THROWBACK THURSDAY, all the way back to December, 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor. I dont know about you but I hated U.S. history class as a kid. Although I did alright in regurgitating facts and figures to get As and Bs (pardon the humblebrag), everything in the textbooks was dead to me, irrelevant. Dry stories written by old men that had little in common with me and my American classmates growing up in Vallejo, California. Maybe thats why it wasnt real for us, because it wasnt for us, by us (FUBU)? I mean, some of us had grandpas and granduncles and older dads in the U.S. military that fought in wars and lived to tell the tales, but most didnt tell us, or we didnt listen, or both. Many of us were second and third generation immigrants doing our best to assimilate and become fully American so that we could compete with the rest of the *real* American kids. Somewhere along the way our parents, grandparents, and us kids made an invisible pact to forget the past lest it become a distraction from speaking proper English or *gasp* getting good grades for college and getting a good job. Somewhere along the way we learned to forget. Somewhere along the way we learned that our stories didnt matter as much as the ones in the textbooks. The *right* answers. Fast forward a few years with the same families. Our parents and grandparents, the baby boomer generation, form the backbone of the American economy as productive members of the corporate world. As contributors to industry, the U.S. military, education, medicine. Us kids reap the benefits of growing up low, then lower-middle, then middle, and for the lucky ones, upper-middle class Americans. We want our MTV!, and we get it, along with HBO and disposable income for a day at the movies. We see Saving Private Ryan in the theater, weaned on years of watching Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks (an east bay area kid like us) so we know *they* are cool. Were unconsciously like, Damn, history is kinda dope. Lets learn more. And we do. Our families have cable now! We watch Band of Brothers on HBO, The Pacific, The Great Raid (we hear James Franco is in it with some Filipina chick--we might be related and therefore famous by association), start playing Call of Duty and Medal of Honor on Playstation, and now it all starts to make sense. Its real for us now, even though weve long separated from our U.S. history classes. Suddenly we want SO BAD to hear the stories our parents and grandparents locked away in that invisible box/pact we agreed never to open. We dance around them and check Google and the library, only to find more dead ends and dry textbooks without the stories and history were looking for. The ones we vaguely remember grandpa and grandma mentioning (and us ignoring) while playing video games or watching Saved by the Bell reruns. Yeah. Uh-huh. Fast forward a few years more, and grandpa and grandma pass away. Most of us didnt get to ask them what it was like living in 1941 when the Japanese bombed the U.S. bases in the Philippines they were working at, the same day as Pearl Harbor. We only knew Pearl Harbor from Ben Afflecks POV. We had no idea Pearl Harbor was part of a bigger picture of simultaneous attacks in the Pacific that included the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore and other U.S. jump-offs. We think, Maybe I can ask my homies grandpa. I remember he was a vet. He should have some stories only to find out he passed away too. As invincible kids, we forget that particular answer on our test, on everyones test. Old people die... Last week my cousin Rodney Cajudo launched a Kickstarter campaign: The Valor Project: World War II Stories from the Philippines. Because of his huge heart and compassion for telling the stories of grandpas and grandmas and aunts and uncles and parents that will never be interviewed by the Steven Spielbergs and Tom Hanks of the world. If youre still reading this, you realize how important it is to me to tell these stories, to record them in the mediums we know and love, before they are lost forever. Philippine culture and storytelling has always been an oral tradition, and oral traditions get lost when the dominant culture requires things to be written down in textbook form or spun into movies or documentaries or novels. Its up to us second and third generation American kids that *do* know how to write, make movies, write novels, to tell the stories of the grandparent WWII veterans still alive. Theres not that many left and more pass away each year thinking their stories, their history, their contribution--doesnt matter as much as the ones we read in textbooks. That was the point of us getting cable TV and Playstation war games, right? Lets show our grandparents how cool we think they are. Lets get their stories on tape. Check out Rodneys Kickstarter and give what you can to make it happen. And please pass this on if youre moved to do so. THANK YOU! kck.st/1dpKqW6 #tbt #throwbackthursday #thevalorproject
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 22:18:17 +0000
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