Pray, But Still Study: Norma Bolosan, an essay by her eldest grandson

        Imagine you are eating a minuscule dinner of rice with your family when Japanese soldiers knock on the door. A few unintelligible words are spoken, then the men take your father and leave your house. Silence. You don't understand what has happened, but your mother takes your hands and leads you and your siblings in silent prayer. Your father later returns unharmed. He survived this night, but maybe not the next. My grandmother, Norma Bolosan, was a young child during World War II. She grew up in the Philippines but, because of the war, could not go to school. She later started medical school in the Philippines, but when the opportunity arose for her to move to the United States and earn a nursing degree, she jumped at the chance. Norma Bolosan is currently a nurse in Hawaii but was born a Filipino and Chinese Roman Catholic with eight other siblings in the Philippines.

        My grandmother, or Lola ( grandmother in Tagalog), had a rough childhood because resources were spread thin, and only made thinner when the war broke out in 1941.

My grandfather, Eloy Koh, an accountant, and my grandmother, Graciana, a home maker, had nine children together. Eloy had married her out of love, something that went against the arranged marriage custom of his family. Eloy was supposed to have married a young Chinese doctor. Eloy was the first son of a wealthy Chinese man. But for love, he eloped with Graciana, an 18 year old bride, and lost his claim to his father’s wealth. They raised a devoutly Catholic family. There were five boys and four girls. My great-aunt Lydia was the eldest, eleven years older than my grandmother. The five boys, Elisio, Efren, Herman, Eloy Jr., Nestor, were born before my grandmother made the scene. Her sisters Arsenia and Priscilla are 2 and 4 years younger than Lola respectively.

When Lola was two years old, she broke her leg falling down the stairs which led to her family’s apartment. Her father immediately ran out in a panic, not realizing that he was wearing only his boxers, and picked her up. He sprinted with her to the hospital. Since they were living in Manila, they had resources nearby. The doctors wanted to amputate the leg because it was broken in three places and they thought it wouldn't heal. Fortunately, her father convinced them to put Norma into a cast and she eventually recovered. She has foggy memories of being constrained in a full leg cast. If they did not live in the city, surely my grandmother would have lost that leg. But their living situation had a dark consequence once the war started.

By 1941, Norma was about 3 years old. The Japanese occupied Manila. Once a multicultural icon of the Pacific, it quickly became over run with hostile Japanese forces. These forces took all the resources like food and water from the citizenry and left very little for the residents. Norma's father was taken away many times by Japanese soldiers for questioning. The Japanese would round up all the men in her village. Then a man with a hood over his face would point to whom he even felt was collaborating with the Guerrilla forces. Anyone to whom he pointed was never seen again. It didn’t take long before the family looked to other accommodations.

Her eldest brother Elisio was a very young teen, maybe 13 or 14 years old, when the Japanese occupied the city and the Koh family’s life was put on hold. School was stopped for all the children. Elisio took to the woods and aided the guerrilla soldiers. He helped the American forces. Through his connections,  the Koh family moved to a remote province to find food. Elisio knew other people in the resistance. The province had a kind farmer who took in Norma’s family in exchange for help with the work. There were few people there, and while she had her siblings to play with, there was not the busyness of the city or school friends. Sometimes Elisio would send Klim powdered milk for the little ones to drink. The war was not easy for anyone, let alone a young child in a war zone.

Norma Bolosan's early education was very sparse compared to education today or education before WWII. Because of the Japanese Occupation (1941-1945) there was no public schooling. This caused Norma to miss kindergarten and preschool and go directly into 1st grade. However, education during the Japanese occupation consisted only of going to church. The church taught her how to share, and to be kind to your neighbor. The church also taught other important skills that preschools normally teach. Japanese soldiers supervised and taught the children Japanese words and songs during Sunday school. They would start by saying what sounded like “Ohio.” This was “good morning,” in Japanese.  In response the children were supposed to also say “Ohio.” However the children would say, “Ohiop,” which means “you animals,” in Tagalog. This small resistance was remembered fondly by Norma. While she could do very little to fight the forces of the world, she could at least remember calling the Japanese occupiers “animals,” directly to their faces. The Japanese soldiers only thought that they were saying good morning. After the Japanese occupation ended, American soldiers brought English books for the schools because the Japanese soldiers had destroyed many of the earlier English books. Norma learn to read, write, and speak in English. This also caused all of her high school classes to be in English. Only the Filipino language class was in still Tagalog.

Things were much better after the Japanese occupation was over. The Filipino people depended heavily on the American shipments.

“During the war, … resources were hard to come by. Right after the war, the Americans were sending food to Manila. Sardines, peanut butter and rice were distributed at certain areas of the city. You lined up to get some... Because it was based on how many people were in your family, we'd get 11 cans of sardines because we had 9 kids and 2 adults... We had so many bottles of peanut butter and bags of rice. The Americans sent us relief. ”

Even though her childhood years were hard, that is not to say there was no joy to be found. Her family participated in the yearly town fiesta centered around the Catholic Church. There would be a procession of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The whole town would prepare foods to share with each other and people would invite friends from all over for this fiesta.

        They also had their own traditions within the family. Even though money was scarce, for each person’s birthday, her mother would prepare a chicken and pancit, a noodle dish. Her mother taught them that noodles signify long life and that you should not break noodles because of this. For Christmastime, they didn’t set up a tree like we do here. They would hang a star shaped paper lantern that they’d make out of bamboo and paper. The gifts weren’t noisy toys, but usually new shoes or new clothes.

