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favorite piece of disability history is Hand Talk. as i understand it, the history of sign language in settler society is one in which "home sign" - the private sign language of families with Deaf members - gave way to local signed argot as a constantly-developing spectrum of contact languages between different home signs, which gave way to the two major sign language families, French Sign Language and British Sign Language, in the late 18th century, when formal education for the deaf brought together people from so many areas that the formation of a contact pidgin was daunting.

(as a sidebar, this has the interesting side effect that despite both being glossed into and taking core elements of grammar and vocabulary from English, ASL and BSL are genetically unrelated, with radically different signing spaces, grammar, and approaches to novel words and phrases. both look not just like gibberish to native speakers of the other, but only barely recognizable as sign language at all.)

there's a wrinkle in that story, though. one of the first adopters of French Sign Language outside of France was a school for the deaf in America located in Massachusetts, which relied on the existing substrate of contact pidgins between home signs in New England.

which included a tremendous substrate of indigenous sign language. native North America has one of those problems that can turn into opportunities in human history; it is blessed and cursed with hundreds, possibly once thousands, of languages. there are on the order of a dozen major language families indigenous to the borders of the united states. not languages, families. the eastern seaboard of the united states, an area approximately the size of western europe, contains five big enough to show up on a map, with some modern US states there containing as many as three. for context, you can go from Portuguese to Hindi without leaving indo-european, from Malay to Hawaiian without leaving austronesian. the only large areas with a similar density of language families i know of are Papua New Guinea and India (and, of course, South America). in some limited areas this lead to spoken linguas franca. think Chinuk Wawa, the contact pidgin of the Pacific Northwest. these languages would be simple, easy to learn by outsiders to the language family, and with a dramatically reduced vocabulary, grammar, and sound inventory compared to their nearest relatives.

but this was not tremendously common east of the Rockies, because a signed lingua franca already existed. known as Hand Talk, it was understood by a wide cross-section of society - depending on the area, familiarity ranged from "specialists sign and understand Hand Talk for purposes of communication on long journeys" and "nearly everyone knows basic vocabulary in Hand Talk". it can be divided into a number of dialect areas, but all of them are at least slightly mutually intelligible and rely on similar signing spaces and approaches to signing words.

many more words are shared by Hand Talk and ASL than can be explained by coincidence, and to someone familiar with ASL elements of Hand Talk are surprisingly familiar, likely because ASL developed alongside an already quite mature and functional sign language and freely borrowed what its creators could comprehend. and during the 19th century "kill the Indian, save the man" era, schools to which ndn children were sent by the state would punish both Deaf and hearing students for using Hand Talk in the same ways they would punish them for using their own spoken or written languages. i am loath to use "cultural appropriation" in the usual sense generally, but it's hard to say anything else when settlers strip-mine a language for parts then try to exterminate it.

despite these efforts to extinguish it, Hand Talk still exists, having been signed continuously by Deaf and hearing speakers since time immemorial, and can be learned today. it is undergoing something of a revival at the moment. look it up! it's cool stuff. it strikes me as especially neat that, where European society tended to treat the Deaf as second-class citizens at the best of times and even now literacy in sign language is not commonplace, at one point indigenous societies across North America relied on sign language to communicate across vast distances and esteemed Deaf signers as the most fluent communicators by hand

the passcode thing is cool as shit. if youre still infodumping what is your FAVORITE thing about a language. or languages in general. talk for a long time about some nerd shit is what i'm saying

You want a long infodump of nerd shit?? HERE IT COMES

My absolute favorite area of study in linguistics is pidgin and creole languages and, in particular, this really weird theory around them being the secret to discovering the “root code of language.” To start, you need to know what a pidgins and creoles are and what the difference is:

The word “pidgin��� is based on a transcription of how Chinese merchants pronounced the English word “business.” And that’s a pretty apt description! A pidgin is a sort of broken mashup of two or more languages that occurs when speakers of different languages, who don’t speak one another’s languages with much fluency, have to interact and figure out how to communicate with one another. Historically, this often happened during trade and commerce interactions.

Imagine you’re a French merchant arriving in Haiti and trying to sell gun powder to a local who speaks no French whatsoever and you don’t even know what language this dude speaks. And you’re pointing at your wares and shouting “Poudre pour les armes!!” which to him probably sounds like “Pood pore lay zahhm” and the local kinda squints at you and says “Poud zam?” and mimes shooting a gun. You’re sick of shouting and you think he gets what you’re saying, so you’re just like “Oui, sure, poud zam,” and now gunpowder is “poud zam.”

Generally, one language provides most of the vocabulary for a pidgin, whichever is most widely spoken or is spoken by those with the most prestige or power. That’s called 'lexification.' So, for instance, Haitian creole is 'French lexified.' The vocabulary will be colored by local accents, though, and depend on what sounds everyone knows how to make (if half the people don’t know how to trill their ‘R’s, that sound will be left out of a Spanish-based pidgin).

When it comes to grammar, though, pidgins are distinctly lacking. Communicating grammar by pointing and shouting just doesn’t work that well, and you can mostly get by without a lot of grammatical nuance in those contexts. “Me give gunpowder. You give one-two-three bag gold.” BOOM, commerce accomplished.

You really only need more comprehensive structures once the pidgin enters the private/personal sphere, and THIS is where creoles come in. A pidgin becomes a creole the moment it becomes someone’s mother tongue. The second a kid is raised speaking pidgin as a first language, it’s considered a creole. And the reason we make that distinction is where things get very interesting.

Unlike pidgins, creoles are grammatically complete. But it’s not like anyone sits down and says, "Okay, kids are learning this now, we have to figure out the grammar rules.” It’s actually the opposite. Children naturally fill in the grammatical gaps of a pidgin. Studies that compared adult pidgin speakers with their creole-speaking children found that the children had formed grammatical constructions... pretty much out of nowhere. They do it naturally. Instinctively.

Now, this makes sense if you’ve ever spoken with a child who is still learning their first language. Have you ever heard a kid say ‘mouses' instead of 'mice'? It’s because they’ve learned the grammar rule for how we pluralize things in English and simply over-applied it. Kids will take the barest hints and grains of grammar in a pidgin and apply them over an entire language. And if there’s nothing to go off of? They make it out of nothing.

