Michael David Kwan’s Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China is one of those memoirs in which the apparent subject gradually changes as the book progresses. It begins as the recollection of an unusual childhood, develops into an account of a family trying to survive war and political upheaval, and ultimately becomes something more complicated: an examination of memory, identity, loyalty and the uncomfortable moral compromises demanded of people caught between competing political and military powers.
Kwan was born in 1934 to a Chinese father and Swiss mother and spent his early childhood in circumstances of considerable privilege. His father, John Kwan, was a Cambridge educated railway administrator, and the family occupied a social world far removed from the lives of most Chinese people. Servants, comfortable houses, foreign acquaintances and the protected environment of Beijing’s Legation Quarter initially insulated the young Kwan from many of the problems surrounding him. That protection could not survive the Japanese invasion and the progressive disintegration of political and social order in China.
This contrast between the sheltered world of Kwan’s earliest memories and what subsequently happens is one of the book’s greatest strengths. Kwan does not begin with battlefields, armies or political leaders. Instead, the larger events of history gradually intrude upon the small world of a child. People disappear, relationships change, movement becomes more difficult, adults become secretive and danger becomes increasingly apparent even when the child observing it does not entirely understand what is happening.
Consequently, Things That Must Not Be Forgotten is not really a conventional history of wartime China, nor should it be judged as one. It is history viewed from below, although in Kwan’s case this is a somewhat unusual description because his family was economically and socially privileged. The importance of the book lies in its ability to demonstrate how political decisions and military events eventually penetrate the domestic world. Japanese occupation, resistance, collaboration, Nationalist politics and eventually civil war are experienced through their effects upon individuals rather than through an analysis of strategy or ideology.
At the centre of the memoir is Kwan’s father, and in many respects this is as much his story as his son’s. John Kwan occupied the morally dangerous territory created by military occupation. He accepted a position within the Japanese controlled political structure while simultaneously assisting Chinese resistance activities. The family home became connected with clandestine resistance, and Kwan records the considerable risks his father accepted while outwardly appearing to cooperate with the occupying authorities.
This part of the book raises one of its most interesting historical questions. Collaboration during occupation is very easy to identify retrospectively and considerably more difficult to define for those living through it. An individual may work within institutions controlled by an occupying power for reasons ranging from ideological commitment and personal advancement to economic necessity, family protection or clandestine resistance. The outward behaviour may appear similar while the underlying motives are entirely different.
Kwan’s father becomes a particularly effective example of this ambiguity because his apparent cooperation with the Japanese later has serious consequences. Following Japan’s defeat, he is accused of collaboration and imprisoned despite his resistance activities. His wartime strategy, which depended upon concealing his real loyalties from the Japanese, consequently leaves him vulnerable when those same concealed activities must subsequently be demonstrated to the Chinese authorities. His eventual exoneration does little to diminish the tragedy of the situation.
This is where the title acquires much of its significance. Memory is not merely nostalgia in Kwan’s account. Remembering can become evidence, defence and even survival. His father’s record of his wartime activities provides another source upon which Kwan could draw when reconstructing the family story. The memoir is therefore partly concerned with the preservation of a version of events that might otherwise disappear beneath the much larger historical narratives of Japanese occupation, Nationalist government and Communist victory.
There is another story running alongside this political history, however, and I found it at least as interesting. Kwan occupies an uncertain cultural position because of his mixed Chinese and European ancestry. He belongs completely to neither world. His appearance distinguishes him from other Chinese children, while his Chinese ancestry prevents complete acceptance within European society. He encounters prejudice from both communities and particularly painful treatment at school.
The importance of this experience extends beyond Kwan himself. Wartime tends to encourage societies to simplify identity. People are increasingly classified as belonging to one side or another, while ambiguous identities become uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous. Kwan cannot easily satisfy such categories. He is Chinese and European, privileged yet increasingly vulnerable, connected with foreign society but nevertheless part of a Chinese family deeply involved in resistance to Japan.
His childhood therefore provides an interesting study of identity under pressure. Nationality, ethnicity and loyalty are repeatedly treated by others as though they should coincide neatly, while Kwan’s existence demonstrates that they frequently do not. This aspect of the memoir is particularly effective because Kwan generally allows these contradictions to emerge through experience rather than turning them into an extended theoretical discussion.
The domestic story is equally complicated. Kwan’s Swiss mother leaves the family when he is young, his relationship with his English stepmother is difficult, and his father is a distant and imposing figure. The family therefore offers no simple refuge from the instability occurring outside it. Kwan’s loneliness becomes an important element of the narrative, with companionship sometimes found in animals, solitary activities and observation rather than conventional family intimacy.
This produces some of the memoir’s strongest passages because Kwan does not need dramatic military action to communicate the effects of war. The disruption of relationships, the disappearance of security and the inability of a child to understand adult decisions can communicate instability more effectively than descriptions of combat. War is not simply something happening between armies elsewhere. It alters households, friendships, schools, social hierarchies and assumptions about the future.
There are nevertheless limitations to the book, particularly if it is approached as a source for the political history of Republican China. The wider historical context is sometimes too thin. Chang tai Hung, reviewing the book for The China Quarterly, identified precisely this problem, noting that Kwan provides insufficient background concerning his father’s career and the foreign communities with which the family interacted. Hung also questioned Kwan’s treatment of the Nationalist government, arguing that the memoir presents the conflict between Nationalists and Communists too simply and does not sufficiently acknowledge the enormous problems confronting a government attempting to administer a devastated country after years of invasion and warfare.