The war years were terrible on Norma’s mother, my great grandmother, Graciana Koh. She moved her 9 children via caribou (a type of water buffalo) drawn cart miles from their apartment in the city. Her husband and eldest daughter quickly opted to move back to the city for work. During the war, her eldest son Elisio, would be out with the resistance for days at a time. Directly after the war, Elisio joined the guerrilla forces. Every day during the occupation was filled with menial labor to earn their keep on the farm. After the occupation was over, “she just went downhill. She died about 5 years later. She was only 43 years old in 1950. It must have been very stressful on her.”

Her mother’s illness and death changed Norma’s focus once again. At the time, her eldest sister was away at university or training in the hospital. Her father continued to work to support the family. Her brothers opted to work right out of high school as opposed to continuing for higher education. While her eldest sister Lydia organized family life and assigned chores, it fell to Norma to care for her siblings and her father. She cooked and cleaned, likely more than a child who still had a mother in the house. However, after Graciana’s death, Eloy who had once married for love, now took a wife out of practicality and obligation.

Eloy saw how hard his children worked at keeping the family functioning. Within the year of his wife’s death, Eloy married again. His new wife was named Felicidad. They married shortly after my great grandmother’s death as Felicidad was pregant. Norma’s step mother was nicknamed Kabayo by Graciana’s children. In Tagalog, it means horse. The origin of the nickname is a little ambiguous. She was not kind and loving to Norma’s siblings. She could not understand her husband’s misguided need to pay for his children’s higher education. At one point, Kabayo made Eloy get an apartment just for the two of them and the baby they had together. That way she didn’t need to be around his children.

        When she graduated from high school, Norma's father told her go to school or get a job. She chose to go to school. Following in the steps of her sister, Norma decided to join the medical profession and went to the University of Santo Tomas  in the Philippines to become a doctor. With this good education  Norma was finally starting to have something good happen in her life.

        Two months after she started studying to become a doctor, Norma got word that would change the course of her life. Her eldest sister Lydia was a medical resident in Hawaii. Lydia invited Norma to come to Hawaii to study nursing. She readily agreed.

        My grandmother is a strong and intelligent woman. After landing in Hawaii she started a new course and became a nurse even though she could have easily became a doctor and been wealthy in the Philippines. She left the Philippines not just for herself but for her future family. She had hopes that they would have a better life living in the U.S.

The Koh women were driven. Norma and her sisters all pursued education in medical fields. Her sisters Lydia and Arsenia got their medical degrees in the Phillipines but moved to the United States. Norma got her diploma in nursing. Priscilla became a radiology tech after her sisters sponsored her immigration to the United States.

Lydia and Norma were very close despite the difference in their age. Lydia was always head strong and opinionated, even before she became a doctor. Her younger siblings always called her the Commander in Chief. When Norma arrived in Hawaii, Lydia was newly married to a young man who was introduced to her via his sister, a nursing instructor at St. Francis Hospital, Genedina Bolosan. Lydia’s husband Mauricio also had 3 brothers; Domingo, Onofre, and Juan Bolosan. Onofre and Juan were still in high school and grade school respectively. Domingo, who was eight years older than Norma, had been in the army and already had earned his degree. He was a veteran of both WWII and the Korean war. His service was done, but he had a job with the federal government as a civil servant. Over the course of many family functions, dances at nursing school, and shared babysitting duties for Lydia and Mauricio’s daughter, Norma and Domingo got to know each other. By the time Norma completed her nursing degree, Domingo and she were headed for the altar.

Together they had four kids, the youngest of which is my mother.  Both she and Apo (grandfather in Ilocano)  worked full time for their entire adult lives. She was a nurse working in a clinic setting with her sister Dr. Lydia Bolosan. Her husband Domingo worked as an office worker and later as a pest controller on the military bases on Oahu, HI. With their modest incomes, they sent all four children to private school for both elementary and high school. She boasts that all four of her children have their degrees. Her eldest Dwight, has his MBA and her youngest son Norman, has his DDS. Her middle son David is a corporate chef for a multi-state Italian restaurant chain. My mother has her BSN, RN, but stays home with me and my sisters. Lola boasts 7 grand children, of which I’m the first.

When asked what values were important to her, she cautioned that we should always remember what is important:  God and family. We should try to be good citizens. We should always study and maybe through an education we can get somewhere in the world. She thinks that if she had not gotten her education, she’d probably still be in the Philippines and likely would be dead by now. “Trust in God, but you won’t get good grades unless you work. Pray, but still study.”

It is easy to look back and see how these values were active in her life. She and her family are all devout Catholic Christians. Her brother Elisio risked all to help his family and his country. Norma married a veteran of 2 wars. Her sisters all helped each other come to the United States and to earn their degrees. On her husband’s and her own modest income, they sent four children through private schools and universities. Those values directed her through her life despite all the turns it has taken. She says that even though she doesn’t have much in the bank to show for it, her children and grand children are the fruits of her labor, her treasures. To her, we sparkle as much as gold.

Throughout this whole Culture fair I have found out a lot about my grandmother I have learned about the sacrifices that she made so that I could have a better life than what she lived through. Even though her future family was just a vague concept when she decided to get on that plane to the United States, I’m glad she made that choice. I am now proud that I am going to Hawaii this summer to stay with my grandmother for a month. And in the words of my grandmother, “Pray, but still study.”

Attached: Culture fair paper.odt

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