One really fascinating thing about creoles is that a lot of them share similar features - even when they were made in very different places, based on very different languages. Since a lot of modern creoles were created during the colonial period, one theory was that those features come from common ‘substratum’ languages (languages that didn’t lexify the pidgin) that were spoken by the African slaves transported around the world. While this may have contributed to some language similarities, attempts to trace back the linguistic origins of the populations that created the original pidgins has generally disproved this theory. Another WILD theory was that all creoles were originally based on Portuguese. Don’t ask me how this makes sense. It doesn’t. But there were whole ass professional academics spewing that shit.

A more contemporary - and exciting! - theory is that these common features come from a “root code of language” buried in the human brain. Basically, that children can and will learn whatever grammatical constructions exist in the language they’re taught, but when there’s nothing for them to go off of, there is a very old basic language instinct that reverts them to our oldest, most basic grammar forms. One example is reduplication or the repeating of all or part of a word. Instead of using a suffix for pluralization (mouses), you just say the word twice (mouse-mouse). Instead of saying ‘really tall,’ you say ‘tall-tall.’ This does exist in some other languages but is particularly common in creoles.

Creoles are often seen as “simple” or “incomplete” languages. While they are simpler in some ways, native speakers are still able to convey complex ideas, which makes them more complicated in others. For instance, creoles tend to have a smaller vocabulary. However, to make up for this, they tend to be highly metaphorical in their constructions. In Tok Pisin, the creole of Papua New Guinea, most fibrous materials are called 'gras' (as in ‘grass’ - it’s English-lexified). But to distinguish between them, you have ‘gras bilong het’ (hair), ‘gras bilong sipsip’ (wool), ‘gras bilong solwara’ (seaweed).

Grammatically, creoles tend to have fewer verb tenses and tend not to have case markers. But it would be a mistake to say that all creole grammar is simple. To use Tok Pisin as an example again, that language has way more pronoun distinctions than most languages. Instead of just “we,” it has words for “you and me,” “me and another person [not you],” “me and two other people [not you],” “me and the two of you,” “me and all y’all,” and “me and all of them.” They have different forms of ‘you’ depending on if you’re talking about one, two, three, or more than three people - same with ‘he/she/them’! (And their pronouns are nongendered.)

Grammatical simplicity doesn’t equate to a lesser language, in any case. And it can tell us a lot about how languages develop over time. Creoles have fewer irregular constructions than older languages, which makes sense - irregular constructions are often vestiges of old words or grammar that no longer exist. A lot of grammatical complexity is just the result of things being added to a language or changing over time. If creoles are using a “new” root code sort of grammar, it makes sense that it wouldn’t be as “complex” - they haven’t had time to fuck it up yet!

So these are some of the many, many reasons I love creoles. I hope you enjoyed this infodump <3

Ask me about linguistics!

My MC's world has a medieval-type setting, but magic allowed them to advance faster with space travel. So they're fully aware of and in contact with six nearby solar systems that are populated. My question is: would it make sense to have people from all these different planets communicate with each other via a Universal Sign Language? (For the record, there's also deaf characters in my story that use their own regional sign languages, which are different than the interplanetary sign language)

Feral: I think it totally makes sense. For trade to occur between groups that speak different languages, some kind of common language has to be established for communication. Often in our history, that’s been a language imposed by dominant or colonial powers, but a pidgin or a blended language could easily develop. Sign languages are particularly fantastic for this as they can be used equally among hearing and d/Deaf people as well as in a variety of environments. One thing to keep in mind is that for a USL to work, the various peoples across the six solar systems will need to have enough anatomical similarities that the audience can reasonably expect them to be able to make the same signs. As you know, there are many sign languages in the real world, and they have accents and dialects within them (video), so it’s reasonable to assume that any USL would have the same. Noting that accents develop from different alien species having a variation on specific signs from what is considered the “standard” way of doing it can help with verisimilitude as well as allow for a slightly wider variety of alien anatomy, but still keep in mind that if a large portion of your population couldn’t possibly sign in the standard dialect, it’s unlikely that said dialect would have organically developed or been accepted without force.

Utuabzu: It is certainly plausible, particularly if one or several species lack the ability to use spoken language for anatomical reasons. Throughout history one of the first things that happens when two groups first come into contact is the development of a contact language. This is usually a very basic code with a few words initially established by gesture, almost all nouns or verbs, and little to no grammar. Over time, with prolonged contact this evolves into a pidgin, characterised by a simplified grammar and a limited vocabulary, but still more versatility than a contact language. If, later on, you have a significant number of children learning the pidgin as a first language, they will elaborate its grammar as they use it and create or borrow vocabulary to fill in gaps until you have a full, natural language, called a creole. (NB: while there are several languages called “Pidgin” or some variation thereof, they are almost all now classed as creoles. Pidgin and creole are here just the technical terms used by linguists and should not be taken as any sort of value judgement.)

One thing that can occur is that a pre-existing common language, sometimes a pidgin or creole, can spread and overtake contact languages instead of allowing them to develop into pidgins. A good example of this is Bislama in Vanuatu or Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea, where an initially limited pidgin extended to cover peoples speaking languages unrelated to the initial speakers’, and often with little to no direct contact with them. In both cases this occurred in large part because a powerful body (in this case government) chose to use that creole as its common language.

So, in short, yes, it’s totally plausible. You may especially want to look at this real-world example of a signed creole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plains_Indian_Sign_Language

Higa was one of more than a dozen American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who were involved in the Battle of Okinawa, which some historians have called the "cruelest battle of the Pacific." It was a costly battle. More than 12,000 Americans and some 95,000 Japanese--60,000 of whom were Okinawan civilians--were killed.

For Kalihi resident Takejiro Higa, the Battle of Okinawa would pit two "parents" against each other.

Higa was born in Waipahu. At the age of 2, his mother took him, his brother Warren, then 5, and 8-year-old sister Yuriko to Okinawa to meet their grandparents. His father remained in Hawaii and operated the family store. Three years later he went to Okinawa to accompany his family back to Hawaii.

Higa was 11 when his parents died within a year of each other. His grandparents, with whom he and his mother had lived, died the following year. For the next four years, he lived with an uncle.

As his 16th birthday neared, Higa began thinking seriously about returning to Hawaii. New immigration to Hawaii had been halted in 1924, and Japan had begun sending young, able-bodied men to settle in Manchuria in its efforts to control Asia militarily.

