Fang Cai Pei and Ye Sai Chu are a married couple, Chinese citizens who were victims of Japan’s system of germ warfare during the Second World War. Both of them are actively seeking justice for the ways in which they were exploited and harmed during that distant conflict. Both lost many family members when Japan launched attacks […]
Archives: Oral History Project
Ye Sai Chu
Fang Cai Pei and Ye Sai Chu are a married couple, Chinese citizens who were victims of Japan’s system of germ warfare during the Second World War. Both of them are actively seeking justice for the ways in which they were exploited and harmed during that distant conflict. Both lost many family members when Japan launched attacks […]
Baskin, Genya
Genya Baskin is a the Holocaust survivor. She was born in Poland in 1932 and lived with her parents, siblings and grandmother. When she was about five years old, she and her family had to leave Poland when the Germans invaded. Genya and her family had moved to different places during the war, spending most of […]
Pollack, Sophie
Sophie Pollack, like other Jewish children living in Europe at the time of the Second World War, had her childhood snatched away from her at the hands of the Nazis. Born in Skierniewice, Poland, Sophie told us about her miraculous story of survival, after being placed in the Koluszki Ghetto and then just barely managing to […]
Zarembo, Michael
Michael Zarembo is a Lithuanian Jew, one of so many overwhelmed with the terrible events that befell his people and region during the war. 1941 saw the initiation of that horror…Germany initiated Operation Barbarossa, and within days Michael’s family was under the heel of the Nazi regime. Life became increasingly difficult in the ghettos that were […]
Wu Xianbin
Wu Xianbin is a private citizen in Nanjing, China, one with a passion for history. His commitment to keeping alive the memory of the Nanjing Massacre is second-to-none, as evidenced in the private museum he has founded in the city. Mr. Wu believes that history offers a guideline not only to the past, but to […]
Sim Jin Tae
During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of Korean civilians, along with thousands of others in the occupied territories, were conscripted for Japan’s war effort, a topic that is only on the periphery of Western historiography and education. During their visit to Seoul, members of the Alpha Education Peace Tour were able to meet […]
Wu Jianping
In July 2017 Crestwood teacher Scott Masters took part in Alpha Education’s Peace and Reconciliation Tour. Seventeen educators, activists, lawyers, and documentarians toured China and Korea, learning about the Asian perspective on the Second World War, and exploring ways to raise awareness of this side of the war to an international audience. The tour was organized by […]
Chen Chun Hua
Chen Chunhua is a Chinese citizen who was a victim of Japanese germ warfare during the Second World War. She and her team are actively seeking justice and medical treatment for the ways in which she and so many others were attacked and harmed during that distant conflict. One of her advocates, Mr. Wu Jianping, […]
Lee Yong Su
Lee Yong Su is a halmeoni, or “grandmother”, a name Koreans use for the women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during the Second World War. The Japanese military developed the term “comfort women” to describe these women who were coerced into this terrible existence. Ms. Lee was kidnapped at the age […]
Katz, Eugene
Eugene Katz was born in Dyszna, Poland in in 1927. He was one of five children, growing up in a Jewish family not too far from Vilna; he recalls a difficult life, beset by hunger and poverty, but also filled with family and friends. When war came in 1939, Eugene’s family was in eastern Poland, […]
Pham Cong Lien
Pham Cong Lien lives outside Hanoi, Vietnam, in a state-sponsored home for the veterans of what the Vietnamese call the “American War”. Mr. Pham turned eighteen and was conscripted by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) in 1967-68, just as the American involvement was reaching its apex. Forced to leave school and his family behind, he […]
Chen Lifei
In July 2017 Crestwood teacher Scott Masters took part in Alpha Education’s Peace and Reconciliation Tour. Seventeen educators, activists, lawyers, and documentarians toured China and Korea, learning about the Asian perspective on the Second World War, and exploring ways to raise awareness of this side of the war to an international audience. The tour was organized by […]
Zhao Zong Ren
Zhao Zong Ren is a Chinese citizen who was a victim of Japan’s system of forced labour during the Second World War. He is actively seeking justice for the ways in which he was exploited and harmed during that distant conflict. Mr. Zhao – only 14 at the time – recalls being tortured by the […]
Gao Xiongfei and Li Liangjei
Gao Xiongfei and Li Liangjei are Chinese citizens who were victims of Japan’s system of forced labour during the Second World War. Both of them are actively seeking justice for the ways in which they were exploited and harmed during that distant conflict. Mr. Li is currently the President of the Chinese Slave Laborer Association, […]
