From Memory to Oral History

*This is a blending of previously published posts.*

In the top drawer of my parents' dresser, my dad keeps souvenirs of his time in Vietnam. When we were kids, we loved the money from Taiwan and the yellowed letters. We weren't so interested in the little medal in the black box. He'd tell us, time and again, to stay out of his stuff. But Daddy was a big pushover and we couldn't resist the allure of that treasure.

When I got older, I realized the medal was a Purple Heart. He'd been a Radio Telephone Operator and had gotten shot in his neck and shoulder. We used to trace the scars--not finely or precisely done, they resemble railroad tracks. They are firm lines that rise up from his skin, the result of an infection and keloids.


I moved the Purple Heart from the drawer and into my mom's china cabinet, a display that matches nothing else in there. "Why'd you do that?" he asked. "Because I don't think you should keep it buried," was my snappy answer. "Mm-hmm. Except you don't tell me what to do. I'm your father; you're not my mother," he said. But he left it alone.

My dad doesn't talk about VietNam. He used to, he says, when he was young. But then people would ask him things like, "Did you kill anybody? What is that like?" And he'd get so angry, so offended, that he thought it was better just to make the subject taboo.

So there are only three occasions on which I've been able to get a little bit of his story. I interviewed him once for a Vietnam and Watergate class I took while working on my Master's. Basically, I just let him talk. My professor, himself a VietNam vet, found the transcript riveting. My dad has a way with words that can keep you enthralled. I remember that my professor smiled and repeated my dad's words about arriving "in country." "I haven't heard that in a while," he said.

The second time was for a colleague [in graduate school] whose dissertation was about the war. He wanted to know more of my dad's story. Again, my dad opened up a little. "An RTO?" my colleague said, when I shared my dad's memories. "He had a dangerous job."

All I could say was, "Really?"

"You have to keep his story, elle," he told me. "Whenever, however he wants to tell it."

Finally, I went to DC a couple of years ago. My dad has never been to the VietNam memorial. I asked him if there were names he'd like me to shade. He thought for a while and then gave me three. One of them included an old guy that they'd looked up to. By old, my dad meant 27. So I got there, with my friend John, without paper or pencil (didn't think to bring it). In my purse, I had an envelope, that I tore open, and a golf pencil. We looked in that book, found the sections of the wall, got down on our knees and shaded the names. When I went to Louisiana a few weeks later, I presented it to my dad sheepishly. "I didn't have paper," I said. "It's okay," he said rubbing his thumbs over the shadings. "It's okay." Still, I felt badly.

When my parents moved last winter, my sister and I helped pack an old dresser while my dad supervised. There, in the top, was the money and the letters. And inside a Ziploc bag, was the envelope. "Daddy!" I said, surprised. It was his turn to look sheepish. "Aw, Ugly," he said, "I told you it was okay."

Since I first wrote this post for Veteran's Day in 2006, my father has mentioned his time in SouthEast Asia to me one other time, after hearing "Taps" on youtube, an experience that was triggering for him.

Upon hearing it, he said, "That is a sad, sad song."

I asked him was it only played at funerals.

"Oh, no. Sometimes when you get back from a battle, they play it in honor of those who died. It's especially hard on you when it's a good friend," he explained.

"I got so very tired of hearing that song in Vietnam."

Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women

Has anyone seen the film Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson? Do you know where I can get a copy? My computer has labeled her site as "dangerous to your computer" and won't let me in. Plus, given my computer issues, I am hesitant to do so.

On preliminary search, I see that the book is available, but not the film at places like Amazon. My PBS search--PBS aired the film--is proving fruitless (of course, I don't know how to find anything at PBS--I stumble upon stuff there).

I found this website, which lists the price of the film as $265 which definitely means it goes on my list of "films to ask the department to buy," but I wanted the opinions of people who might have seen it first.

I've never thought about it, but given my fascination with the Civil War home front, the exploitation of women during WWII, all aspects of the Vietnam War, how I think so often about the stories from The Greatest Silence, and what is being revealed, piece by piece, about the abuse of women in Iraq, I think I'd like to develop a class on women and war.