I think this criticism is justified, although it needs to be applied carefully. Kwan is writing memoir rather than comprehensive political history. The young Kwan did not possess a sophisticated understanding of the structural weaknesses of the Nationalist state, the relationship between central and provincial authority or the ideological and military development of the Chinese Communist movement. To impose such analysis retrospectively might actually weaken the immediacy of the childhood perspective.
The problem arises only when personal observation moves towards broader historical judgement. A memoirist is an exceptionally strong source for what he experienced, a more problematic source for explaining why the political system surrounding those experiences behaved as it did. The distinction between testimony and historical analysis is therefore important when reading Kwan.
There is a related problem with memory itself. Kwan was reconstructing experiences from childhood many decades after they occurred. Some scenes and conversations possess a degree of detail that inevitably raises questions about the precision with which they could have been remembered. Contemporary reviewers also noticed the presence of apparently reconstructed dialogue.
Again, this does not invalidate the memoir. It simply means that the reader should distinguish between the factual reliability expected from a contemporary document and the different kind of truth offered by retrospective autobiography. Memory selects, rearranges and interprets. An adult understands events that a child could not have understood when experiencing them. The memoir therefore represents both the child’s experience and the older author’s subsequent interpretation of that experience.
Indeed, this tension may actually make the book more interesting. Kwan is not simply telling us what happened. He is showing us what survived in memory and what subsequently acquired significance. The title is therefore particularly appropriate. These are not necessarily all the things that happened. They are the things that, for Kwan and his family, must not be forgotten.
The book is also valuable because it complicates simplistic accounts of occupation. Political history often divides populations into collaborators and resisters, patriots and traitors, victims and perpetrators. Kwan’s family demonstrates how inadequate these categories can become when applied to individuals attempting to survive occupation. His father works within a Japanese dominated system while resisting it. The family possesses privileges unavailable to most Chinese while nevertheless being placed in genuine danger. Foreign connections provide protection at some moments while Kwan’s mixed ancestry exposes him to hostility at others.
The Japanese surrender does not provide the conventional ending that might be expected from a wartime memoir either. Liberation does not restore the old world. Instead, the defeat of Japan exposes the political conflicts temporarily obscured by resistance to the common enemy. Nationalists and Communists resume their struggle, Kwan’s father suffers imprisonment, the family’s circumstances deteriorate and the young Kwan is eventually sent to Hong Kong in 1946. He would remain separated from the China of his childhood for decades.
That is perhaps the central historical lesson of the book. Wars rarely end as neatly for individuals as they do in chronologies. Japan’s surrender marks the end of one conflict, but for the Kwan family it does not mean the restoration of security. Political accusations, civil war and the collapse of the social order in which the family had lived continue the disruption. Victory at the national level does not necessarily produce peace at the personal level.
Stylistically, Kwan writes with considerable restraint. This is important because the material could easily have become sentimental. Abandonment, racism, wartime danger, family separation and political persecution provide more than enough material for an author determined to emphasise his suffering. Kwan generally avoids doing so. The emotional effect instead accumulates through the description of ordinary experiences increasingly distorted by extraordinary circumstances.
The book’s greatest achievement is consequently not its explanation of twentieth century Chinese politics. There are far better books for understanding the Sino Japanese War, the weaknesses of the Nationalist government or the Communist victory. Nor should Things That Must Not Be Forgotten be treated as a representative account of childhood in wartime China. Kwan’s wealthy, internationally connected and Eurasian family was highly unusual.
Paradoxically, that unusual perspective is exactly what makes the memoir valuable. History is not improved by having every witness represent an average experience. Kwan allows us to observe wartime China from a position rarely encountered in conventional military or political histories: inside an affluent Chinese family with strong European connections, divided cultural identities and direct involvement in the morally ambiguous world of resistance under occupation.
For the military historian there is another useful lesson. War is often reconstructed through campaigns, commanders and battlefield decisions because these provide convenient structures for historical narrative. Kwan reminds us that the consequences of those decisions spread far beyond the battlefield. Occupation changes schools and friendships. Intelligence activity alters family relationships. Political allegiance determines whether yesterday’s patriot becomes tomorrow’s suspected collaborator. Victory can create new dangers rather than ending old ones.
The memoir is therefore strongest when read alongside rather than instead of conventional histories of wartime China. Its weaknesses are real. The political context can be insufficient, its treatment of the Nationalist regime sometimes lacks nuance, and retrospective memory inevitably creates questions about reconstructed detail. These limitations prevent the book from functioning as a comprehensive guide to the period, but that was never really its purpose. Contemporary academic criticism similarly recognised both the shortage of contextual depth and the power of Kwan’s immediate personal experiences.
What remains is an exceptionally engaging personal account of a child watching the apparently permanent structures around him disappear. Family, wealth, social status and political authority all prove less stable than they initially appear. Kwan survives partly by adapting, partly because others protect him and partly through circumstances over which he has little control.
I found Things That Must Not Be Forgotten most successful when Kwan stays closest to that personal experience. His childhood cannot explain wartime China, but it can tell us something equally important about what living through wartime China could mean for one individual and one very unusual family. The book is ultimately less concerned with explaining great events than with preserving the human experiences that great historical narratives have a tendency to flatten or overlook.
That makes the title entirely appropriate. Governments fall, armies withdraw and political interpretations change, but the experiences of the people caught between them remain. Kwan’s achievement was to ensure that at least some of those experiences were not forgotten.
well worth reading if you pick up an inexpensive second hand copy like I did.