When Higa turned 16 in April 1939, he wrote to his sister in Hawaii, asking her to sponsor him back to Hawaii "before the Japanese army grab me." "Personally, I didn't want to go Manchuria. If I had to leave Okinawa, I'd rather go back to Hawaii where my sister and brother and other relatives were."

That July, 14 years after leaving Hawaii as an infant, Takejiro Higa went "home."

Less than three years later, Japan and America were at war.

In early 1943, despite reservations about his lack of proficiency in English, Higa volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. His brother volunteered, also. Warren made the cut; Takejiro didn't.

Several months after the 442 had left for training at Camp Shelby, Higa received a letter from the War Department, informing him of its plans to organize a unit of Japanese language soldiers, the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), to serve in the Pacific warfront. Was he willing to serve?

"It put me in terrific turmoil, psychologically, because, if it's Japanese, it's understood I'll be sent to the Pacific warfront," he says. What if he came face to face with someone he knew - a relative, a classmate. "It may not happen, but it was possible," he said.

It left him torn between his personal anxiety and his desire to serve his country. After days of soul searching, Higa decided to volunteer for the MIS. This time he made the cut.

Higa was accepted into the MIS and underwent eight months of language training at Camp Savage, where he studied not only the language, but technical and military terminology based on a Japanese Military Academy textbook. He graduated in July 1943.

At his sister's request, Takejiro was assigned to his brother's team, an action that required War Department approval. The practice had been banned after five brothers serving on the same cruiser were killed when it was torpedoed in the South Pacific.

"In my case, my sister wanted me to be with my brother because of my lack of proficiency in English. She felt that two brothers serving together would cover each other and help each other," Higa explained.

Approval was granted.

The brothers returned to Hawaii in the summer of 1944 and were assigned to the 96th Infantry Division. After two weeks of jungle training on Oahu, their jobs as soldiers officially began when the 96th was sent overseas.

En route to their destination, Yap Island, they learned that the island had been secured. So the 96th was diverted to Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters in New Guinea and then dispatched to Leyte lsland in the Philippines.

The captain said he heard that Higa had lived in Okinawa for many years. In what area, he asked. Higa pointed to the general area of his grandfather's village in Nakagusuku.

Next he pulled out an aerial photo of Okinawa's capital, Naha City. "I couldn't recognize it at first," Higa says. "It was completely destroyed.".

The captain then pulled out another photo. Higa recognized it instantly as his grandfather's village, Shimabuku, which, up until five years ago, had been his home. "My hair stood up! For awhile I couldn't even open my mouth; I was so choked up."

Higa looked at the photo through a special three-dimensional glass capable of picking up minute details. "I instantly recognized my Grandpa's home and from there, finger-traced all of my relatives' houses." To his relief, their homes were intact.

The captain then pulled out a shot of a typical country hillside in Okinawa. Higa glanced at it and then looked back at the captain with a "so what?" look. "Godammit, look carefully," shouted the captain. "We think the whole island is fortified!" The captain had mistaken traditional Okinawan burial tombs for fortifications. "I suddenly realized the wrong impression the captain and other intelligence officers had." Higa proceeded to give the officers a crash course in Okinawan culture.

He explained that Okinawans view their burial tomb as their permanent home. Thus, they try to build them on a hillside with a good view, overlooking the ocean. He also explained that the crater-like holes intelligence officers had observed in the comers of fields were composting pits used by farmers, not machine gun nests.

"From that time on, he (the captain) said, 'Sgt. Higa, you're going to assist us right through here.'" Higa was sworn to silence. When he returned to division headquarters later, his brother asked him what he had done during the day. "Don't ask me, because I've been told not to say anything," Takejiro replied.

Unbeknownst to him; Warren had informally volunteered his brother's first-hand knowledge of Okinawa to the division brass in the event of an Okinawa invasion.

All the signs--the aerial photos, the questions--pointed to an Okinawan invasion. Higa says he knew of the plans at least five months before the actual strike. The only thing he didn't know was the exact landing date.

Higa proved a big help to Corps headquarters because the area in which they landed was about a mile from where he had grown up.

"It was a horrible feeling," he says. "Ever since the first day I saw the picture, every night I used to dream about my relatives. Every night . . . never miss," Higa said, his voice breaking. "I dreamed about my uncle, my cousins, and even schoolmates."

But as an American soldier, he had a duty to perform. The last thing he wanted to do was harm his former countrymen, but he didn't know how he could do that without violating the military code of conduct.

"Deep inside I was torn," he says. "That feeling is hard to describe. Unless you yourself experience it, you don't appreciate it."

By late December, Leyte had been secured. In March 1945 the soldiers in the 96th Division boarded a troop ship. On their second day at sea, they were told their destination: Okinawa.

Higa was often called to the radio shack to translate radio transmissions they had picked up from Okinawa. Most of the time they were music programs with some Okinawan language sprinkled in the broadcast.

The Okinawa offensive, code-named "Operation Iceberg," began April 1. Early that morning the soldiers lined up on the deck.

"When the outline of Okinawa came up, I instantly recognized the hills. I couldn't help but choke up," Higa says almost 50 years later, fighting back tears, his voice breaking.

Only five years had passed since he left Okinawa, and his heart was being tugged in two opposite directions. "I'm an American G.I. I have a duty to perform, and yet I have a cultural obligation to Okinawa. I was really torn between loyalty and patriotism versus personal feeling . . . . I can tell you I had tears in my eyes."

It was different for his brother Warren, he says. True, he was Uchinanchu and Okinawa was the land of his ancestors. But he had not established an emotional attachment to the island in his three years there. "In my case, I grew up there. Although I've been back in Hawaii over 50 years, even to this day, the little country roads and small ditches and taro patches that we played in seem more like a real homeland to me than Honolulu."

Higa recites an old Japanese saying: "Mitsugo no tamashi hyaku made. . . The spirit of a 3-year-old child will last a hundred years." "What you learn in your small kid time, you'll never forget."

Because of his first-hand knowledge of the area and the Okinawan dialect, Higa was assigned to the division's advanced unit. They landed at the Chatan beachhead on the western side of the island.

Higa remembers his first image on land. "There were farm houses all on fire, farm animals all over the place, all dead, some of them burning."

The soldiers began moving towards higher ground. While walking through a narrow road, Higa saw something move in a small roadside dugout. "My heart stopped beating." Higa jumped back and took cover. Slowly he began walking toward the dugout. With his carbine trained, he ordered loudly, "Come out, whoever you are! Come out!"