My Thoughts on The Greatest Silence and Rape in the Congo

Watching The Greatest Silence created a dilemma for me: it was both so difficult to watch and impossible to turn away from it. When Lisa Jackson mused that, for many of the survivors whom she filmed at one meeting, this would be the first time their stories were heard outside the meeting room, I was struck not only by how sad and how frustrating that was, but how true.

There are moments, themes from that film that stick with me. First, as An Anxious Black Woman pointed out:

there are TWO kinds of rapists lurking in the shadows (or boldfacedly emerging to terrorize the nation) of the Congo - the local soldiers and multinational corporations. So, these gang rapists - working in SOLIDARITY, I might add! - are perpetuating the violence.

Corporations take untold millions of dollars of natural resources from the Congo--a fact Chris Clarke wrote about a year ago.* Competition over these resources fuels the ongoing war with the catastrophic results on which Jackson focuses.

Then, there were Jackson's chilling interviews with the rapists. On the surface, they described their violent acts in terms of physiological need, portraying rape as a "natural" outcome--what happens when men have been in the bush too long without sex. Jackson attempted to ask them if the rapes were about power and sex. The interpreter dismissed her question, telling her that these men could not understand what she was asking. But I think he was wrong. The more the soldiers talked, the more it became obvious that they very much understood the power dynamic. They raped, some said, because they were ordered to do so. They made women and children suffer because they had suffered. Repeatedly, they said, "If she refuses, then I must..." and one of the soldiers offered an explanation based on men's superiority to women. One of the most chilling statements in that film began with, "Yes, she's a human being, too, but-" Because what follows is the implication that "her" humanity is somehow less than "his."

The nature of the rapes as well--the violent attacks with sticks and razors and hot coals that destroy women's bladders/urinary tracts and their uteruses--points to the fact that soldiers understand that they are waging a total war, that the murder and rape of women and children can destroy "enemy" nations. That is not to dismiss the purported "allies" who rape as well--the UN peacekeepers and the soldiers from these women's own communities, for example.

And so the stories that emerge from the film are disturbing. The women who are isolated from their families and communities because they have been "shamed" and because they can no longer control some bodily functions. The young woman who named her daughter "Lumiere," French for "light." When Jackson tried to grasp some triumph from that name--"She is your light?" she asked the young woman--she is told solemnly "No, I was obliged to accept her." The lack of adequate medical and emotional care--the clearly overwhelmed Panzi Hospital, for example. The dedicated Officer Honorine who reveals the overwhelming nature of her work--she is the only officer for child protection and for investigating crimes of sexual violence.

And the privileged, Western feminist in me railed at the fact that, for many of these women, their only hope is to find a man who will "accept" and help them. They are largely illiterate and lack paid workforce skills. To me, it seemed, so much of their lives was determined by their encounters and relationships with men. That is an analysis, of course, that places my feelings at the center, and so it is sadly insufficient and unfair.

A few days ago, Professor Black Woman wrote that "women's bodies are part of the battleground in wars" and, in that sense at least**, the rape epidemic in the Congo was not exceptional but part of a worldwide pattern. Anxious Black Woman expounded upon that today as she remembered

those Carib, Arawak, Aztec, Mayan, Creek, Cherokee, Iroquois, Inuit, Kanaka Maoli, Warai, and Jingili women whose genitalia were routinely cut out of them and placed on sticks, spears, and hats for proud exhibition. I think of the Khoisan woman from South Africa, Saartjie Baartman, whose genitalia was also placed on proud exhibition - not on a spear, but in a scientific bell jar. I think of imperialism and racism, and how both ideologies depended upon the institution of misogyny to maintain supremacy. I think of this long, long, awfully long history of women in general - and women of color especially - who are often targeted for the most brutal forms of violence and then enveloped in silence so that we dare not dwell on the traumatic memories or, worse, on the traumatic future that is surely set for our daughters.

In recounting how "disturbing" these stories are, I do not mean to discount the fact that these women survived and that spirit of survival comes through loud and clear. I remember how proud one woman was that, after surgery to repair her fistula, she was no longer wetting the bed. In that meeting that I mentioned initially, the nun who works with survivors opined that together, they could help each other, that speaking out, sharing their stories could ease the trauma, foster a sense of connectedness. Jackson filmed survivors learning trades and nurturing their children and tending their gardens.***

She also captured them singing. And laughing, a sound she remembered hearing so little of in the Congo.

