Just Asking: Capturing Memories as a Child, Student, and Historian

Abstract

If my family stories can be counted as oral history, then my introduction to this means of extracting personal memories came at a very early age. When I was in my early teenage years, my grandmother started telling me of what my grandparents had to put up with when the Japanese occupied Singapore from February 1942 to August 1945. My parents also told me of life in Singapore from their earliest recollection of the mid-1950s to the time when they got married in 1970. They told me of their childhood games, the places they frequently visited as teenagers, and their early teaching careers to the time when I was born. Furthermore, my grandfather died when I was five. But his memory is kept alive by my father, so that I do know how my grandfather lived and what he did in his life. Consequently, at a young age I understood the value of memories, but my family never jotted them down in a personal journal or diary. I learned about approaching history using oral history methodology when I did my Honours in Asian Studies at Murdoch University in Perth. My supervisor was Associate Professor James Francis Warren, and it was from him that I learned the value of oral history work in historical studies. Jim taught the value of oral traditions in an Approaches to History class, which introduced students to sociological, anthropological and philosophical concepts used by historians in studying the past. We devoted two weeks to learning about oral traditions, oral history, and listening to the inarticulate in history. Compulsory