Higa was so scared he can't remember whether he spoke English, Japanese or Okinawan. "I meant to speak Uchinaguchi (Okinawan dialect), but I have a feeling it was a mixture of everything," he laughs.

After returning to Hawaii in 1939, he had made a concerted effort to not speak Okinawan and to learn English. In the excitement of the moment, he says he wouldn't be surprised if what he uttered was a mish-mash of Japanese, Uchinaguchi, English and pidgin.

There was no response to his order, so Higa began squeezing his trigger. Suddenly he saw a thin human leg appear. "'Njiti (come out) mensooree (please)!" he ordered in Uchinaguchi.

An old woman, thin and frail, her clothing covered with dirt, crawled from the dugout. With her was a little girl, about 5 or 6 years old--her granddaughter. Higa began questioning the old woman. She said her family had escaped to the north; however, because of her weak leg, she had remained behind with her granddaughter.

Higa recommended that they be taken to a civilian refugee camp. "To this day I'm very grateful that I didn't pull the trigger." At point blank range, he knows he wouldn't have missed. "If I ever shot that old lady, I think I'd go crazy, knowing that she was a civilian. . . "

Higa has tried locating the granddaughter, who by now, would be nearly 60 years old. The old woman has probably died by now. "In all probability, the kid might have been the first Okinawan civilian prisoner," he says.

Soon after arriving at Chatan, what Higa had hoped would never happen, did. While scurrying around, looking for potatoes to eat, his former teacher, Shunsho Nakandakari, had been caught and sent to a civilian refugee center. Because of his tall, conditioned physique, he was suspected of being a Japanese soldier trying to pass himself off as a civilian. Higa was sent to interrogate the prisoner.

"I recognized him instantly, because he was my teacher for seventh and eighth grade. I looked at him, 'Sensei . . .' He turned around, looked at me and recognized me. 'Ah, kimi ka (oh, it's you)!'" Teacher and student were at a loss for words. "We were so choked up," Higa recalls.

He told the escort officer that Nakandakari was a teacher, not a soldier--and that he should be allowed to remain at the refugee camp.

The division continued to advance. One day, they set up camp inside an Okinawan kaaminakuu ufaka (turtle-back burial tomb). The concrete tomb offered lots of protection. In no time captured documents began arriving. Higa was assigned to translate some Japanese maps. He worked around the clock for three days straight, without any sleep, burning a gas lantern at night. A dark curtain concealed their whereabouts from the enemy.

Lined behind them were jiishigaami, or ceramic containers, which contained the bones of the deceased. Higa said he was uneasy about working in someone's final resting place. The Japanese put up virtually no resistance in the first two days, Higa recalls. Okinawa took such a beating because one Japanese division had been pulled and sent to Formosa, leaving Okinawa under-defended, said Higa. By the close of the second day, the island was cut completely in half. The Marines went north and the Army proceeded south. The 96th Division was [missing text] enemies.

Higa estimates that in two weeks, the 96th lost about a third of its combat strength, with the Japanese losing an equal number. Nakandakari sensei later told Higa that the Japanese army was effective for only 50 days of the nearly three-month-long Battle of Okinawa.

The Japanese troops were pushed back to the south after their line at Shuri, Okinawa's ancient capital, had been broken. The headquarters of the 96th was moved one last time, to Yonaha.

In May, shortly before Okinawa was secured, two men were brought in. Their uniforms were tattered and they were hungry. Higa was ordered to interrogate them. He offered them some biscuits and D-rations, a hard chocolate candy bar, which is equivalent of a complete meal.

The prisoners refused to eat. "Why won't you eat?" he asked. They said they thought the rations contained poison. "Baka yaro! (Stupid!)" Higa shouted at them. He began nibbling at the candy bar to show them that it hadn't been laced. Relieved, they began gobbling down the candy bars.

The two had been captured in a cave. When they refused to come out after repeated calls from U.S. soldiers, the engineers had sealed the cave and planted dynamite. The two frantically dug themselves out. The American soldiers were waiting when they surfaced. The men surrendered and were brought into headquarters.

After giving them time to compose themselves, Higa began his interrogation. Their answer to his question about the school they had attended, Kishaba Shogakko, made his ears perk up--for Higa had attended the same school.

Without revealing his identity, he began asking more specific questions, drawing on his memories of school. "Each response led me to believe that these guys were my classmates." Finally he asked whether they knew Nakandakari sensei. They were shocked. How would this American G.I. possibly know Nakandakari sensei? Higa looked them square in the eye. "I'm an American Military Intelligence Service language school graduate, noncommissioned officer. I know everything about you guys. Don't lie to me," he ordered sternly.

Higa decided to put them through one final test. "Do you remember one of your classmates named Takejiro Higa from Shimabuku?" he asked. They were shocked.

"How do you know him?" they asked. "I told you I know everything about you guys. Don't lie to me," Higa repeated.

One prisoner said he heard Takejiro Higa had gone back to Hawaii. They hadn't seen each other for so long and didn't know where he was, nor if they would recognize him today.

By then Higa was positive they were his classmates. "I looked at them straight in the face, and in Okinawa-go (Okinawan dialect), said, 'Godammit, don't you recognize your own classmate?'" They looked up, shocked beyond belief, and began crying.

"Why are you crying?" asked Higa. They said they were crying for joy. After answering his questions they thought they were no longer useful and would thus be executed.

"Now, knowing that our own classmate is on the other side, we believe our lives will be saved. That's why we're crying, because we're happy."

Higa couldn't restrain his emotions any longer. "The three of us grabbed each other's shoulders and had a cry." Higa says he still gets "chickenskin" whenever he recalls the reunion.

He never saw the two again. What he regrets most is that he can't remember their names. So far, his search for them has been futile.

Higa interrogated suspected imposters at the civilian compound at Sashiki-Chinen for the remainder of the Okinawa offensive. One of them was a Japanese colonel. The incident is testament of how valuable Higa's personal knowledge of Okinawa was to America.

He nabbed the colonel after his claim to be from Yamachi village turned up a series of inconsistencies. And how did Higa know? He had grown up in neighboring Shimabuku village.

Finally in perfect Uchinaguchi, he asked, "Who the hell are you?" The prisoner was stuck. He couldn't understand a word of what Higa had said. He then proceeded to tear apart the prisoner's story.

