​Student Reflections
I am Minori Sakai from Kyoto, Japan. I am currently a second-year student at Soka University of America and study International Studies as my concentration. In Vietnam, we witnessed the long-lasting impacts on innocent citizens that the U.S. caused more than 40 years ago. While the Vietnamese official memory emphasizes the victory in the Vietnam war, we learned that Vietnamese citizens had to sacrifice themselves a lot behind the victory from individual memories we collected. Even after the war, many Vietnamese citizens had to experience poverty and sufferings caused by the U.S. atrocities in the war, including the diseases from Agent Orange and numerous mines buried under the soil.
While seeing the Agent Orange victims in the rehabilitation center in Hanoi, I could not help but feel powerless as a student who just visited there to research the memories of the war. However, I realized that one of our missions in this project is to share 'reality' we witnessed and 'memories' we heard from victims in Vietnam and Korea with students in our school and people who visit our website or Instagram. American history education does not teach atrocities the U.S. committed to the Vietnamese civilians; Japanese history textbooks do not talk about Korean and other Asian people's sufferings caused by Imperialist Japan. If our research can provide people with chances to doubt meta-narratives and challenge history their countries have taught them, it would mean the success of our LC project.
​Minori Sakai
My name is Kevin Chen from Zhengzhou, China. I am currently a second-year student at Soka University of America, and my concentration is social behavior science. I am very fortunate to join this learning cluster and visit two countries in two weeks. To be honest, I have never seriously and deeply considered this topic before this LC, and I was quite ignorant of many issues during the Vietnam War and Korean War. During my two weeks of visiting local organizations and people in Hanoi and Seoul, I was moved by so many powerful individual voices.
Personally speaking, I was so shocked by what I have seen at Seodaemun Prison History Hall at Dongnimmun in Seoul. It is a museum and former prison where Korean Independence activists were jailed, tortured and killed under the direction of the Japanese government during Japan’s 35 year colonial rule over the Korean peninsula. In the basement floor of “A Place of Experience,” I put myself into one of the jail cells and soon found out it was so tiny and hard to breath. I could not imagine how desperate and frightening prisoners must have felt one hundred years ago. Coming from a privileged background, I often take my comfortable life for granted. It becomes easy to forget about the people who literally sacrificed themselves to create the democracy, peace and freedom in our today’s lives. I truly hope during my next visit to another country, I will not only see the beautiful scencies, but also learn more history and meet more courageous people.
​Kevin Chen
I am Mika Akiyama, a second-year student from Tokyo, Japan. Through this LC trip to Vietnam and South Korea, I expected to see things that I already know from other perspectives. However, there were so many things that I never heard of, and all of them were eye-opening to me. For example, I didn’t know that the demonstration to demand an apology from the Japanese government for the “comfort women” issue takes place every Wednesday in front of the Japanese embassy. I was shocked to see that young people account for most of the participants in the demonstration, which was very different from Japan, where the young generation doesn’t know or care about this issue. Not only getting an apology from the Japanese government, but demonstrators also asked their government to make an apology to Vietnam for the massacre of Vietnam citizens done by the Korean army in the Vietnam War. Seeing these people’s attitudes, I felt my responsibility as a student who took part in this trip and also a Japanese youth to bring reconciliation for the future of South Korea and Japan.
Mika Akiyama
My name is Lucas Antonio Caceres and I am a second-year student. I am from Bakersfield, California. Growing up from a small town, I had few opportunities to travel outside the United States but with the opportunity to travel to Vietnam and South Korea for this LC, I have had the chance to become immersed in different cultures and learn much more about the Pacific, Korean, and Vietnam wars. However, my education was very biased and leaned towards only the American perspective, which is why I was extremely grateful to travel to Vietnam and Korea in order to gain more additional perspectives regarding the wars and how they are collectively and individually remembered and forgotten by the state. This Learning Cluster has allowed me to view beyond the nationalistic US narrative of fighting for democracy and freedom, as the US often intervenes in wars around the world with imperialist and capitalist intentions, in its own national interest. My questions during this trip have yet to be answered, but I take every single experience and person I spoke with, as an incremental step towards educating myself on these historical issues and to forge my own path to contribute towards a spirit of global peace. I am eternally grateful to all the organizations and scholars we met on this trip, in order for me to question and be critically educated on these topics within East Asia. I believe the best answer that I found is for there to be strong activism from the civil society sector and for scholars and young activists to push for grassroots educational programs that seek to educate the public on these issues of historical and contemporary transgressions and memories, in order to learn from the past and not repeat it. This Learning Cluster has opened my perspectives to strive to work towards peace.
