like you know you know as a vietnamese and kambodian descent uh our lands were colonized by france and there always seems to be this this um Vietnam is another thing where Ho Chi Minh actually wrote to the Americans and said, hey, you like freedom, I like freedom.

15:18 Can you help us to fight the French? And guess what? They even assigned a puppet leader for Vietnam. I don't think Vietnam is a communist country per se, but they definitely do not mess with Vietnam. They will fight. They do fight. They do fight pretty hard. But it's also interesting because everyone seems to... Well, I don't want to say everyone, but it just seems like France's involvement or their participation in engaging in colonialism... seems to be sanitized. It seems to be like that they were not that evil, even though if you look at history, that says otherwise.

16:03 I think this is going to be very important when you talk about Japan, because in World War II, like, what is one of the more forgotten genocides of our time is the nanking massacre and i have learned about through two things um reading um helen zia's last boat out of shanghai and helen zia was a person i had on my podcast a few years ago and i came to her um uh to her uh author talk at a bookstore about the last boat out of shanghai and I will say that it was a very, very nauseating read for me.

16:43 I mean, as someone who has been involved in the Cambodian genocide memorial work, this took it to another level that I never would have expected. And I would say that when you learn about the atrocities, it was so bad that even the Nazis that were living in Shanghai actually thought they went too far. and um also that that the word barbaric comes to mind um barbaric was i don't want to get into the details of what was done to the people of nanking but it was very violent and um and it created lifetime trauma that I'm sure still lives on to this day.

17:34 And also Japan and how they colonized Korea during that particular time. how violent that period was for them. Which Teddy Roosevelt handed Korea to Japan. I mean, and a lot of people don't learn about that, which is crazy to me that, I mean, I didn't learn about it until like, I was out of college however many years after, then I learned about the Treaty of Portsmouth. And immediately I was thinking like, who is Teddy Roosevelt to hand the whole country to another power just because like in his eyes, you know, the Japanese assimilated. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious about what you were learning about Japan rise to global power, because I know there's the Mejia, like the 1868 era, and afterward, they started to become more assertive in their own global, as a global power.

18:29 I'm curious about their history of colonialism, and why their tactics to oppress and, um, Violently oppress the... Inferior, they call it. Yes. Yeah. Because I think that's certainly something I'm very interested in about where their participation was and also their relationship with other global powers such as the U.S. and England and perhaps like Russia. Yeah, definitely. So I... During the Russo-Japanese War, if you read like historical records, the Japanese were actually quite nice to the Russians that were defeated.

19:13 And so it wasn't until like, you know, one day during World War II that they started being that kind of nasty. And I think a part of it has to do with racism. Because they saw themselves as like, oh, we're not really Asians. We're actually on like this island. So like how the British saw themselves out of Europe, right? They have this channel, they have this ocean that separate them. And in order for them to conquer the whole Asia, Teddy Roosevelt handing them Korea, they were able to use it as like a springboard onto Asia. If you look at the map, right, Korea is actually a part of Asia. So then they were actually able to leverage Korea.

19:54 into Manchuria. And what I have gathered and read from these people, like, for example, Kishi Nobusuke, who Eisenhower took out of prison after World War II because they needed to fight so-called communist China, is that he saw Chinese people as something that is so dirty as basically like poop water or like toilet water. And you cannot commingle the Japanese with the Chinese people. And you can see that even during like Unit 731, like if the Japanese scientist died from some kind of experimentation that had gone wrong, then he...

20:37 I mean, then they get incinerated in a different like incinerator versus like all of the other victims, like all of the other victims get their own incinerator. So I think like racial hierarchy really had something to do with it. And during Meiji Restoration, it's very good that you brought up 1868 because that's when... Matthew Perry, who showed up on, you know, Japan's shore, you know, in the 1800s, showed them that, you know, in order to be a you need to stop isolationism. So then they took kind of like West. So then they took it to an extreme form.

21:19 They brought like all their elites to the West and basically they're abandoning Asia and they're like now westernizing to become like a more modern state. And so then their concept is that now they're the Yankees of the East. In fact, you see Teddy Roosevelt calling them the Yankees of the East, like with Baron Connacle, who was a diplomat from Japan. And Baron Connacle, like no one talks about him, but he was a diplomat from Japan. And he basically like... became really good friends with Teddy Roosevelt. And Teddy Roosevelt even brought him to go fundraise at Wall Street to fight against Russia.

