My Grandpa’s Childhood Memories

By Mario Zeng

I interview my grandfather named Yagong Zeng. He is from China Guangzhou. My grandpa always said Guangzhou is nice place. This nice place had long history. He has experiences in the war of resistance Against Japan. The war is very big. This war occurred in 1937-1945. The beginning of the war, he was 9 years old. He was very young, when the war ended, he was 16 years. During this war, he lived with his grandfather, his mom, his dad, and his brother, this was a big family. My grandfather’s living conditions at that time was poor; often there was no food, because war needed a lot of food and they could not plant food because the war destroyed a lot of land. Their food was limited to purchase.

My grandfather said the war of Resistance Against Japan was an eight-year war. The war began in the Marco polo Bridge incident. Due to China 29 army garrison refused to Japan garrison into Wanping Cheng searching for missing soldiers and fierce fighting in July 7^th 1937. Japanese invaders occupied Guangzhou in October 21th 1938. After the Japanese came to loot, they killed anyone without reason. And caught beautiful woman and raped them. During the war, he lost job and he to go out and be killed by Japanese. There were nothing, he could eat and eat was limit to bought food.

I asked my grandfather what happened with his father. He says: “I remember that my father went out to find a job, but he never came back. My mom told me: “you father was dead, he was killed by Japanese. I need to go out and find a job. Take care of yourselves.” My mom’s life was so hard after my dad dead. She only earn low paid and did very hard work, because she was a woman. Also, the Japanese loved beautiful woman and if they met Chinese woman, they would raped them. So my mom would spread coal on her face for make her looks ugly. Finally the war end. In October 1^st, the date of China independence people’s lives becomes happier.