The Garfield High School (Seattle) Oral History project.

This is a collection of interviews with people about their personal experiences with events of worldwide historical significance since the end of World War 2. They were done by Garfield 10th grade A.P. World History students as end-of-year oral history research projects.

We've published these projects to the web because they are impressive and deserve to be seen more widely than just in our history class. We invite you to read a few. The label cloud can give you a sense of what topics are represented. You can search for a specific project by student name or topic, or search on topics and key words that interest you. Comments are welcome, of course.

Label Cloud

Search the interview collection - for topics or student

Chinese Civil War, Helen Leung

The first person I interviewed was my grandfather. He is 90 years old. I am interviewing him because he was a KMT soldier in the Winter Offensive of 1947 in Northeast China; he was in the city of Changchun, China. He was twenty seven years old at that time. The second person I am interviewing is my great uncle. He is 83 years old. He was a CPC soldier during the Summer Offensive of 1947 in Northeast China; he was in the city of Siping. He was 20 years old at the time. The third person I interviewed was my grandmother. She is 78 years old. She was just an innocent civilian. She was in the city of Shenyang when it was under attack, and was 15 at the time. My main focus is to understand their situation living through the Cold War. Next, you will be able to hear about their experiences.

Interview 1: KMT soldier

I wanted our country to be smart, advanced. Like the westerners. Chiang Kai-Shek knew what he was doing, where he was going with those ideas. To do good. To do good for our country. That’s more than I can say for Mao Zedong, however. Thank god the bastard’s dead. He picked on us peasants, because he knew we’d be too uneducated to know any better. Talking about how he grew up poor, so that he could relate to us, gain our trust. Let me tell you. I was never that stupid, naïve, kid to be tricked by Mao Zedong. I had dreams growing up. I was ambitious. Unlike all the other kids I our village, I knew I wasn’t about to be an old guy who’d worked on a farm his life. I told myself I was gonna be somebody. Someone rich. And no. I wasn’t a self hater. I knew where I came from, can’t say I’m proud of it, but I will tell you I’ve never lied about it. Not once. I just think that the people who have money deserve what they have, and if you got to work at it to get what you want, then so be it. I opposed of him attempting to make us all equal. Us peasants didn’t deserve any land. Sounds ridiculous even thinking about it. Now how wrong would that be if a poor man owned his own land? Ha. Mao Zedong and all of his equality crap. Oh please. I kept thinking “am I the only one in this whole country not dumb enough to buy that?” he was always going on about that crap. That’s why I hated him. He was trying to take my dreams away. Not just me. Anyone. Anyone who actually wanted a real life, with a real house, and a real car. And one day, I had enough, and decided I’d join the KMT. I was not going to sit around all day, just watch as Mao Zedong took over our country. Yes, I knew the disadvantages in me joining. I wasn’t scared though, to be completely honest. I didn’t know what to be scared of. What death? That didn’t scare me. Where I come from, you might as well be dead rather than living. I was just some regular old farm boy. I barely got any food, just some rice every night. Yeah, I had nothing to lose joining that army. I learned to shoot, to stab, to fight. Every time we trained, our leaders would yell. Stab him, stab him like you would a commie. When I first got there, I thought it wouldn’t be possible to hate them anymore than I did. But I was wrong. I was enraged everyday. One bad thing about that army though, you’re always tired. Even more so than when I was working on my farm. I still remember that day. It was a hot, humid, summer day. We got orders to get rid of these guys, these stupid commies, south of the Songhua river. It would be my first battle. Now I’m telling you, I was very excited. This is what they’ve been breathing down out backs for all these months, haven’t they? I felt like jumping up and down, maybe writing a letter. Tell my father and my mother that their little boy is finally gonna get some action. Now they didn’t mind me going. I was one of five sons. They could afford to lose one. And besides, I was the one without kids, I didn’t really have any meaning to my life at that point. That was until that day. I learned I could no longer be that carefree young man. Once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. There’s no looking back. What I saw that day made me a man. We were hunched down on the ground for hours, and my best friend Li and I were talking about how we have never done anything like this, and might just make it a career. We were waiting for the Han. Those guys were taking forever. The orders were to wait for them, then attack. But it was too late. They were too late. The commies started shooting, and before I could tell Li not to worry, that I had his back out there, a bullet grazed him right in the chest. Those bastards were shooting from a distance, and it was their territory. They knew it so much better than us. We could barely see them. We’d get a lucky one every here and there, but compared to how they were shooting, it wasn’t enough for us to last an hour without the Hans. Li was still breathing, but shaking. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, I had never seen a wounded man before. All he was doing was groaning. And eventually, it stopped. I felt tears drip down my cheek as I brushed his eyes closed.

Interview 2: CPC Soldier

I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Mao was a great leader. I love my country so much that I would never leave it. That’s why I’m still here. Being part of the CPC. Can’t say I loved it, but can’t say I hated it either. I was damn proud. I’ll tell you that. I was proud to support the greatest leader that ever lived. It’s not none of that Chiang Kai-Shek crap. He was a sissy and the whole country knew it. He had no idea what to do with the country. Useless piece of crap. Yeah. That sick bastard doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He didn’t care about us. The people. Mao Zedong did. He listened to us. He gave us a voice. I was just any old poor farm boy, headed no where. But because of Mao Zedong, we didn’t have to feel that anymore. We could feel equal. Equal to the rich. It didn’t matter to me that I wasn’t one of them, one of the wealthy. I was proud to be who I was, thanks to Mao Zedong. Someone who we could listen to, who listened to us in return, someone who cared, who could relate. He knew what it was like growing up like that. So yeah, I was kinda young when I joined CPC, but hey, those are Mao Zedong’s favorites. He says the younger the better. More adolescent brains, I guess. I didn’t fight for him because I loved what he was doing for us. Yes, that too. However, no, it was because that’s what I believed in now. Everything Mao Zedong said was amazing. He knew what he was talking about, and he knew where he was going with his ideas. I guess you could ay I worshipped him. Heck, who didn’t? When I first joined, I was quite shocked to see that not everyone was patriotic as I was. Well sure, everyone had their individual amounts of patriotism in them, but they just all seemed like dogs. A couple days later, I found out why. They worked us like dogs, I didn’t feel like I was in an army. I felt like I was in a guerilla group. It was exhausting. But I could take it. You had to. Everyday, they pushed you. Pushed you until you broke. But I knew that was the way that it had to be done. That was the only way we would be tough enough. To fight Chiang Kai-Shek and his little group of sissies. I knew that no matter what happened to me, that we were gonna win this war. We have the heart, Mao, he has the heart. The heart to care for the people. You never saw Chiang Kai-Shek do that, have you? That’s right you haven’t. Nobody has. We were given a mission out on the river to attack the nationalists between Shenyang, and Changchun. It was a freezing cold day. Northeastern china always had the worst temperatures during the summer. I was so cold I couldn’t feel my feet, couldn’t feel my fingers. Our plan was to use the frozen rivers to our advantage, but being out there? That didn’t seem much of an advantage to me. When I heard the first gunshot, I tried to pull the trigger, fire back, but I couldn’t my hands could not have been moved. I waited five minutes. Still cold. It felt like it was getting colder. I saw a couple of my guys wounded. But that would just be the beginning. There would be more blood, more deaths, but I was prepared. Us CPC. We knew what we had to do.

Interview 3: innocent civilian girl

I was braiding my hair for school that morning. I put on my uniform, and made my bed. It was the same day as any day. The sky was pretty, but the town was not the same today. As I stepped outside to walk to school, I saw people yelling, and screaming, and running. I couldn’t help but thinking “Why?” as I got to school, many of my friends were crying. So many of their faces were soaked in tears, I couldn’t even make out what they were saying. “Oh no! Are they getting close? Are they?” I heard someone scream. I grabbed my friend Jing Li. “What’s happening?” I yelled. “They’re coming!” she responded. “Who’s they?” I screamed. “The commies! she shouted. I had only ever vaguely hear of them. Never much detail. But I knew one thing, they were scary. They scared me. Severely. I was distraught. I never knew the war would hit where I lived. I mean I lived in the smallest town in Siping. Why would they ever come to this tiny, pea sized town. There was absolutely nothing here for them. I prayed. I prayed a lot. I just wanted it to be over. I hoped one day that maybe God would be able to hear me. Help me help this whole country. I just hope that day isn’t too late. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that I couldn’t have stayed there. Apparently, they had just started to invade, taking over our base here in Siping. Why did this have to happen, I thought. I imagined our nation a couple years from now, 20 years from now. I was scared but more so confused. Hundreds of things were running through my head, such as my family. I didn’t even know where my family was. Jing Li grabbed my arm and told me to run. We ran together all the way to the safe side of the town. Looking back on it, I really wish I had never seen a thing. Not a single dead body, not a single limb, and most of all, no blood. It’s not the blood that was shed from the body, it was the heart of the whole town that had died. I looked over at Jing Li, and she kept telling me to run, but I all I wanted to do was lay next to the girl laying on the ground holding her stuffed animal.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive

About this project

We are Jerry N-K's 10th grade AP World History students, at Seattle Garfield High School.