Eight decades have passed since the end of World War II. The generations who experienced the war are also passing away, and their memories may die along with them. To help preserve the reality of life during wartime, this website aims to collect the testimony of those who lived through the war years. While secondary sources are useful to learn the larger historical context, primary documents, both oral and written, are invaluable for a full understanding of the war at the level of each individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each of the 177 individual posts in this website is the text of an interview with a survivor of World War II, describing his or her personal experiences. Each interview was conducted by a Grade 11 student, usually 16 years old. These took place during the years from 1984 to 2020, including 177 students who graduated between 1985 and 2022. Students chose to present the interview results in a question-and-answer format or as continuous narrative, either first-person or third-person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aside from the views expressed by the interview subjects themselves, and reactions by the student interviewers, the content of each post is completely unfiltered. No commentary or analysis is included, nor any historical context. These are the voices of eyewitnesses, speaking to us from the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These transcribed interviews are a precious historical resource, especially since the great majority of the interview subjects have already died. Sadly, some of the interviewers have also died in the intervening decades since they were high school students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These interviews originated as a class assignment for a course in Japanese History, part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme at Saint Maur International School in Yokohama, Japan. Founded in 1872, Saint Maur is the oldest international school in Asia. Its student body is multilingual and multicultural, representing over forty nationalities (including many students with multiple citizenships). English is the main teaching language of the school, although all students also study Japanese and either French or Spanish. The approach of the IB History curriculum is designed to help students understand past events within a global context, not through a narrow national perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The interview subjects whom students chose all had first-hand knowledge of the years of continuous conflict with China and the West. Often called the Fifteen-Year War, this began in September 1931 with Japan\u2019s invasion of Manchuria and continued through surrender to the United States and its allies in September 1945. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interview subjects described their experiences during one or more of these historical periods:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Students chose their interview subjects on their own. They included many nationalities, and interviews were conducted in a variety of languages. All of these were translated into English by the students themselves. They have been lightly edited for clarity and accuracy and to resolve confusion, factual incongruity, or contradictions, but there have been no substantive alterations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The original text of each interview is preserved in the Archives of Saint Maur International School. They have all been transcribed and digitized by Glenn Scoggins, a former History teacher at Saint Maur who now helps to organize the Archives. Although the use of Artificial Intelligence would have made this process easier and faster, no AI tools were used in the creation of this website. (Needless to say, AI was not an option when students began these interviews over four decades ago. Technology consisted of a typewriter and sometimes a cassette tape recorder.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The website has been made possible by the invaluable guidance of Jamie Payne, head of Computer Science at Saint Maur. Without his expertise and organization, the interviews would have existed only on dusty yellowing paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All participants, including the students and their interview subjects, were asked for their permission for the transcribed interviews to be preserved and used for historical research. In some cases, for reasons unique to each case, permission was withheld. Those interviews were immediately returned to students without question, not kept in the database, and do not appear in this website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, if any of the former Saint Maur students, or those whom they interviewed, object for any reason to the inclusion of their interviews in this website, please contact the editor, Glenn Scoggins, by email at steadfast1872 [at] gmail [dot] com. Those interviews will be removed promptly. Similarly, if the website contains any factual errors, they will be corrected immediately after contacting the editor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This website also includes a comprehensive Index<\/strong>, grouping the interviews in order of the student\u2019s Saint Maur graduation year and the year when the interview took place, with an individual student code for each interviewer. In the Index and at the top of each transcribed interview, the student\u2019s name, graduation year, and, whenever possible, the interview subject\u2019s name, relationship, and birth year are included, although this information is often absent, unclear, or estimated. As described in the following section, the locations where the events described took place are also listed in the Index and at the top of each interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In many cases, the nationality, ethnicity, or heritage of the student interviewers included countries other than (or in addition to) Japan. These are indicated in the individual student code, which precedes the student name at the top of each interview and is included in the Index. These abbreviations are used:<\/p>\n\n\n\n