Further reading (I'll add to these links):

Anxious Black Woman (to whom I owe so much)
Professor Black Woman
Lauren
SheCodes
Melissa
Marcella
Tasha212
Res Publica
Katie (here, too)

Then, there is always the question of what we can do.**** Here's a non-exhaustive list:
Anxious Black Woman challenges us to call out corporate rapists. (She's provided contact information).
Support Women for Women, International.
Support Doctors without Borders.
Support the International Rescue Committee.
Here is a link to the Panzi Hospital.

From the BBC:

The Panzi Hospital (for Victims of Sexual Violence)
8th Community of Pentecostal Churches in Central Africa (CEPAC)
Medical Department.
GENERAL REFERRAL HOSPITAL OF PANZI,
PO Box: 266
BUKAVU
South Kivu Province,
Democratic Republic of Congo

Christian Relief Network
CRN deal regularly with the Panzi Hospital
CRN, Christian Relief Network
(+47) 22 01 07 00
Email: info@crn.no

______________________
*Thanks, Lauren for the link.
**In speaking of Congolese "exceptionality," I say "in that sense" because Melissa's post points me to a WaPo article that suggests that the prevalence of rape in the Congo is, indeed, exceptional.
***Lex has a wonderful post about how tending our gardens also means tending each other--knowing " how to make each other grow."
**** As a teacher, I've been trying to get my post-45 class to make links, to be not-as-clueless as I was about rape and exploitation and war. We talked about "comfort women" in World War II. And when we covered the My Lai massacre, we talked about the rape of Vietnamese women. I did not assign The Greatest Silence, as I had not seen it, but I did recommend that they watch it. A couple of them did and one young woman asked me "Why do you think it happens?" a question that I re-directed to her classmates.

The Greatest Silence

Thank you to Professor Black Woman and an Anxious Black Woman, who both posted about the premiere of The Greatest Silence on HBO tonight. From the website:

Since 1998 a brutal war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Over 4 million people have died. And there are the uncountable casualties: the many tens of thousands of women and girls who have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army.

The world knows nothing of these women. Their stories have never been told. They suffer and die in silence. In The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo these brave women finally speak.

Before the last few years, I had never thought of rape as a weapon of war. I thought of it as something that invariably occurred during war, as part of a larger power struggle, but never as a systematic assault with consequences that affect so many.

I've learned a lot from BfP's posts, many of them archived in the nation/state violence category. Prof BW's analysis, I think, is embodied in her hope that this film:

covers the issues of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war in the Congo not as exceptional or part of a racialized narrative, which has been the way these issues have been presented to date, but rather as part of an increasingly astute understanding of how women’s bodies are part of the battleground in wars around the world. I am looking for this, not to erase the specificity of the violence in the Congo, which is a necessary part of any analysis, but rather to develop a language of addressing sexual violence that deals with its use as a tool of war throughout history and allows us to deal with the specific use against, and experience of, women in any given place.

Historiann talks a bit about the history Prof BW mentions here.

Here is the trailer for the film:



It premieres tonight at 9 PM my time, which is 10 Eastern.

So Timely

Yesterday, while thinking about my junior class trip to the King Center, I went to the Center's website and saw excerpts from Dr. King's sermon, "The Drum Major Instinct." I found the full text in his papers. And there was something so timely about much of the sermon.

For example this southern/labor historian's heart jumped when she read Dr. King's analysis of the wages of whiteness:

The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking—calmly, because they wanted to talk about it.

And then we got down one day to the point—that was the second or third day—to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. [laughter] You're just as poor as Negroes." And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. (Yes) And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you're so poor you can't send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march."

And an encapsulated critique of the U.S. as warmonger:

God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.

And a wonderful sentiment , one that I think shapes the spirituality of people like my mom and Quaker Dave, one that I'm working and struggling to live by:

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. Recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.... (I)t means that everybody can be great.... You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

(somebody's baby) blogging

Quaker Dave has a gift for telling stories through pictures. Check out the post with the title: "Wednesday (somebody's baby) blogging" and pictures like this:

Because that fact gets dismissed.