"Ah, shimatta! (Dammit!)" exclaimed the colonel, who thought he would get better treatment in a civilian refugee camp than in an Army POW camp. And he might have gone though undetected had Higa not been assigned to interrogate him. Higa concedes also that he might not have detected the charade had the colonel claimed to have been from a village Higa was unfamiliar with.

Higa remained in Okinawa for the duration of the battle - early August - when the 96th Division returned to the Philippines. En route, they learned of the bombing of Hiroshima and. Nagasaki which ended the war. The division reached. Mindoro on Aug. 15, the day Japan surrendered, bringing World War II to a close.

Warren Higa had accumulated enough points for an immediate discharge. Takejiro, however, was sent to Korea, where he interrogated Japanese evacuees for almost four months. He had wanted to remain in Okinawa and serve with the Occupational forces, but his request was denied because the 96th was being reorganized.

The Okinawa Takejiro Higa left behind when he boarded the transport ship back to the Philippines in 1945 was very different from his memories of Okinawa in 1939. "Everything was burned out, especially in the south. . . . The worst ground battle of World War II took place in Okinawa. Just about everything was busted up. You couldn't recognize anything."

And there were changes from 1945, when the war ended, to 1965, when Higa returned to Okinawa for the first time since the war's end. The landmarks were all different. What he had seen as targets 20 years earlier were gone.

Higa did not see Nakandakari sensei, whom he bad interrogated, until his first visit back to the island. Today, the bond formed in childhood and strengthened in war remains tight.

Higa visits Nakandakari whenever he goes to Okinawa nowaday. At 83 years of age, his former teacher--and prisoner - is still spry and healthy. "'Take one bottle of whiskey and I go visit him," says Higa, smiling broadly. "We have oodles of things to talk about."

In retrospect, he says he's glad he was sent to the Pacific warfront--and to Okinawa. Innocent people were killed; that is the nature of war. But if his personal knowledge of not just Japanese, but of the Okinawan language and culture saved even one life, Takejiro Higa is content Today he can tell the story of going to war--and finding his peace.

i want all the juicy details >:3c

Send me “ I want all the juicy details “ for a random fact about my muse

(This is an actual fact about Leckie, because I’m tired but this is actually super interesting:)

Leckie learnt some Pidgin English while in New Guinea. The Marines had an Australian man called Digger with them for a few months (I think??) who worked with the natives of the islands, and through interactions with him and the native people Leckie met, he managed to learn a decent amount. I doubt he kept that up after they left New Britain, but he was working closely with both Digger and the native population for a while, so that must have done something.

Day 6: Leaving Gomai tomorrow, we don’t wanna leave…

I spent my days at Gomai recording under- and over seas in a very noisy jungle on the islands around (Taukuna and Gomai, listen in previous post), diving to the reefs staring in the eye of clown-fish, painting the unbelievable colors of the reef waters, making some binaural tests on sounds of sea bottom with sand and dead corals, and exchanging with the people of Gomai whom we'll miss! 

Peter the teacher and his four children, Marta and Chris the diver, and of course all of the kids we met at the village's school when we made a presentation of the expedition. We showed a film about the project - it took a while to find a strong enough generator for the projector, in a village organized without electricity.

This afternoon I boarded a pirogue to go swim ashore with the other kids and learned a few words of the village's language with Meri, Melinda and Anna. There's about 70 local languages spoken in the Solomon, while Pidgin (mixture of Melanesian grammar and English vocabulary) is used to communicate between different islands and provinces. The kids have their local language as mother tongue, then learn pidgin then English at school.

No one lives on the west coast of Bougainville by the sea, due to the old tradition of head-hunting that was conducted by the Shortland Islanders... Peter the teacher told us. So every Thursday, a couple of boats leave Gomai towards the autonomous province of Bougainville to sell Shortland fish to people that still live up in the mountains. Tomorrow morning we’ll say farewell to the bay and the Shortlanders to sail North towards Bougainville then East New Britain Province of Papua New Guinea.

(pics below: the tiny island of Taukuna and its reefs just ashore Gomai, and kids on board Fleur de Passion checking out the hydrophone)

Allen Down Under 2

Post 241

 Aloha! We just returned from a great two week holiday in Hawaii, compliments of our two loving daughters, their husbands and my Wheaton College classmate of 1960 who retired there. Among other interesting places we visited South Point, the southernmost location in the USA, so you can say we have been in the deep, deep south.

This blog is a continuation of my Post 233 (4-4-17).

After completing our work in Darwin (in Australia’s Northern Territory) in 1988 and spending a day in Cairns (northern Queensland), Jan and I flew on to Port Moresby, the capital city of what was by then called Papua New Guinea (PNG), which had gained its independence from Australia in 1975. From there we flew in a small plane to Ukarumpa, Wycliffe’s highland center. We visited with various friends and colleagues at the center, then went to Madang on the north coast. We tested my Basic English Commentary with some of the local translators and it seemed to be helpful to them. Jan also gave a talk to a few literacy teachers.

Next stops: Buka and Bougainville islands, where we used to help the people translate the Bible into their own languages. We saw old friends at Buka and talked with them in their Halia language. At the Aropa airport near the town of Kieta on Bougainville, our confirmed bookings on Air Niugini (Air New Guinea) direct to the island nation of Vanuatu were cancelled because a pylon had been blown up, disrupting communications. We later learned that this was an early sign of unrest that eventually developed into a civil war in Bougainville.

Air Niugini put us up at the Davara Hotel at Kieta, and we and the other hotel guests enjoyed a deliciously varied dinner, followed by entertainment by a bamboo band from Buka. We spoke in Halia to young people in the band who had not previously known us. They were amazed that two white-skins knew their language! The next day Air Niugini, at their own expense, rerouted us to Vanuatu the long way around. We flew to Port Moresby, then the following day to Brisbane then Sydney (Australia) and on to Noumea (New Caledonia). We finally arrived at our destination, Port Vila, Vanuatu.

The old name for Vanuatu had been New Hebrides, a small condominium island nation formerly administered jointly by England and France. Consequently they had two national languages: English and French. At independence it was renamed Vanuatu, and English became dominant as the national language. The capitol, Port Vila, lies about 1200 miles south of Bougainville. I never saw so many ancient cars still workable and on the road, some literally held together by baling wire!

