Jean Chan
Jean Bee Chan was born in 1937 in Hai Chin Li, a village near Taishan, in the south of China as the eldest of what would eventually become a family of six daughters. During the Asia-Pacific War, her father worked in Chongqing for the Kuomintang government while Jean stayed with her mother and younger brother in Hai Chin Li village. Her brother, the only son in the family, would die at the age of four and a half towards the end of the war, leaving her mother devastated. After reuniting with her father in Nanjing after the war in 1946, Jean and her family later moved to Hong Kong, where she attended high school and studied English. She eventually came with her parents and five sisters to the United States in 1956. She then attended the University of Chicago and UCLA before settling down in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she currently resides.
Jean vividly remembers her childhood in Hai Chin Li village, where she spent four years during the war. At four years old in 1941, she remembers helping her mother as well as her aunt and grandmother plant rice from grains along with tending to their family vegetable plots, chickens, and cow. Although she never remembers starving, she also never remembers ever feeling full. She lucidly remembers how frightened she was when she and her family saw Japanese soldiers point bayonets right towards where they were hiding in the river bank. Although the Japanese soldiers eventually left, this encounter would become seared in Jean’s memory. Throughout her entire childhood, Jean remembers always running away, first from the Japanese soldiers, and then from the Communists who took control of mainland China in 1949.
While growing up in China, Jean remembers her parents constantly talking about the Asia-Pacific War and how cruel the Japanese soldiers were to the Chinese. When talking about the atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers, her parents’ voices would quiver with anger and sadness. Coming to the United States, Jean made several Japanese-American friends who exposed her to their families’ wartime experiences in the U.S. and Japan. This then caused her to realize that Japanese people suffered in similar ways as she did during the war, allowing her to comprehend the sheer extent of the suffering caused by WWII.
Although the war always remained in the back of Jean’s mind as an adult, she only began to become interested in researching the Asia-Pacific War when she read Iris Chang’s chilling bestseller, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII, in 1997. Chang’s book opened Jean’s eyes to the gravity of the suffering of the Chinese people during WWII and inspired her to learn more about her own experiences and history. After meeting with Iris, who she considered a heroine, Jean helped found the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition (RNRC), which seeks justice for the victims of the Nanking Massacre by seeking the acknowledgment of, reparations for, and an official apology to the victims from the Japanese government.
Jean is currently interested in incorporating the role of China during WWII into American school curriculums to acknowledge the experiences and suffering of the Chinese people during the war. She works closely with Pacific War Atrocities Education, another organization dedicated to educating the American public about the Asia-Pacific War, in order to accomplish this aim. Jean believes that her experiences during the war have made her more compassionate as a person. She feels compelled to speak out and take action against injustices by making sure that no one is left behind the way she was by her family as they moved from place to place during the Asia-Pacific war. She has published a children’s picture book called The Soldiers are Coming! about her wartime experiences. She hopes that by sharing her story, younger generations will learn more about the war and remain steadfast in the struggle for an official apology from the Japanese government.
Wartime Experiences:
Identity in the U.S:
Knowledge About the Asia-Pacific War:
Impact on Identity and Worldview: