Introduction

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.