<p>Have your grandparents ever went through a war and such? It's so interesting to hear about such events when it seems so far off. </p>
<p>I'll start. Very recently I have learned that until my grandma was fifteen, Korea was under Japanese control. She had to learn in Japanese and have a Japanese name (hers was oyama) and such. Any Korean who spoke in Korean (she said she did a lot) would get in trouble by getting beaten up or wearing a black ring so that others can tell she's a Korean. Many of her friends were killed, kidnapped, and all that other crap.</p>
<p>Since she entered elementary school when 10 and graduated when 16, she only got one year of Korean education.</p>
<p>I've read about such things, but I never thought to ask my grandma about these things because for some reason I thought she was born after all that.</p>
<p>So, when she was 15 Korea was freed. She got married at the age of 17, and when she was pregnant with her first baby she went through the Korean War. 0_0</p>
<p>Have your grandparents tell you about such hard times? It's like reading an excerpt from the history book except that 'book' is your mom's mom.</p>
<p>i'm just very interested in the korea-japan rivary. from corea-korea issue and fighting over that island (long story short, japan claims a korean island to be theirs because it wasn't included when japan returned korea's land back) and things...</p>
<p>i don't hate japanese ppl, just their ancestors. someone i know told me that there was a japanese guy madly in love with a chinese girl, but the girl's father said no japanese will marry his daughter sot hey had to break up. pretty sad...</p>
<p>My maternal grandfather was a member of the Amish church. When he was young (early teens), his father divorced his mother, so they were "shunned" (basically excommunicated) from the church. They joined a Mennonite church nearby, but were never really welcomed into the church and life in the small community was hard for them because of the attitudes of some of the neighbors. So, during my grandfather's junior year of HS, he altered his birth certificate and joined the army. The Mennonite church are strict pacifists, so he was officially shunned from the Mennonite church as well. I didn't know this until after my grandfather passed away, but I wish I could have had the chance to talk to him about what life was like in the Amish community.</p>
<p>All my other grandparents lived in Oklahoma and their families are from Oklahoma. It is really interesting to hear my grandmother (maternal) tell about how she, as an Indian child (Native American, not Indian) was treated in a white community and what life was like during the depression and Dust Bowl, which continued to affect the lives of people in Southwestern Oklahoma for many years after it was officially "over." Her father died when she was 13, leaving her and her mother to support the rest of the family. She has told me often about picking cotton (which she started to do for money as soon as she could walk) and what it was like to help support her three younger siblings when she was so young. Ironically, despite having to work, she is the only one of my four grandparents to complete high school.</p>
<p>I love hearing from my grandparents what life was like. Once you look past the "when I was your age...." lectures, it is really cool to hear about thier experiences and how they were shaped by them.</p>
<p>First of all, "(Native American, not Indian)" What's the difference?</p>
<p>Second - </p>
<p>My grandma tells me stories about her childhood in Athens, Greece during the Nazi occupation. She told me that they were only allowed one loaf of bread per week for her family. She said that her parents told her to get some, but on her way back home, someone stole it. Her family went without food for a week. My grandmother also saw her friends being shot on the street. I feel really bad for her that she had to go through this. Just yesterday she sounded so lonely on the phone. She has no family up there besides my dad, but he claims he's "too busy" to visit her. They only see each other every two weeks or so.</p>
<p>my grandma and grandpa immigrated or my great grandparents(both on dads siDE) but speciffically my grandma and grandpa didnt go past 8th grade got a job and raised 6 kids...they died a few years b4 i was born</p>
<p>My paternal grandmother and grandfather were married at 17 and 20, respectively. They fled from China when war broke out between the nationalists and communists. There was some miscommunication in their family, and they were the only two that ended up fleeing the country. In the midst of their escape, my paternal grandmother's brother was killed by a bomb.</p>
<p>My maternal grandfather had always lived in Taiwan, so when the Japanese took over Taiwan, everyone was educated in Japanese. After graduating, my grandfather had registered to be a kamikaze pilot during WWII. Apparently, you had to take a test to see if you were good enough to be one of those. He failed. HAHA. He later told me that it was the stupidest thing that he'd ever done. I totally agreed, cause I wouldn't be alive if he wasn't.</p>
<p>Technically speaking, I guess I would be one of those rare, indistinguishable mutts. Haha.</p>
<p>My grandmother, a German Jewish girl, escaped from Berlin at the age of 8 in late 1938 and came to America with her family. She tells tons of fascinating stories about her childhood in Nazi Germany and is in the process of writing her memoirs. I drink up every word I hear about my grandmother and the unfortunate fates of many of her family members, some of whom died in concentration camps and others who escaped to Brazil, Australia, and Turkey.
She remembers wearing a yellow Star of David, her mother's arrest, the burning down of her synagogue on a morning when her older sister was playing soccer there for her Jewish league, and a beating from a Nazi teacher after he learned that she, smart, blonde, and blue-eyed, was a Jew. She remembers a brave Christian housekeeper telling SS men that she was washing "filth" off of her physician father's professional sign after it was vandalized and spray painted with a Star of David.
Stories like these are ones I'll never forget, in the hopes that none of us ever forget, especially when similar horrors are taking place in Darfur right now..</p>
<p>Yeah--I'm lucky that she's been able to talk about this stuff (she couldn't for many years). She talked to my little sister's class about the Holocaust the other day and I got to go listen. She gets emotional about it, but was a great speaker overall.</p>