Half-Forgotten Things: Vignettes From A Life- A Memoir

Half-Forgotten Things focuses on the Aberasturis, a prominent Spanish Basque family in Malitbog, a town in the island of Southern Leyte, the Philippines.The author's father, Dionisio Aberasturi, a Basque from Vizcaya, Spain who came to the Philippines at the early part of the 20th century, at the hub of his family and of this memoir, is defined not only by his unshakable uprightness, but by his actions, all the more remarkable because they are not fictional. When the author is eight years old, Pearl Harbor is bombed and life on the Philippines, and everywhere else, changes dramatically. It is riveting to hear the details of life under Japanese Occupation from the author who, while extremely knowledgeable about the Second World War, nonetheless writes with a child's clarity of vision. Particularly compelling is the child's narrative of the Japanese occupation during World War II, eye-opening in its unflinching depiction of brutality interspersed with the ongoing routine of everyday life.Two sisters of the author are at a boarding school in a Basque village of Larrauri near Guernica when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. This event is vividly recounted. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, "the greatest of all naval battles," is described in precise, almost cinematic, detail, with the young author a witness to the beginnings of this definitive historical event. After the war, since the U. S. Army needs abaca, it becomes possible to restart the family business. The author works hard alongside his father until he goes off to college. While he is away, his father dies in a tragic accident, and the author returns for the funeral. The absence of his father is as palpable as his presence always was. The reader is swept with the enormous emptiness he leaves.

Author: Nilda Aberasturi

Publisher: Nilda A. Aberasturi

Publication Date: Sep 11, 2015

Number of Pages: 281 pages

Language: English

Binding: Paperback

ISBN-10: 0692007636

ISBN-13: 9780692007631