Our Wycliffe friends and former Bougainville colleagues, Skip and Jackie Firchow, had asked us to lead a workshop there for the NiVanuatuan translators who were learning to translate the Bible into their own languages. So I conducted a four week course teaching biblical culture and translation principles. Jan’s role was typing some of the translations onto computer and printing them out. Nineteen students representing thirteen local languages attended the workshop. Several expatriates (non-citizens of Vanuatu) helped with the teaching, and the NiVanuatuan students learned to translate into their languages short texts that explained biblical culture.

We also had the privilege of seeing again our friend Dorothy Dewar from New Zealand, who had been one of our students at a Wycliffe course years before. She had subsequently spent many years in Vanuatu as advisor to a project translating the New Testament into a local language, and also working with a local team to translate the Bible into Bislama, the Vanuatuan Pidgin lingua-franca.

In December, after the workshop was finished, we returned to Texas.

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We love the word of God; not least because it brings wholeness and healing. Everybody has a time in their lives when they’ve experienced emotional pain and need God’s healing.

In some of the countries in which we work where people have experienced wars, natural disasters, banditry, rape and other severe traumas, this healing is even more meaningful. We help churches work with the emotionally wounded through trauma healing workshops which apply the word of God to these deep wounds.

On 29 May – 2 June and 5-9 June, trauma healing workshops will be held in Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea (PNG). The first will be taught in English and the second in Melanesian Pidgin, a language of wider communication in PNG. Participants will learn basic biblical mental health principles related to trauma care, explore their own heart wounds and bring them to Christ for healing, and learn to help others heal from trauma.

Trauma healing specialist Sam Smucker explains that these workshops are not isolated but part of a strategy to support the church and help it to engage with Scripture well:

‘I’ve been running several trauma healing workshops here in PNG. I’ve run four Pidgin workshops already and we are planning two more workshops in June, one in English and one in Pidgin.

During these workshops  I have been teaching and training a few PNG people who have a heart for helping people heal emotionally. I want to continue running these workshops so that the people I’ve been training feel comfortable teaching and running the workshops. I would love to have a group of trained people who could go throughout PNG and run these workshops for different churches and villages. That’s my vision.

Other workshops being run in PNG include Oral Bible Storytelling and Culture Meets Scripture. Together with Trauma Healing, they are making significant contributions in equipping the Church and helping Scripture come alive in peoples’ everyday lives.’

Please will you pray:

for the workshops, that each participant will have a significant healing encounter with God and understand the principles well so that they can help others

for the people that Sam is training to be well equipped to run these workshops throughout PNG

that many others will encounter God’s love and healing as the principles of the workshops are shared in churches and communities

Sign up for Words for Life, our free magazine which is packed full of interesting and inspiring articles and also a prayer diary giving daily requests to help you pray.

From our blog

Discovering my ABC’s in PNG!

Hello family and friends,

I hope this post finds you well.  I miss you all.  Your replies to send me hurrahs bring me inexplicable joy!  And somehow, I weirdly miss the sweater weather too.  

Time apart from home, friends, church, and work life had me reflecting on my relationships with you.  I look at my list of emails and I feel so blessed to be connected with you.  You have invested some time and energy into my life, in both small and big ways, in the past and in the present.  I value you all dearly. WARNING: This post includes much updates!!!  I was pleasantly surprised how busy the past nine weeks have been here in Papua New Guinea.  A cup of coffee or tea is highly recommended to read this with! ☕️😊 Foundation of IT

I've had the privilege to teach the foundation of computer and IT to 85 students in 7 classes, where each class has 4 to 25 students.  They come from all walks of life -  primary to college students, school teachers, pastors, mothers, government employees, unemployed, etc.  For most of the classes, we used the equipment we brought from Hawaii - Rasperry Pi's and other hardware. One class broke my heart as 4 out of 5 could sorta read but could not write at all.  So I  customized the class where I can teach them how to use the computer, but at the same time teach them how to read and write as well.  Illiteracy is a major problem especially in places far from the school establishments.

As development and technology are just slowly entering this nation, computer classes are very rare and very expensive.  A group of students expressed how much these classes mean to them.  Some have never thought they could ever touch a computer in their lifetime.  Some have been praying to one day have an opportunity to learn how to use a computer.  Some have been saving up to one day afford to enroll to a computer class.  My eyes got watery fast. It must be sheer ignorance that one can easily assume that in this day and age, everyone should have seen/used a computer.  I may be teaching technology in this nation, but this nation is teaching reality and humanity in me. The Bible Translated

For hundreds of years, the people of Papua New Guinea worshiped random things as gods such as a big tree or even a child.  Demonic rituals, cannibalism, and witchcraft & sorcery practices ensued.  However, a revival in the past couple of decades occurred.  And so today, there is an openness and eagerness to know God. 

Of the 7,000+ languages in the world, 850+ languages are from this country.  Astounding fact!  Most people we meet are trilingual - they speak their village language, Pidgin ("broken English" taught by Germans), and English (taught by English and Australians). 

As part of the "End The Bible Poverty" project, our team brought tech-based tools to share The Gospel.  First is a solar-powered projector to show a movie called "Jesus Film" in the evenings.  It is a 2-hour movie on the life, death and resurrection of Christ dubbed in different languages.  We play the movie version according to the tribal language of the village/town/city we're in.  Second are 50sh mini SD cards with audio bibles that are again translated in various languages.  Some people own basic cellphones which have SD card slots. Village Living

They say you have not experienced Papua New Guinea if you have not lived in the villages.  And so we did, in four to be exact.  One village usually represents one clan - an extended family with 100 to 1,000 members.  I envy the simplicity of their lives.  Organic produce from their gardens, small straw huts as homes, barely any furniture or belongings, vast lands and forests as children's playgrounds, creeks/rivers for water needs... and unlimited coconuts!  Yaasss, coconut is life.  However, due to their remote locations, the trade-offs are no immediate access to medical clinics or hospitals, no power lines, no running water, and no to little cellphone coverage.  Oh and no bridges, so had to cross strong rivers bare feet!  This is exciting anddd terrifying, but grateful to locals who guided us in every step... literally, with our arms locked with theirs, in every step. 

Medicine is a big need in the villages. When people found out I had a first-aid kit and some medicine, there was a line up from wounds to chronic pains.  One thing I was not equipped for though was when I was bitten by a poisonous centipede.  Overnight, the venom moved from my thumb to the rest of my arm.  It was such an excruciating pain I've never felt before!  Lesson learned: bring a bigger first-aid kit and more pain killers. 