22:02 And so you see this kind of like power dynamic and you see that it's really like race had a lot to do with it. Yeah. And so I think that's, you know, once you stop seeing the other person as a human, you can do all kinds of brutal things. I mean, it's like it's scary what would then transpire in the whole Asia continent. with the particular period and also another thing I forgot to mention was the second way I've learned about it was learning about the work of the late Iris Chang who died 20 plus years ago and she did not live through that particular period but she went and did the research about what was happening in Nanking and giving voice to the survivors of that period and and forced in trying to force the japanese government to acknowledge and apologize which to this day still hasn't has not happened um the cream i don't think it'll ever happen why do you feel that there's such i mean we saw that with the turkish government with the armenian genocide and how they will still not apologize even though no one is still alive during that period but why do you feel that those governments are so um reluctant to even apologize knowing that knowing that it's been well documented

23:33 Or even acknowledge that it even happened because of, they don't need to because of the power structure. You know, Kishi Nobusuke, who basically was a class A war criminal, was, was brought out of Sugamo prison. This actually makes me sick. Like millions of people died because of his policies, right? And he basically, after the war, Eisenhower and the CIA got him out of Sugamo prison. He didn't have to go through justice. And then he founded the LDP party, who is now the prime minister, Sanae, Takaichi and Sinai Takaichi is in this party right that Kishinobusuke had was funded by the United States by the CIA and Kishinobusuke's grandson is Shinzo Abe or was Shinzo Abe and and so you can see that this power structure is very well you know living and And one of the prominent LDP member is Taro Aso.

24:53 And Taro Aso is actually, his family was running a POW mine, slave labor mine. And he was prime minister in the 2010s. And he really likes the current prime minister. And so, and when you have also, I don't think, I think there are also a lot of denialists that is continuing to deny that this even happened, either for political issues or maybe it's a popular agenda item in their country, right? And so why apologize or even acknowledge when it's not a popular thing to do?

25:33 And like Shigeru, the last prime minister who was also recalled, he actually acknowledged that the Nanjing massacre happened. And I think that's a big part of why he was recalled. And if you think about it too, like the brutality of Nanjing Massacre is 300,000 people. It's not even a fraction of the people who died in World War II. It's like... 30 million people who died from brutality it's and just learning about that fraction it's like it brings chills to my bones like it's so gruesome that like you said even nazi like the nazi had to write to like the nazi headquarter to say like hey maybe our friends here are doing some crazy things like And he was using swastika to like protect that building.

26:25 So then he can protect these women and children, which is my mind was blown because when I was learning like World War Two history, I only thought that the Nazis were the bad guys. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a lot to unpack. It's mind-numbing to me, because I think that was one of the takeaways from that particular period. It's like, wow, this is unbelievable. And then having to read about it, I had a very, very hard time, to the point where I can't even finish her book, Helen Zia's book. It was too overwhelming for me to read it.

27:05 I also am curious about, and this is coming up in my mind, is we talk about the atomic bomb that landed in Japan, but I'm also curious about America's involvement in Japan prior to that. Cause I don't think we were talking about like what happened in America, what the Americans did in Japan before the bomb was dropped. I'm very curious about what was going through that particular period and what was the Japanese people contending with during that particular period. Yeah, so I'm not going to debate if, you know, dropping the bomb was a good idea or not.

27:46 But the interesting thing is that when I was reading the death toll, I think the two atomic bombs was like less than the Rape of Nanking. And that was so shocking to me because Rape of Nanking is by sword and bayonet. And like, you know, it's like very almost like a medieval way of... dying and um and one thing that really stroke struck out to me lately is reading the yokohama trial and reading about human experimentation and like apparently some of these like human experimentation people are like class b and class c war criminals so they're not even like you know Rated as Class A.

28:30 And there was a B-29 bomber crew that was bombing Tokyo. And they got, like, knocked down by a bunch of villagers. And some died right away. But then the others, they... They hung on. And a few of them were then pushed to Kyushu Imperial University. And they thought that they were going to be saved and helped. But then little did they realize that they were going to become human experimentation subjects in front of... uh a college lecture so they did everything from like removing the organ to see how long they would live until like um uh or like yeah um just basically very brutal things um and this is like in i think like in the early of 1945 and also a lot of people don't think about this but like america was actually losing the war before 1944.

29:39 It wasn't until the capture of the Mariana Islands that they see a peculiar path of winning. And when the six wise men, I think they call it the six wise men, like Dean Acheson and whatnot... was trying to they were trying to like cut oil for japan and then which led to pearl harbor i don't think they realized how brutal the war was going to be they had no maps of asia they had no idea what's going to go what's going to happen they had no detailed plan but then they and and the more i think about it right like america was still supplying oil and like well into 1940 for Japan.