Ai Yi-Ying
Ai Yi-ying is a survivor of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, otherwise known as the “Rape of Nanking”. When the Japanese invaded, her family was trapped, and many were killed at the outset. Ms. Ai’s mother managed to save some of the family members, and they were able to escape to the nearby mountains, evading the […]
Boyd, John
John Boyd was born January 26, 1913 in Alberta. He grew up against the backdrop of the Great Depression, though he said he was lucky to have been sheltered from the toughest times. The harsh conditions did push his politics to the left, and John was attracted to the leftist ideals of the time. After […]
Kim Han Soo
Kim Han Soo was born in northern Korea in 1918, during the time of Japanese occupation. When the Japanese invaded the Chinese in 1937, Mr. Kim remembers an offhand remark from a Japanese officer, bragging about a Chinese girl he had raped and murdered. It would prove to be a powerful lesson for Mr. Kim, […]
Cournoyea, Joe
Joe Cournoyea was born in the Tweed, Ontario in the early 1920s. He grew up against the backdrop of the Great Depression, in a large family in a rural area of eastern Ontario. While four of his older brothers served in the Second World War, Joe and the younger children worked the family farm, though […]
Hall, John
John Hall was born in the Canadian West in the early 1920s. He grew up against the backdrop of the Great Depression, though he said he was lucky to have been sheltered from the toughest times. With his brother he made his way to western Ontario, riding the rails and working the ports of Lake […]
McMichael, Reginald
Major Reginald McMichael joined the Canadian Forces in 2001, having made the decision to attend Royal Military College. After initial training, he was deployed in Alberta as a member of the PPCLI, and he rose through the ranks as an officer. From there, Major McMichael was sent on several overseas deployments, serving in Afghanistan at […]
Keeping, Andrea
Major Andrea Keeping grew up in the small farming community Russell, Manitoba and entered the University of Manitoba with the intention of studying to be an architect. Instead, she would end up finishing her education at Kingston’s Royal Military College and embark on a career that has seen her deployed in support roles to Afghanistan, […]
Lefrancois, Olivier
Major Olivier Lefrancois joined the Canadian Forces in 1997, having made the decision to attend Royal Military College. After initial training, he was deployed in Quebec, where he helped in the recovery efforts after the ice storm. From there, Major Lefrancois was stationed in different parts of Canada, including North Bay, Resolute Bay and Cold Lake, […]
Sitbon, Stefania
Stefania Sitbon is a Holocaust Survivor from Poland. She was born just before the war began, so Stefania doesn’t remember the German invasion, or life before the war. The memories she has are of her childhood, a time when things had changed dramatically. Stefania grew up in the chaos and hunger of the Warsaw Ghetto, […]
Dwyer, Liam
We met Liam Dwyer at the Castle Peak Retirement Suites in Bracebridge, where he presently lives. Liam is one of several authors/editors who assembled At Your Age, a collection of stories of those who live there. The residents felt it was important for them to record their stories, which serve as a great entry point into […]
Du Peizhen
Du Peizhen was born in 1932 in Tieling, China. Her father was an officer who worked in the court, and her mother was a teacher. She should have had a happy and affluent family at that time, but Japan had occupied the North East of China at that time, called Manchuria. She directly experienced World […]
Jarvis, Mary
Mary Jarvis grew up in Ontario in the prewar era, in the Markham area just north of Toronto. She grew up in a conservative, church-going family, in what was then a largely rural community, and Mary recalls chafing just a bit against those restrictions; like her friends, she would have loved to enjoy the movies and […]
Mohammed, Tahir
On April 28, 2017, Crestwood World History and Religion students took a day to take in the multireligious and multicultural character of Toronto. Students visited a Sikh gurdwara, a Hindu temple, and in the afternoon we visited the Noor Cultural Centre and Mosque, to take part in Friday prayers. It was a day for students to put […]
Pegg, Mary
We met Mary Pegg at the Castle Peak Retirement Suites in Bracebridge, where she presently lives. Mary is one of several authors/editors who assembled At Your Age, a collection of stories of those who live there. The residents felt it was important for them to record their stories, which serve as a great entry point into […]
Broere, Marie
Marie Broere was born in 1926 in Rotterdam. As a teenager, Marie witnessed the Rotterdam Blitz of 1940. Marie remembers her daily life, living under the German occupation of Holland. She remembers her father being taken from the streets by German soldiers, and managing to escape and return with his family. Being the eldest child […]