Radically generous.  This is simply how I would describe the people in the villages.  They hosted us in their homes, served us their best meals, showered us with gifts (I got a dozen handmade bags, a handful of dresses, etc), and loved and encouraged us much!  A man named Moses un-reluctantly explained it as "You are in our village. What is ours is yours."  I came to serve and to give, but I was greatly moved and felt that I was served more and had received more.  My hope and prayer is to grow such a heart of uncalculated, unjustified, radical generosity.  

Market Open Air

I had no idea what "open air" really meant until I had a microphone in one hand... in the middle of a very busy market... with close to three-hundred people surrounding me.  Open air, indeed.  After our team dramatized the good ol' Everything skit by Lifehouse, I shared a word on faith and love in action.  They were all ears, vendors and shoppers, men and women, young and old.  They listened to understand, not to condemn or ridicule.  They listened to understand, and so they understood.  Lots raised their hands to be prayed for after.  Moments like these make this journey all worth it.   Hospital Visit

Out of the eight members of our team from Hawaii, two got malaria.  I'm the only who chose to take anti-malaria pills from day one.  Though I have less chance of getting malaria, I can still get it but with the meds masking the symptoms.  That said, I was advised to get tested when I'm back home and off the meds. 

Malaria, a big threatening word for us in the western world; but it's so common here that it'd be hard to find a local who has not had it.  The hospital was full of malaria patients.  We approached every patient's bed and offered our prayers.  Everyone said yes without any hesitation.  One I cannot get my mind off of was a one-month old girl suffering from malaria and asthma.  I wouldn't even try describing her condition.  It was heartbreaking. Corporation Visit

A national secular company with 1,000 employees provides an optional time and space to meet weekly to discuss the bible.  I had the opportunity to speak in their meeting.  I focused on the topic of discovering your purpose on earth.  "It's not about you." was my introduction to faith a few years ago.  The best selling book by Rick Warren, Purpose Driven Life, was a game changer.  The talk was well-received and so we were asked to speak at a college as well.  But alas, our schedule was already packed. Prison Visit

I don't fear many things, but I'd say that my biggest fear in life was to go to prison.  The 24 hours leading to our visit to a jail with 800 prisoners was full of reflection and anxiety.  The day came and we were stripped off our cellphones, purses, jewelries, pens, and hats upon entering the facilities.  Before I could say my first word, I was all tears.  It dawned on me why I had this fear.  And so I fessed up to a room of female prisoners dressed in blue uniform, all with the same buzz hair cut, and whose eyes glistened in wonder. 

Prison represents falling short of perfection.  I am imperfect, we all are imperfect.  Prison represents brokenness.  I am broken, we all are broken.  Prison represents guilt.  I am guilty, we all are guilty.  Perhaps not of murder, but of lies, white or whatever colour we name them to be.  But when I realized these subconscious notions of what a prison represents was just half the picture, I was finally reminded to fear not.  

I've had the honour to share a word in various public settings about ten times, one even up to four hours (I literally lost my voice towards the end of it!)  But this fifteen-minute talk in prison was my most heartfelt.  So what can I share to a group of prisoners?  

Hope.  Hope that these momentary prisons we all are in, physically or metaphorically, do not define us.  Death is inevitable and no amount of good works can secure us a place in heaven - not even by abiding by the law as good citizens, and not even by me serving here in PNG.  The full picture is that God is not asking us for the unattainable perfection, but His unconditional love offers us to live a life in relationship with Him as our Father.  Such bond is what takes us through the journey of renewing our minds and hearts.  Our identity and destiny are rooted in our choice to answer God's call to be his sons and daughters.  It is a choice, the gift of free will. 

I tightly hugged as many of them as I can before we left.  It was a bittersweet day. Business Consultation

For those of you who know me well know that if there is a need, I'll try to meet it.  But if there is a need and it meets my skillset and peaks my interest, I'll relentlessly pursue it with much passion and energy.  This gets me in trouble sometimes.  Let's just say the following are beyond our team's initial definition of mission...

A local business was started by a YWAM leader to provide employment to women in the villages.  A couple of years into it, it is now ready to grow and expand its production to continuously support its cause.  I provided consultation on product packaging, marketing and branding, social media presence, online sales, etc.  And camera gear to the rescue!  I captured and produced a video to capitalize on online crowdfund sourcing.  Stay tuned for when we launch it on Indiegogo site. 

A YWAM school campus in a village is in need to replace its temporary building as it cannot withstand the strong winds and heavy rain.  It is made out of tree logs as posts, tarps and cloths as walls, and without floors.  First, I wrote their captivating story in a script, flew the drone over the property, recorded some dramatized scenes, recorded an interview of the school leaders... and voila!  An awareness and fundraising video was captured and produced to be launched on GoFundMe site.   Overcoming Challenges

It's easy to list down the discomfort and inconveniences as the so-called challenges of this trip, but they were not.  Not the sharing of a small bedroom with twelve ladies, nor the sharing of a bathroom with twenty people.  Not the two-hour hikes in the rain walking in bare feet with our big backpacks on to move from one village to another.  Not the numerous mosquito bites, ant bites, and poisonous centipede bite.  And not even the outhouses. I learned a few years back that the best way to get to know someone is not by working with them, not by living with them... but by traveling with them.  You get to see that 10% only traveling can unveil.  In the same manner, you also get to know yourself much better. Both your strengths and weaknesses are heightened.   How do I survive being the only minority in a school program where all students and 90% of its staff all come from one deeply rooted, strong culture?  Moreover, how do I survive a trip with a team of six students and a leader who all come from one deeply rooted, strong culture?  I learned to choose my battles wisely.  I stand up for finishing the video productions.  I stand up for donating all the surplus from our budget.  But for the most part, I fight through prayers.  First, thanking God for these tests are growing in me a faithful heart.  Secondly, surrendering to him our inadequacies for this load was not mine to carry to begin with.  And lastly, asking for a refreshed joy.  This helped channel my energy to get to know the locals more and therefore work on other projects on top of my main responsibilities. Grateful that though from day one in Hawaii was the most challenging time I've ever experienced culturally and socially, it made for the greatest time to grow spiritually and emotionally.  If I can turn back time, will I change anything?  No.  If I can do it all over again, will I?  Absolutely not hahah.  Along the way, I did develop some lifelong friendships.  I also learned to embrace my strengths and to face my weaknesses.  There truly is a reason for every season and that each one is a preparation for the next.  I've many takeaways and learning from this one.  This was the vessel that introduced me to PNG. And for that, I genuinely only have a thankful heart for such a time as this.   What's Next? I had peace with my direction from A to B, from quitting my job to pursuing missions school.  But from B to C, I had to think and pray through six different routes.  I hasten to say, it's not irresponsibility that I quit a career without a solidified and well-defined one, two, or five-year A to Z life plan.  I just needed and wanted to calculate for some room for God to reveal to me his plans that I know are greater than mine ever will be.  Because with or without faith as a factor, life do not fully materialize anyway according to meticulous time planning and goal setting.  Yes I do have big dreams, but I've experienced that God-sized dreams are much much better!  