30:24 So basically what Japan did and the invasion of China happened in 1931, right? So it was between 19... So it was like 10 years before Pearl Harbor and Japan was using American oil. So like the rape of Nanking and like Manchuria basically are almost like they use American oil to do it. There was... and um that is always so fascinating to me and to um switch gears the world war ii generation folks are nearly gone and now it's currently the vietnam war era folks and i think that the korean war era is folks were are almost disappearing too and with the vietnam war era folks are on their way transitioning and we just had the 50 year Mark of the fall of Saigon, the beginning of the Khmer Rouge and the end of the Laos Civil War.

31:26 What do you tell folks who are trying to find ways to reconcile capture stories and be stewards of their families' history? And how do you work to help support that in the past? Because I know that at that time when you were working with the survivors during World War II, you were trying to race against time. It's actually a very good question. So one of our survivors that we work with in terms of conference and lecturing, her name is Jean B. Chan. And she survived World War II in China. She lost her brother due to starvation and illness.

32:07 And the first time I heard her talk, we had like a... We had a joint event at the Day of Learning with the Holocaust Center, and she was crying so hard that I was just like, wow, shoot, I don't even know what to do. And I think it happens. We need to let folks to get through their emotions because in order for them to tell their story, they're almost reliving that moment that they have suffered through. And Jean actually ended up to be like a great mathematician and she was a math professor at Sonoma State. And, you know, she lived a very normal middle class life that even her husband didn't know about like her survival in World War Two until like they were watching a World War Two movie and she was crying so hard that she couldn't even like leave the movie theater seat.

33:00 Like that is the kind of story like, you know, the war might have only last a few years, but then your body either suppress it or you think about it for the rest of your life. Right. And last year we held we held our conference and Jean like Jean was fine. She was she dropped like a few tears. And in a way, I think that she's actually like healing just by sharing her story with with so many people. Mm hmm. It's really hard to imagine what, how time can change a person's grief journey or how it evolves a person's grief journey.

33:41 And I mean, like, you know, for my father, like who had survived the genocide, I mean, he still has nightmares. I mean, I could hear him like, you know, having nightmares and it's very present. I mean, sometimes like he will tell me, where he was at in April 17th, 1975, when the Capitol was flushed out and people were forced to go to the countryside. And he was very vivid about it. And for folks who have been in their 80s and 90s, like you hear stories about how well they could recall something, even the minute details, because it was so visceral. And yeah, I remembered Helen Zietz mentioned, and I think her mom, I think after like 50, 60 years, finally told her, what happened and it was just a drop out of a dime i think she said something like her mom basically came to the kitchen said do you want to know my story i'll tell you my story and yeah and like oh okay and this isn't like knowing that helen zia has been a journalist and a writer for a number of years so it really kind of tells you that that some of these stories can pop up out of nowhere but like for you how do you deal with the working with the survivors, but also dealing with the vicarious trauma of it all.

34:56 Because I know that when I've held spaces to hear stories, it overwhelms me tremendously. I think of Iris Chang and what it did to her, you know, having to hear the many stories, doing the intense research on The Rape of Nanking, which is the title of her book. And then I think before she passed She was working on the Bataan Death March. And I'm just like, wow. I mean, the consumption of it is incredibly intense. And I wonder how you are able to handle that. I walk my dog and I go outside to touch grass. Yes.

35:37 I think that's really important, especially in the digital age. Sometimes, you know, we all need our mental health. It's really important. But also, like when I see a story that's like so untold and it disgusts me to my core, I'm like, people need to know about it. I think it drives me very passionately to like tell that story. And so I think that's part of what drives me. I think when you are doing this specific work, especially on the World War II era for your organization, how do you find ways to help it to keep its relevancy, especially when the survivors and the perpetrators have been long gone?

36:21 And what does that look like for the organization, but also for historians and storytellers sharing this? I think history is timeless. And also like getting to understand layers of history is also very important, for example. And I think students are now smarter than ever with Internet. They want to Google what happened in the world. In fact, like last year, we had a group of students from New Mexico who reached out to us to do a documentary on Unit 731. And that really empowered me. And they were like enrolling in National History Day with their documentary.

37:02 And they won first place in New Mexico. And they were telling me that a lot of judges are like historians and history teachers. And they had never heard about this. Um, which was really shocking to me because just thinking about like why they haven't, they heard about it because I lot of way history is told in such a Western centric way, you know, and, um, and so that really empowered me, um, to keep going and like, keep telling these stories because it is making a difference. You know, people are listening and people are like, there are eyeballs on their website. So, yeah.

