Yasminko Halilovic, "We Grew Up on the Battlefield, Sarajevo 1992-1995" Overview and Comments - Voices of Children Who Experienced the Bosnian Conflict
This time, we would like to introduce "Bokutachi wa Senjo ni Kodachi Sarajevo 1992-1995" written by Yasminko Halilovic, translated by Mitsuyo Kakuta, and supervised by Zen Senda, published by Shueisha International in 2015.
Let's take a quick look at the book.
The four-year siege of Sarajevo that began in 1992 was one of the most tragic wars in modern history, with most of the victims being civilians. The international community was shocked by the indiscriminate killing of civilians by snipers from the mountains.
Twenty years have passed since the war ended, and those who were once "children of war" are now in their 30s. The author of this book, Jasminko Halilovic, who was born in Sarajevo and was also four years old when the war began, called out to them in this book.
This book, carefully selected from thousands of messages gathered through social networking services, is a book filled with the joys, anger, sorrows, and joys of such "children in wartime. Here is the "war you don't know".
The volume ends with an essay written by former Japanese national soccer team coach Ivica Osim (born in Sarajevo).
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The book is a compilation of voices collected through social networking sites by Jasminko Halilovic, who experienced the Bosnian conflict as a child. The first half of the book gives a brief overview of the Bosnian conflict and the siege of Sarajevo, and from there you will hear the voices of those who actually experienced the conflict. The book is also shocking.
The author describes the book's origins as follows
The year is 2010. About 15 years have passed since the war ended. After elementary school, I graduated from Sarajevo First Secondary School and went on to the Faculty of Economics at the University of Sarajevo (secondary school in the Bosnian academic system is equivalent to high school in Japan). While I was a secondary school student, I started a blog called "Sarajevo Thinking" with my friend Asha. Our project was well received and became the first blog in Bosnia-Herzegovina to be published in book form. Since then, I have published several poems and a collection of essays with more serious photos about Sarajevo, Sarajevo: Where My City Met My Life.
During this period, I had been thinking about writing something myself on the subject of children caught up in the war. I tried a few times, but I realized that I didn't have much to offer, given the number of excellent diaries that had already been published. Then, as I talked to others, I realized that we all have something unique inside of us. I decided to open the book up to everyone.
In June 2010, he invited people who had spent their childhood in Sarajevo during the war to answer the question, "What was war like for you as a child?" in a short recollection.
Thanks to friends, sponsored media, and social networks, the idea quickly spread to the generation that grew up in Sarajevo during the war. For practical reasons, we limited the setting of our recollections to Sarajevo. We knew that it would be too much for us to collect stories from outside Sarajevo, and that we would have a huge number of recollections from Sarajevo alone. Of course, it is impossible to know what was going on in Bosnia as a whole from these recollections alone. However, I am convinced that no matter which city or war, the experiences of the children involved must have been the same. That is why I have limited my call to those who grew up in Sarajevo.
Soon after, we received more than 1,500 messages from people in many parts of the world. This book thus became the first to investigate the experience of growing up in wartime Sarajevo, and after two years of editing, it was decided to include approximately 1,000 messages that tell the story of this generation. We tried to balance the main emotions and frequent themes, while sequencing the reminiscences in a way that would be balanced.
In this book, we decided to select only the indirect recollections in their "ー" section and to include many pure testimonies directly experienced by the individuals themselves. We dared to duplicate even similar testimonies or those with the same content, if they might be useful in understanding what it was like to grow up under wartime conditions.
Each of these recollections is an answer to the question of what war means to a child. It is important to remember that behind each short reminiscence lies an individual and his or her unique perspective on life.
Shueisha International, Bokutachi wa Senjo de Ikiru Sarajevo 1992-1995, written by Yasminko Halilovic, translated by Mitsuyo Tsunoda, supervised by Zen Senda, p. 36-37.
What does it mean to live under conflict? And what does it mean to experience it as a child?
In this book, you will be confronted with that straight away.
The translator, Mitsuyo Tsunoda, describes the significance of this book as follows. I will read it in its entirety because it is very important for learning about the Bosnian conflict.
In 2013, I visited Sarajevo on a TV assignment. It all started with a guidebook. I happened to pick up a book titled "A Travel Guide to Sarajevo: A Guide to the First Ever Battlefield City" (Sanshusha, translated by FAMA, P3 art and enviroment), which introduces the city of Sarajevo during the war. What is surprising is that the city has become a battlefield. A town where ordinary people live is besieged by the enemy, and ordinary people are targeted. It is as if Shibuya or Shinjuku were blocked off and passersby and shoppers were targeted. And yet, the text introducing the town and its lifestyle is ironic and full of humor. It says that concerts, plays, and soccer games are being held in towns under attack.
What is this town? I thought so. The war ended almost 20 years ago, but I wanted to see the town and meet the people who live there. That is why I went there. I met all kinds of people.the aforesaidThe woman who organized the guidebook for the "Mazda" series, the violinist who continued to give concerts, the mothers who lost their children in the war, and the girls who were children at the time. I also met Yasminko, the collector of this book, at that time.
Jasminko, who is still in his twenties, used the Internet to call on those who were children between 1992 and 1995, when the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, known as the Bosnian-Herzegovina conflict, was still going on. What was war like for you? He asked. He himself was four years old when the war started.
