HIEA115 Post #3

Based on noticing the incompleteness of archives of Korean buraku and Okinawan women and men in the Japanese countryside, I have realized that it is important for historians to know the actual experiences that these people went through. The archive information may not include the personal experiences of the people and they may be biased or even incorrect. Therefore, I think it is ethical for historians to write about the experiences of the people so that any sort of bias can be eliminated. The archive information will most likely be from the government and we cannot only look at the information from their point of view. I do think it is ethical to include both sides of the story which is the perspective of both the people and the government. And I think that if we erase archive information from history, we cannot get the full picture of what happened so we definitely need archives.

Speaking of the current pandemic, I have gone through lots of major and personal experiences. Some of the experiences could have been losing family members, losing your job, or becoming anxious or depressed, but I think those specific experiences will not be recorded in official archives. Only the general information about the pandemic and the statistics will most likely be in the archives for the historians to analyze. If the personal experiences would be included, then the historians will not only know the amount of deaths that the virus has caused, they will also know how the people felt emotionally during the pandemic. This will allow historians to get a bigger picture of what happened. I would be fine with historians digging through my personal experiences because it will allow for a non biased historical writing. The perspectives of most people will be recorded if they were to include these experiences. Thinking about this made me realize that what I may not have learned everything about history throughout my education. There must be important personal experiences that were left out which lead to different understanding of history.