37:43 I wonder about like, do you find when you look at like current events that are going on, you know, whether it's an ice raids to genocides are happening in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and and Hawaii and the current struggles that we see. Do you find ways or do folks who are invested in that particular work, World War II and prior, do you find yourself having to connect with these groups as a way to inform, but also to show the correlation how all of these atrocities are very much connected to the current day?

38:23 Yeah, I think so. And we cannot learn from history if we don't understand what had happened. And I also am so skeptical about how we tell history as well, because like I said, it's so Western-centric in a way. And I'm pretty sure you've seen Ken Burns' documentary of... of the vietnam war about how we could have won like this we could have won like that but at the end of the day it almost feels like it's propaganda you know and you leave the humanization out of it that that is the thing that always drives me insane for a lack of a better term here like the fact that like Asian people are seen as just pawns, as just like people that are in the way or as seen as the enemy.

39:15 And this does not help with how people feel about Asian people in America because it creates a narrative that we're the villains and that we are the troublemakers. And obviously we saw that with the COVID-19 era. And so I think that, yeah, it does matter. I mean, the way we tell history really does matter, but also, Kathleen Berkenshaw, a good friend of mine, wrote about, she's the daughter of a survivor of the, not Pearl Harbor, the Hiroshima bombing, the atomic bomb. And her daughter basically said, when they were learning about that particular era, the kids were fascinated by the mushroom clouds.

39:57 And Kathleen decided to write a book about about her mom's story and also to try to help humanize the people that went through that particular period. Sudako and the Thousand Cranes really was very humanizing of a story of what was going through. And can I get back to Ken Burns also? Like Ken Burns, I don't feel like he understands Asian people. He really does not. And so it's like this whitewashing of history, telling through the Western lens. And that always, you know, really gets on my nerves.

40:38 It's... And then it's like eight episodes later, I'm like, what are you trying to say, dude? He's like, we could have won this way. It's almost like it's just a way for him to conquer the Asian people. And it's like a way to justify why America had to fight. It's insane. It's an insane narrative. Have you watched the eight parts? I did not watch all eight parts of it. I think I would be... I had read so much think pieces on it already, because I will say this. I get very, very skeptical and I have a red flag when any Westerners do documentaries about stories that they had never lived through and are coming from a white lens.

41:28 And so that is something that I have a lot of resistance to in my work because I feel that we should be the ones telling these stories because we are the stewards of that history. And we are the ones that were impacted or our ancestors were impacted by it. So I hold to that very tightly. I mean, the way I know you do. But yeah, I think knowing about Ken Burns' reputation, it's very nationalistic. It's very patriarchal. And I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of done with this toxic male vibes that he brings. Yeah, I'm not there for that. So... Yeah, the Ken Burns free zone here.

42:10 So yeah, I think it's a very interesting way to see how we intersect this history to today's events and how America became America that it is today. I mean, we think of the many wonderful things that we see from President Obama to Martin Luther King, the things that we glorify, but then we still forget that there's been a lot of like hidden violence that have been, um, and that that onto marginalized communities and, and how our actions abroad, you know, like whether it's Iraq, Afghanistan and, um, to what has happened in Asia.

42:56 Um, I think it really does tell you about the history that it can't, that we inherited and how it's still being used today. Um, I am wondering when you are continuing to create more awareness about this history, what other outlets have you been able to work on or what other platforms or what other ways do you try to work with maybe the school districts? And I know that certain states like Illinois past the Asian American History, the TEACH Act, I believe.

43:38 I'm curious about what that looks like now in terms of trying to find ways to create dialogue. Yeah, so students reach out to us. We also have lesson plans that we allow teachers to use, and we try to make it as frictionless as possible because teachers are already underpaid and I don't want them to dive into like two hours of research. That's already too much, you know, so it's like easy, painless. lesson plans that they can just download and they can do it we get like five stars reviews um and yeah and so and obviously we're also on social media and youtube um just to have this kind of dialogue and there are actually quite surprisingly or not so surprisingly for you know 50 um for the last like i don't know a lot of posts like there's i mean it happened 80 years ago and people are still like denying it and still feel so strongly to like pop some nasty comments into our posts which is crazy to me it's just like it's exhausting work i mean it's it used to be it used to scare me now i'm just like let me just double down like Yeah, I think that's all we can do.

