It seems like there is a fundamental human instinct
that drives us to pursue wholeness. Would you agree with me? Tangibly and
intangibly, that is. We fill empty gas tanks and we fix broken legs. We embark on
journeys to find fulfillment. We seek for things and people fill that void in
our hearts that we so often mull over. We perceive incompleteness to be
undesirable.
It seems to me that it is the same with memory. Have
you thought about why you indulge in memories? Don’t you remember because it’s
the only thing you have left of moments that are long gone? I find myself
landing in conversations with long-time friends where we’d reminiscence,
savoring times of the past. Yet, if memory is solely for the purpose of
savoring a lost moment, what good does it do except for temporal contentment?
I say that memory is for the future. No, memory is
not just of the past. Memory drives us to move forward, to make change, to
recreate and to transform. This is why we remember. We remember for the sake of
better days.
Today, I explore memory in the larger scheme of historical
archiving. While truth-making powers in our society today denounce memory as an
outsider to official archival history, how much do these truth-making powers
know of the human experience? In elementary school, I read in my history
textbook about the Japanese invasion in Singapore. I looked at photos, memorized
the dates, and learned the number of casualties. But at home, I listened to my
grandmother grimly describe the faces of the soldiers as they tortured her
neighbors. What I know of the Japanese invasion in Singapore is not the number
of casualties. All I remember is the face of my grandmother’s neighborhood when
the Japanese soldier forced a spouting water hose down his throat to bloat him
to death.
If history is no more accurate in one account than
the other, why is memory often forgotten from historical archiving?
Take a moment to think about this.
I want you to meet Jean Mishima.
