A collective responsibility – Carrying on the work of oral history

ACCORDING to Wikipedia, the tradition of oral history’s modern concept was developed in the 1940s by Allan Nevins and his associates at Columbia University in America, although primitive societies had long relied on oral tradition to preserve a record of the past in the absence of written histories.

In Western society, the use of such oral material goes back to the early Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, both of whom had made extensive use of oral reports from eye-witnesses of their time.

Today oral history has become an international movement in historical research, partly due to the rapid development of information technology as historians practising in the oral tradition have discovered to their amazement the endless possibilities of posting data and information on the Internet, making them readily available to both scholars and average individuals alike; thus allowing history to free itself from its previously-shackled realms on library shelves to reach a much larger universal audience.

I count myself as a long-time believer and practitioner of the method and have been on both sides of the microphone, email exchanges and interview process; I’ve done research and written on many topics and issues since my student days, and have also been at the receiving end of having being interviewed, questioned and queried a great many times on all matters – casual, formal and formidable.

The results of some of these endeavours have appeared in journals, periodicals, magazines, TV shows, documentaries and published books. Most have ended up among the dusty archives and cobwebbed shelves of private and public libraries and yet, others will never see the light of day for one reason or another.

Today, I can count on the fingers of one hand the friends whom I know have proven themselves and are well known experts in their various fields – from Vernon Porrit in Perth, to Heidi Munan, Charlotte Hunter and Mona Manap in Kuching/UK, and Regina Fabiny in Kuala Lumpur.

For as long as I can remember, I have been urged to take up the baton to chronicle my own Ong family history from the time my ancestors had left the shores of Baijiao, Xiamen in China in the 1800s, till the present day.

Having said that, the task is too heavy and entails a vast timeline requiring a massive coordination of networking, family links as well as financial resources; later, it was suggested that I confined myself to just our family after Ong Kwan Hin, my grandfather, whose life spanned 1896 to 1982. After all, he was the first to be born outside China – namely, in Kuching Sarawak.

Thirty-five years ago when I was half my age right now, it had appeared to be quite a challenge but deemed doable and although it might take lots of personal sacrifices by way of personal time, effort and mountains of research, it could prove both exciting and rewarding; indeed, if I were to publish the results, there would be much interest from the larger extended family members as well as those interested in the local history of migrants and the early settlers of Sarawak. For how could one write a history without involving so many others?

However this was in 1987, long before the days of the Internet, the smartphone and social media and modern day communications as we know it now. There was no Google search, no email, no social media and of course, no Wikipedia as well!

To take up such an enterprise would require a team of researchers still using the snail mail by post, telephone by land lines, drafting out on paper, handwritten, then transcribed by typewriters, photocopied by Xerox with fax machines only in common use from 1990.

It would have been impossible to gather such a team without a formidable financial resource, funding or grant to meet staff salaries and outgoing expenses. It was certainly not a job for just one man.

Then to top it all, even if I had managed to do the research and the gathering of oral history etc, on my very own, with time being not of the essence, I had met up with one insurmountable obstacle hitherto unknown and of which I had been totally clueless.

There were some family members whom I would classify as the ‘Forces of Resistance’: those who did not want certain parts of their family histories to ever be revealed, scrutinised or even questioned. In other words, there were skeletons hanging in all families historical past and we, as an extended and very large family, were no different.

I was eventually told that some parts of our family history were reminiscent of certain Shakespearean plays!

Others were not as kind and went even further to suggest that they might even be closer to the twists and turns, love, betrayals and drama of any good soap opera playing on television like The Sopranos, or Dallas!

I was cautioned that in no uncertain terms that if I were to dig deeper into a certain family member’s background and his past deeds, I’d be exposing myself to being personally sued should I make public or publish such details and information – even if I were to disguise them under some subtle flowery innuendos.

That virtually put paid to whatever I had in mind to contribute to an all-encompassing Ong family history account in any non-fiction format: I can only write it if I were to treat everything I discovered in research as ‘fiction based on some real life events’!

There is this new television series I’m watching right now from Shonda Rhimes, which is called ‘Inventing Anna’. There is this great new preamble that perfectly tells you what I mean: “This whole story is completely true. Except the parts that are totally made up.”

But this won’t ever pass the team of lawyers whom I’d bet my fellow Ong relatives might throw up against me.

So that’s the story on why I can never write the story of the Ong family, either as a historical document based on the oral tradition; or in any fictionised form (as the story would be peppered by too many easily recognisable public figures as main characters) for potential defamation of character legal suits to be launched.

However in much happier circumstances, about 25 years ago an Australian accountant/credit analyst by the name of Sean Collum residing in Sydney, who had married a niece of mine (she’s a grand-daughter of my eldest aunt Lucy Ong, who married Chin & Sons family’s eldest boy George Chin) had taken upon himself the arduous and mostly thankless task of being the ‘Ong Family Tree Chronicler’!

Sean had been given the first original Ong family tree chart, beautifully handwritten by my uncle Henry Ong Kee Chuan (and given) to me in the early 1970s, which I had in turn passed it on to him (Collum) around 1999 after he had expressed an interest to take up the baton of expanding the tree further.

I was more than happy to do that after having sat on it for so long.

In September 2008, Sean had started the ‘Ong Extended Family’ private group on Facebook.

Its mission was to attract all family members throughout the world to join, and as of today there are 911 members.

We had held a big family reunion in Kuching around that time when more than 120 had turned up, and a few smaller ones after. We are hopeful of organising another bigger one after this nasty Covid-19 business subsides.

Today, Sean actively lobbies for and campaigns for the addition of Ong family members throughout the world through his vast networking on social media, emails and on Google; he has also set up other group pages in addition to ‘Ong Extended Family’.

He, too, had met with the same obstacles and reluctance as I did in earlier times, mostly from those not at all keen nor interested to share or part with information pertaining to some shady past or from prodigal members – history repeats itself, but Sean perseveres; after all, he’s an accountant!

I continue to help carry on the torch for the collection of historical family memorabilia and data. However, we have lost a vast number of ‘human libraries’ in recent years, which we can never hope to replace – the tradition of oral history; tales of the families and their lives all those many years ago.

If you have that interest and that chance and opportunity now, today, I urge you to please not let that flame fade to black slowly – take time to talk / converse / interview your ageing elders about their past lives now, even if it’s just to satisfy your own personal curiosity.

That chance will never come again. After all, don’t you want your own children to know your own history too some day?

For the present, let us all thank God for the lives of our ancestors without whom, none of us would be here today.

Praise the Lord!