44:58 I mean, there's also farm bots that are being created too. I mean, we live in this really weird, I call it techno, I mean, some people call it techno fascism, the way it's going because the way like, you know, the government's been trying to control algorithms and the access and privacy issues, which is a whole nother topic. But I wonder about like the current federal government in terms of funding, especially nonprofits such as yours. And how do you navigate to make sure that this work stays afloat and that the historical documentation is still preserved? Because, yeah, I mean, like as a person who's been in nonprofit and development work, It is a very scary time when you're seeing funding getting cut, corporate sponsors are playing back, individual donors who have been donating for years, they're starting to have to cut back because, you know, financial...

45:54 Yeah, it's actually quite scary for us, too. We depend a lot of, like, individual donors, so if your listeners want, they can feel free to contribute and donate. And, yeah, it's scary because, you know, with historical truth, you don't know whose tail you're going to step on. People don't want to hear about, you know, true things that are actually happening. that happened you know it's um it's very scary to think that when you look at the current day of Nanking like and you know the Philippines and what scars do you still see that exist for the remaining survivors, but also for the people that have had parents or grandparents that went through it?

46:45 What have you observed so far from places like... Yeah, so in South Korea, they're still protesting every Wednesday in front of Japanese embassy about comfort women. And I think that kind of scar, this kind of historical scar is very it could be just prevented if you know Japan acknowledged what they had done you know not stop going to Yasukuni shrine maybe or like you know but it's not happening um and so I think that this kind of historical scar between Japan and the neighbors I don't think it's like a sustainable thing I mean what do you think like I don't know if I have the answer to that part too and also one place that I forgot to mention was Taiwan because Taiwan also had to deal with Japanese occupation but also its current mess.

47:47 It's all very complicated and it's not something that we understand from if you just watch U.S. media you have no idea what's going on you think that Japan and Korea are like one country Right. Exactly. Yeah. And what do you also look to do for this year or for the organization? What do you hope to work on for this year moving into the future? with this word gosh sorry about that for uh youtube video we have because a lot of the archive documents not a lot of people have the patience to read through documents and whatnot we also hope to work more with like lesson plans and with teachers and of course that could only be you know help uh if we get more funding also so we're applying for a few more grants and trying to get more funding to sustain us to do actually this like this work that we're doing like there's no other non-profit that's currently doing what we're doing I was hoping for you know other non-profits to do it but then it doesn't exist so yeah and so yeah that's my plan for this year Yeah.

49:05 And what would you say to someone that is interested in opening up a story, let's say for a kid or an adult child to talk to their parents about what happened during Vietnam or Iraq or... where they had to escape you know genocide or state sanctioned violence yeah my mom actually escaped through saigon um and it's interesting because um and you know talk to them about like oh what's your childhood like you know like if you uh it's interesting too because um certain things are going to like bring them back like certain foods and like then they would be like oh yeah when i was a kid i had like nine cats and then i forgot what happened to them and then you're like oh what happened you know so kind of go in with like the most basic like topic first so don't try to like go in there and try to like extract you information from them, right?

50:09 Because, like, if you're trying to extract, you're doing too much. So, like, make it, like, for example, how we, how Stacey interviewed a lot of these Filipino stories in the Central Coast was from, like, watching, like, television with these elders and then talk about, like, oh, what's happening in the television? And then it's like, oh, how, what were you doing when you were that age? And like, you know, have a conversation. Yeah. And where can people find your work? Pacificatrocities.org. And we're also on YouTube Pacific Front Untold. And also, maybe a last question to hopefully go on a good note.

50:52 What are you most encouraged by? I know you've already touched on it, but what are you most encouraged by when you hear from survivors in the past, but also what you're also seeing with young people? in the way they have been... Yeah, I actually see... Yeah, I actually see that young people, they think in a way that is not, like, mainstream media influenced. And so they're more curious and more independently thinking than, you know, some of the older generation. And I think that's a good thing. They are able to explore more independently about, like...

51:33 what had happened like a lot of these things they're not going to tell you in the high in the high school setting like you have to do your independent research and a lot of um like students reach out to me because they were doing their independent research and like and so i feel like that's very empowering for me and uh that's there's hope Yeah, I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to be on my show and to really give like this brief deep dive about this part of history in Asian American and also really in Asian history, because I do think that that is a part of that era that never gets the light that it deserves.

52:15 And And we see the consequences when you don't know the history and what that can lead to and how it affects the current day. And I also hope that people can start to open dialogue and create platforms, whether it's on social media or sub-stock, blogging. or any kind of form that really shows our history. Because I think that we are in a position to share stories that we don't have to rely on traditional media outlets and old white man researchers, you know, taking up the spaces there. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And people that are just completely irrelevant to this conversation. But I do hope that people are inspired to learn more history.

53:00 And I hope that that activates ways in which good change can really come about. So thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.