​Lucas Caceres
Hello, my name is Brianna Hanson and I am currently a third-year concentrating in International Relations. I’m from Berryville, Virginia, and had never been outside of the United States before this past fall, when I was able to study abroad in Osaka, Japan. This means that I had received a very American-centric education that was almost entirely devoid of information regarding the three wars we focused on in this Learning Cluster - the Pacific, Vietnam, and Korean wars. Therefore, this Learning Cluster provided me an excellent opportunity to learn about these wars, particularly from the perspectives of the Vietnamese and Korean people. Although it was very cold, I really appreciated being able to observe The Wednesday Demonstration. As someone who does their best to participate in activism here in the United States, it was very interesting to see the parallels as well as differences between typical US demonstrations and at least one example of a South Korean demonstration. I was especially moved by the recognition of South Korea’s own role as a victimizer of the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and the efforts made by the organization which runs The Wednesday Demonstration to apologize. While of course I will always be grateful for the great increase in knowledge this Learning Cluster provided for me, the most valuable thing I gained was a new understanding of how history should be recorded/remembered. I have always taken the side of the victim, and previously that meant that I believed it would be acceptable and perhaps even beneficial for the victimizers’ memories to be forgotten. However, this Learning Cluster challenged that belief by asking me to simply listen to as many memories as possible without judging them based on “truthfulness” or “goodness.” I have come to realize that this is in fact a more helpful way to view things, as memories are subjective.
​Brianna Hanson
Hello, my name is Roseanne. I am a sophomore in Social and Behavioral Sciences. I am absolutely grateful for being a part of 2020 Learning Cluster: Memories of War. Despite being a Vietnamese born and raised, somehow I had also been concealed from the truth by the idolization of Western and East Asian countries as well as the internalized racism among Vietnamese community. However, our visits to the Mine Advisory Group and the Vietnamese Association for Victims of Agent Orange truly exposed the manifestations of the heartbreaking legacies of US oppression. I have now been fully aware of how severe it is for the people of country to go through a long period of crying, losing and bleeding while fighting for national independence, and of the cruel, long-lasting pain as it continues to threaten our lives in the present. These innocent people suffer in silence, without a chance to speak up and demand apologies. The people were hurt, the country was stagnated, and the next generations are still living their lives under the threats of Agent Orange residue and underground munitions. All of those were not by choice, but colonialism. We suffer for the thriving of Imperialist countries, and every step forward in the development of these colonizers has been and will forever be built on the torment of the colonized.
Roseanne Bui
Hello, my name is Pauline and I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. I am currently a freshman at SOKA University and plan on concentrating in humanities or international studies! I mainly applied for this learning cluster because I wanted to explore more of my Vietnamese identity and the history of my people and what they went through. I came in with minimal knowledge about the Korean and Pacific Wars, but left this trip feeling a sense of responsibility and guilt for what the USA has done to Korea. On the other hand, I felt upset learning about the massacre and torture of my people at the hands of American and Korean soldiers. The most shocking part of the trip for me was learning about the Japanese Occupation period in Korea where Koreans were subjected to forced labor and had their culture suppressed, but even more horrifying to learn was the forced sexual slavery system created in order to “prevent” r*pe by soldiers. Korean women, often those who grew up in poverty, were tricked and kidnapped into this system under the guise of a job opportunity. These women were transported to other countries like China, Japan, and the Philippines. Knowing that their lives starting from their youth until their elderly years were stolen from them, my heart felt incredibly heavy and unsettled. The day we visited The House of Sharing and heard Ok-Seon Lee halmoni’s testimony is a day I will never forget. As she lamented over the years and decades that were robbed from her and the time she spent wandering in China as she yearned for home, I was overcome with emotions. Although we had discussions at great length about all of the emotions, pain, and suffering that comes with these forgotten memories, I enjoyed my time abroad and am sincerely grateful for all the kind souls we were able to encounter. I will continue to think about my responsibilities and duties as someone who had the chance to learn these narratives.
Pauline Duong
I am Sweta Shrestha from Nepal. Having completed my high school in Nepal, I had not studied world history, thus, I had little to no knowledge of neither Vietnam or the Korean war. However, this learning cluster introduced me to not only the dominant memories of the war but also the individual and unconventional memories of the war. Apart from many memorable moments during our learning cluster group, a very personal favorite part of this trip, for me, was the opportunity of meeting some of the purest souls. I am grateful to have met Ok Sun Lee halmoni, a former Japanese forced sex slave or ‘comfort woman’, currently fighting for her right to getting an apology officially from the Japanese government. She, in her 90s, has the strongest willpower and motivation to stand up for herself and other victims. Her love for life, truth, and righteousness inspired me. Similarly, another halmoni I met randomly during our trip to Busan made me believe in humanity. I will forever remember her kind words and actions towards me. She made me realize, how little of time one actually needs to leave a beautiful mark on someone’s life. Meeting both halnonies made my trip even memorable. They were beautiful, both inside and out.
Sweta Shrestha
I’m Annabelle Cook, a second-year from Los Angeles. What first attracted me to this Learning Cluster and its topic was the fact that it was strange to me knowing I had family affected by the Pacific War and Korean War, but also participated in the Vietnam War, and yet I still knew nothing about it. Being in the United States, we tended to have a Eurocentric approach, meaning wars/parts of wars that centered around Asia usually were not addressed in history books. By actually traveling to North Vietnam and South Korea, I saw how the aftermath of the war still affects each country, with victims on both sides still trying to achieve reparations. Our Learning Cluster went to visit the Seodaemun Prison in South Korea, which had been converted into a museum. In the bottom floor of one of the buildings was a chamber that explained torture methods, with wax figures and photographs showing what the prisoners endured. There was also a pair of young children walking through the exhibit, and I could not help but notice that children were always present in the places our Learning Cluster visited, despite the grim topic at hand. After all, change and reconciliation cannot happen if ignorance persists. South Korea must continuously teach the painful memories created during the Pacific War to the younger generation, or else the injustices committed during wartime will be forgotten like so many other stories. We can’t afford to let these memories be discarded, and I found that our generation has such a huge responsibility to achieve reconciliation.
Annabelle Cook
My name is Jaden Kim, and I am a 2nd-year student from Korea. This learning cluster, “Memories of War and the Quest of Peace in Eastern Asia,” allowed me to look towards the parts of history that were neglected and buried face to face, as I traveled to Vietnam and Korea. It was full of joy, acknowledgment, and embarrassment. I realized I am heavily American-influenced as a Korean who received education in America after middle school. I did not have a chance to view history from a different point of view, as both Korea and America’s culture considered America as the savior and the protector of peace and democracy. Even though in college, I was finally able to access the view of the minorities, it was mostly through books or the media. However, visiting the victims and the family of victims both in Korea and Vietnam was a new, unexpected experience. I was never educated about the massacre of Vietnamese civilians from Korean soldiers. I wanted to know why Korea wants to hide this information from its people so desperately to the extent the massacre is not included in the Korean textbook at all. In fact, the Vietnamese war is not taught in dept at all in the Korean textbook. Just like the Korean war is considered the forgotten war in America, the Vietnamese war is a forgotten war in Korea. After visiting Vietnam, it was a shock to me how much damage victims received from the Vietnamese war. There were still victims suffering from Agent Orange at the moment and undetonated mines and from the massacre of Korean soldiers to this day. I started to look at history and the world in a different view, rather than the collective, American centered view I had before. The truth, I believe, is not the phenomenal truth: what actually happened, but simply a narrative, and at the same time, many individual victims’ views were neglected. Maybe what we need is not the view from the top: privileged victimizers but the view of people from the ground: victims.
Jaden Kim
Hello, my name is Serena Lao. I was born and raised in Guangdong, China, and later moved to New York City, where I have lived most of my childhood. My history teacher in high school had taught us once that textbooks are biased, and not all history books are going to contain the same information. All secondary sources are bound to have a different narrative based on who is telling the story. In this Learning Cluster, one of the important messages that I have learned is there is no one truth. There is no correct narrative or which side is right, everyone has their own beliefs and their own perspectives to justify the events that they are experiencing. Because I had a mainly American-centric history education growing up, I never heard the history from another aspect. I have never heard about Vietnam or the Korean war. This trip made me realize, while I was learning about the history of wars, I have never once considered the victims that resulted from these wars; or even the state of land on which the wars were fought on. The thought of how the civilians living there may be affected was never ruminated. I live in a privileged and sheltered country, that when things are hidden from me, I don't even try to uncover or question it. I just accept it, and that's what I feel so frustrated by. However, the place that I felt the most hopeful was the DMZ zone where the railroads and observatory were, overlooking at the Han River, you can see North Korea through a tiny hole in the telescope. That moment, I realized, this country that had been isolated from the rest of the world didn't seem to be so far away. That thought gave me hope that maybe through these narratives of the victims that we collect today, maybe one day we can hear the voices of the people from the other side of the river too.
Serena Lao
Hello! My name is Leialani Santos and I am from Guam. I concentrate in Social and Behavioral Sciences as a second-year student at Soka University of America. As a Korean diaspora, I am extremely grateful I got the opportunity to visit the motherland. On a deeply personal level, learning more about the Korean War from the UN Peace Memorial and Bok-Young Kim was an extremely impactful experience that allowed me to feel more connected with my grandmother, who is an orphan of the war. I never got the opportunity to do this in an academic setting before since the Korean War is barely (if even) covered in the US educational system; it is the Forgotten War. Likewise, many aspects of the Vietnam War are also “forgotten” or dismissed. Meeting the victims of these wars (Agent Orange victims and their families, Halmoni Ok-Seon Lee, Bok-Yeong Kim, Paul Harding, and Pham Cong Dung) really changed my perspective of how I view current the tensions between each state. While there’s still much to unpack, the trip overall has really made me rethink my positionality as a Korean-American, especially in regards to the process of reconciliation. It also served as a great reminder that metanarratives are not all-encompassing and oftentimes only serve those with more privilege.
Leialani Santos