It's a persistent prayer and pursuit to see certain doors close and certain doors open.  This is how I find confidence in pursuing my B to C.  And yes, sometimes certain doors are left ajar for the time-being.  It's been a process of hearing, obeying, and trusting God.

Business with a mission, otherwise known as a social enterprise, is where my heart has grown to focus on.  I am an advocate for alleviating physical and spiritual poverty through sustainable mission.  How fitting it is then to marry business with mission - to build a business whose mission is beyond profits, but to maximize its human and socioeconomic impact. 

Papua New Guinea peeled my eyes open to see a land of opportunities to pursue that passion.  My vision is to see God’s transformation of this nation by using business as a tool to sustain the education, employment, and empowerment of the people through the use of natural resources and technology.  I have three business prospects.  One of which I do not have any experience or background on, but one that has the most doors opening for the greatest potential and connections!  How do I distinguish my big dream from God-sized dream?  The latter is usually beyond my immediate comprehension and capacity.  It requires me to grow my faith and to lean in to wise counsel.  I believe this particular business prospect is exactly that. I cannot end a post without sharing some media of sort.  This 200 GB worth of media I captured must be utilized somehow.  So here is a minute video of my ever so wonderful and blessed time in Papua New Guinea - https://vimeo.com/205994204.  How do I look in a purple mary blouse dress??  Hahah only in PNG!  I have grown to appreciate the modesty in their clothing. Thank you for your support, prayers, and interest in my journey.  Please let me know if you'd like to stay posted as I explore my B to C.  

Much Love,  Janice [original email sent on 03/02/17]

Life as Our Ancestors Lived It

January 11, 2016 In most of the time human beings have lived on Earth, it was in circumstances very different from those we encounter now. I learned about how people might have lived in Stone Age cultures when I lived in one fifty years ago. I chose to do so in order to examine facial expressions and gestures that could not have been influenced by contact with outsiders or the media. Would they be the same as I had observed in many literate cultures, or would there be new expressions I had never seen before? (They were the same.) Even if I saw familiar expressions and gestures, might they signal entirely different emotions than they did in literate cultures? (They did not.) I knew that time was running out; soon there would be no more isolated cultures uninfluenced by outsiders and the media. The culture within which I lived, the South Fore in the highlands of New Guinea, was overtaken by the media and material culture just two years after my second visit in 1968. The people I studied traveled less than ten miles from the villages into which they were born during their lifetimes. They lived in a series of small villages, each of less than two-hundred persons. There wasn't much privacy, as we know it today. The South Fore people were cannibals eating only people they had cared about. From a public health viewpoint it would have been safer if they had eaten their enemies who died in battle. Battle victims should pass on less lethal germs to those who ate them than loved ones who died of some disease. But that is not what was practiced. Since I never learned their language, I had to rely on what I observed, and the answers to my questions provided by a few boys who had learned Pidgin (a lingua franca), which I also learned. My knowledge of their motivations is very limited, but since most of their lives were lived out in the open, not behind closed doors, I could see most of their actions. The small huts in which they lived had no doors. Assignations occurred in the bushes, where intimate acts could be hidden from sight. I was told that violence occurred when a man unexpectedly came upon his presumably exclusive mate in the midst of intimacy with another man. The inability to completely hide sexual activity is one of the biggest differences from urban life in industrialized societies today when private rooms can be rented by the hour. Houses, or more precisely huts, were circled around a large open space where children played and food was cooked and consumed. In Wanitabe, the village where I lived, the men lived together in a men's house, with each woman and her children in a separate hut. The village was surrounded by fences which kept the pigs inside the central area, as the pigs lived with their female owner and her children. Pigs had multiple roles: they were treasured pets, money, and on special occasions slaughtered for food. Once or twice a month more than one village would meet together for dancing, singing, communally cooking and killing a few pigs which were eaten barely cooked. Daily, everyone cooked their food in the common fire. Jointly eating what was cooked did not occur every day, but often within a given week or two. Men appeared to engage in two activities: maintaining and repairing the fences that surrounded a village, and hunting. Birds were the prey, a bow and arrow the weapon. I didn't observe a high level of success, but it must have been sufficient to maintain their predatory attempts. Women were the tractors who tilled the land adjacent to but outside the village, providing the vegetables that made up most of what daily was consumed. A wealthy man had more than one wife. There did not appear to be a ruler or king. There appeared to be a joint concern for the welfare of young children, who acted and were treated as if they were in the care of all adults. Vegetables were abundant, seeming to be in sufficient supply to avoid ownership conflicts. The most apparent differences in how they and urban dwellers today live are: Privacy; we have much more than they had. Shared responsibility for child rearing; they had more than we have. Conflict over resources; they appeared to have few, while some of us have many. Sexual segregation of where adults resided; they did, we don't. Authority or status differentiations; we have it explicitly, they didn't. Acknowledged ruler (by inheritance, election, or force) we have, they didn't. We don't have the choice to live as the South Fore did or, presumably, as many of our Stone Age ancestors did. Are the ways most of us live our lives today in urban settings better than how our preliterate ancestors lived? I think better in some ways, worse in others. Thinking through the answer is enlightening, so I leave it for each reader to do. Dr. Paul Ekman is a well-known psychologist and co-discoverer of micro expressions. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine in 2009. He has worked with many government agencies, domestic and abroad. Dr. Ekman has compiled over 40 years of his research to create comprehensive training tools to read the hidden emotions of those around you. To learn more, please visit: www.paulekman.com.

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