This month, on the 19th, my late father turns 103 years old. In 1941 when he found himself stuck in Bataan, he was only 20 years old. That was 84 years ago. We have not seen another world war, and there have been many international organizations that made sure it didn’t happen again. WWII is the most documented of all wars. There are many missing stories, like Filipino-told Bataan, but the internet still brims with what most would be looking for.
For #BataanNewJersey, it’s important that I collect as much information for marketing purposes. I have just started looking for a #LiteraryAgent, the first gatekeeper toward a gated community we would need to blast open. That in itself is a gargantuan task, almost like looking for a dream FT job. One of the reasons why I waited this long to send my work out again for publication was because of this—the business of publishing is time-consuming and personal. And I have a FT job. Writing books is my religion. My DNA. I just do it, with a lot of effort that I actually enjoy and cherish. But the publication process takes the joy out of Art for many of us artists. And so we look for a champion who will take the burden off our shoulders. The first one would be a Literary Agent. For The Umbrella Country, I was represented by Harold Ober, the oldest and storied agency that has ceased operations. Even then, I knew that my job as a novelist wasn’t over once I handed over the book and signed contracts. 25 years since, I have become more experienced in managing what I cannot literally control.
84 years: the memory of my father lives on while the war and interest in WWII fade through time. WWII professors are aging and retiring. We have a new generation whose connection to WWII was a distant relative, a great-grandfather, possibly dead. The question for me complicates through time: where are these organizations that might be interested to hear from a son of a Bataan Death March and Japanese Concentration Camp survivor? What would be the best way to approach this research without pigeonholing myself into a topic that might not even exist anymore?
For the past weeks, I have returned to the coffeeshop. Where I write this blog. With my excel, I put together an organized lists of war-related organizations. At first, my entry point was "WWII" until my chances thinned out. I am now approaching it from a “War and Society” perspective, and this has given me access to universities and war-related organizations that I otherwise would not know had I stayed on a limited “WWII track.” The research landscape has changed. A lot of interest in Wars, an expansion from WWII. But #BataanNewJersey is not only about WWII—the majority of the book is the impact successive wars on a family of four generations.
Last weekend, I ran into Zooniverse, a “people-powered” research hub, and found The American Soldier, launched in 2021 on the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor by thousands of “archivists.” While it’s not an organization per se, it shows that there is still much interest in WWII in our time. The modern lenses haven’t completely faded. They are simply focused on other things never examined before: War and Women, for instance. Widening my research means capturing more organizations that might in part cover WWII. An eclectic example of my growing list is below, not a deadend but in fact a tiny door to wider space of thinking. The first link seems suspect but once inside, you would see a deep common interest.
And this one moved me. My father used to receive a physical copy when he was alive. Glad to see its last issue as it turns into another legacy organization: http://www.axpow.org/bulletins/bullcur.pdf
#BataanNewJersey has an audience. Historical novels enthusiasts. War genre followers. Asian American historians. Historians in general. And those who love and enjoy a good story in the most unknown and vivid landscapes. At the heart of every novel is a human story, one that transcends time. Time-traveling is yet to happen, but we can already do it in our literature. For now, the dream is to add #BataanNewJersey to my own collection of World War II books. The honor is to see the spine next to these gifts I could only be grateful to have held and kept.
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