Kansas, who was now teaching in a rural-region a continent and many-cultures-away, added, "Another semi-retired resident of Barton County was named Hubert Oches. Hubert described to me not only what his farm and school life had been like for him in a German-speaking immigrant family in rural Kansas during the Depression years of his childhoo, but Hubert , also, gave a fairly good and truthful description in German about what some of his other activities were with the OSS, the forerunner of the current CIA, both at the end of WWII in Germany--and during the Occupation over the subsequent 4 years.
Kansas noted, "Until the occupation began with the invasion of Germany in 1945, Mr. Oches had been the navigator on an air force bomber over Nazi-occupied Europe. However, due to his facility in speaking German so well, Mr. Oches was later assigned in occupied Germany to carrying out many special translation duties, i.e. related to prosecuting war criminals and running the occupation of, in, and around Munich, Bavaria through 1948. In addition, under the auspices of the OSS, Hubert Oches helped contribute to the setting-up of the new international airlines system of modern Europe."
"One of Mr. Oches more troubling duties was when he had to oversee his commanders decision to displace thousand of Germans from their own homes in Munich. This was done in 1945 in order that U.S. officers and other occupying troops and staff could live in them throughout the period of occupation and until appropriate base housing could be constructed. In this way, Oches came to oversee the displacement of a one entire surviving neighborhood of Munich, where several blocks of houses had surprisingly managed to withstand the tremendous Allied bombing of that city."
"Oches was ordered to go into that surviving neighborhood and inform the residents that their homes were being requisitioned for an unknown duration. Next, Officer Oches had to organize the inventory of all these homes for these residents, in order to make certain that American troops and officers (in their desire for post-war souvenirs to be sent back home) did not loot these properties too severely. While this was an unpleasant task, indeed, Ochse noted, 'Some of the residents who had been moved or kicked-out of their own homes were soon allowed back in to oversee their property. However, they did so as hired maids, butlers, or gardeners for the occupying authorities.'"
Kansas noted, "Hubert Oches enjoyed the excitement of the occupation and his being allowed at such a young age to contribute to the building of a new nation after Germany's surrender. Specifically, after the fascists had been defeated in Germany, Oches was very proud of having helped set up the first all-European network of airlines. Nonetheless, despite his having enjoyed these and responsibilities that the war era had afforded him, Oches returned to the U.S in 1948 to start his Kansas life over-again in Great Bend City where he still owned car dealerships."
"Oches only returned for the first time to Germany and Munich again in the mid-1980s as part of a tour of Europe with his wife. As she didn't speak any German, the couple had opted to go on a package tour for Americans. Finally, in Munich, whereby Hubert Oches felt he knew the city and its history fairly well, Oches and his wife determined to prepare to leave the American tour group to go off on some short tour by themselves. Nevertheless, since Munich had continued to change quite a bit in the intervening decades, former officer and navigator Hubert Oches approached and asked the young German female tour guide for a set of directions out to Dachau, the infamous Nazi-era concentration camp north of the city." Meanwhile, Kansas continued, "Mr. Oches related how that young Bavarian tour guide responded irritably to his request for help in making his way out to Dachau. She had asked him with derision, 'Don't you know that the stories about the atrocities at Dachau are made up or are in general exaggerated. Why do you want to go out there?'"
"Hubert Oches, who had served formerly as translator out at Dachau and for occupying forces in Southern Germany after the war, responded with loud and angry indignation in the best German he could afford to the uninformed young Bavarian : 'Das stimmt ueberhaupt nicht! Ich war da in dem Lager am Ende des Krieges!' or That is absolutely incorrect! I was there in the camp immediately at the end of the war!"
Kansas noted, "Later, in mid-1989, at the end of that same decade, Mr. Oches helped translate again in Germany as part of a delegation from Great Bend's Sister-City International program as it traveled to a small town in southwest Germany, Villengen-Schwenningen. On this trip he helped the city of Great Bend form an international peace partnership in Germany--just as a few hundred miles to the northeast, the Berlin Wall was about to come down. This school-to-school partnership program had begun in Great Bend starting in the mid-1980s as the local high school in Great bend began to offer German language for the first time in many decades."
Kansas added with pride in his voice, "I was running that very same exchange program between high schools the year I met Mr. Oches. That was one reason I chose to conduct the interviews about German--speaking settlers of Barton County, i.e. before the present generation forgets the heritage of their forefathers."
"Wakarimashitaka?"
Dachau photo from the month, April 1945, of the camp's liberation. A civilian breaks down at seeing the half-burnt body of one of the camps inmates. Dachau was the first NAZI concentration camp and became the model for most of the thousands that followed. Thirty-six thousand from all over Europe died here. Hundreds of thousands of others suffered here-many being sent to other camps. Ojii-san stated with a chuckle, " Before ... going to China I ... had never ... learned to speak Chinese [laughing]. There had been no ... foreign teachers or Assistant Language Teachers [ALTs] of Chinese to teach us ... 'living Chinese.' We knew soldiers only knew the Chinese kanji or symbols used in ... our own alphabet ... prior to the war.... I knew how to read ... kanji ... which helped only a ... little ... in ... the ... mountain village where we ... were ... stationed ... Only ... through writing ... in the sand or on scraps of paper ... at first ... could ... we make ourselves ... understood ... or communicate with the villagers.... I slowly ... learned to ... speak quite a ... a bit of the ... local ... tongue ... or dialect before.... I was sent ... back to ... Japan."
One last time, Kansas' mind was wandering.
He thought, "This unequal conversation with Ojii-san reflects a great deal about both my life-long preoccupations with learning and my occupations--teaching history and languages.
Kansas continued, "My occupation in Japan was specifically to be an assistant language teacher--or ALT--as part of one of the largest cultural educational exchange efforts ever undertaken. The program was called the Japanese Exchange Teacher (JET) and it has brought over 40,000 foreigners to live and work in public and private schools throughout the islands of the formerly fairly isolated economic superpower over the past few decades. The various Japanese government creators and sponsors of the JET program have sought to promote the developed of more well-rounded or international citizens in the 21st century."
"However, the JET program was remarkable in two important areas of neglect for an exchange program of its size. First, it required effectively little or no foreknowledge of the Japanese language on behalf of the participants or the incoming teachers. Second, little or no Japanese language training opportunities were made available to many of those ALTs who were located in rural prefectures. I, myself, had the opportunity only about once a month to meet with a tutor of Japanese who lived several kilometers away from me.. Meanwhile, at work I was generally expected to speak in English most of the time in the teacher's lounge, while planning lessons, or when I was team-teaching in the classroom."
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