When the war ended, his parents told him that as a child he looked lonely. He was a child and his parents told him that he seemed to miss it because the sounds of artillery, which he had counted until then, were no longer heard. In other words, these children found pleasure in counting the sounds of artillery shells and collecting bullets. I thought to myself, "Of course, children don't know what's going on," and the next moment he said, "In that crazy world, you can't just go around counting shells and collecting bullets. In such an abnormal world, "humor is a way of life," he said. Well, I thought. It's not that children don't understand; they know instinctively without words. Children fight by playing, by laughing, by having fun. They continued to search for fun with a will that would never yield to such things, even in the midst of siege, shells, explosions, and severed lifelines. I told Yasuminko what I thought. He said, "Yes, that's right. Living a normal life was a source of resistance.
The enemy occupied the hills and mountains surrounding the city of Sarajevo and shot people walking down the streets. In the midst of this situation, people went to concerts, to soccer games, and to the theater. This was also the struggle of people deprived of their daily lives.
The people of Sarajevo have had their lifelines cut off and their main source of food is "lunch packs" sent by humanitarian organizations. As this book shows, children are always hungry and dreaming of chocolate. But as I talked to the people of Sarajevo and Yasminko, I thought to myself, "Food sustains life. Food sustains life. But what sustains "life" are musicians, movies, plays, books, sports, conversation, laughter, and invisible hope. Without such things, life may live, but "life" will be eroded away. I thought of the country in which I live, which calls for "self-restraint" whenever something serious happens. We are told to refrain from singing, laughing, and joking, and if we do not refrain, we are looked at with a white eye, and sometimes even the people on the street hurl accusations at us.
Shueisha International, Bokutachi wa Sengenjo ni Kodachi Sarajevo 1992-1995, written by Yasminko Halilovic, translated by Mitsuyo Kakuta, supervised by Zen Senda, p. 4-5.
The children didn't know what was going on; they knew what was going on. They understood, and they were fighting to find something to look forward to."
I was very impressed with this. In fact, as you read the book, you will see what I mean. I got goosebumps and almost cried many times while reading it. It is clear that a child's point of view is much more vivid than we as adults can imagine. I urge you to pick up this book and listen to what they have to say.
I was also struck by the fact that the adults also went to concerts, soccer, and enjoyed theater in order to recover their lost routines. I first read this book before I started my trip in 2019, so I didn't know it at the time, but it is actually a very important book about the German-Soviet war inSiege of Leningrad (1944)The same thing had happened when the
The Soviet metropolis of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was besieged by the Nazis during the Russo-German War, a catastrophe that left over 800,000 people starving to death.
Even in this hellish situation, for some people, it was culture and art that sustained them, and there were those who fought to preserve their humanity in a hell where even cannibalism was rampant.
In the above book, I came to learn that human beings do not just live on the food they eat, but on the culture that makes them human.
The siege of Sarajevo, which took place some 50 years after the siege of Leningrad, was similarly a time when people survived on culture, humor, and hope.
And one more point. In the above sentence, the translator stated.
."I thought of the country in which I live, which calls for "self-restraint" whenever something serious happens. We are told to refrain from singing, laughing, and joking, and if we do not refrain, we are looked down upon, sometimes even by ordinary people, and I wonder how we can keep "life" alive in such an extraordinary situation. "
As I mentioned earlier, I first read this book just before I left for my trip in 2019. At the time, I had the feeling that it was true... but I didn't take it that seriously.
But what should we think of this author's proposal now, in 2021, when we are sinking into the Corona disaster...
We now realize how frightening this is.
There have not been many times when tolerance has been lost and cooperation with others has become more difficult than it is today.
If one deviates even slightly from what the higher-ups say, he or she will be looked at with a white eye and subjected to a general attack. Isn't this exactly what is happening today?
What do you all think about the author's proposal?
From this aspect, I think we can say that the Bosnian conflict is not a conflict that is unrelated to us, occurring in a distant country, but a problem that directly affects our way of life.
And the translator continues.
At the end of our conversation, Yasuminko said that this book is my anti-war intention. At that time, I wondered if it would be possible to introduce this book to Japan. I wondered if it would be possible to deliver the words of those who have worked hard to protect the ordinary in the midst of their unusual daily lives.
The woman who organized the guidebook I found said. 'Many people don't think bad things will happen to them.' War comes one day at a time. We don't realize it until it really happens. Even when it starts, we think, 'It will be over soon. We think, "It can't get any worse. And so they were forced to live under the extraordinary circumstances of war for four years. I was horrified to hear this. I was horrified to hear that, because I could imagine the reality of being caught up in the war without realizing it.
The conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina is extremely complex, and it is not easy to understand the extraordinary situation in which a town is besieged and attacked. But the voices of the former children gathered here are terribly simple. What is war? It is neither a cause nor an interpretation, but rather a simple statement made by the children.
Shueisha International, Bokutachi wa Sengenjo ni Kodachi Sarajevo 1992-1995, written by Yasminko Halilovic, translated by Mitsuyo Tsunoda, supervised by Zen Senda, p. 5-6.
Here, the "Many people don't think bad things will happen to them." War comes one day at a time. We don't realize it until it really comes. Even when it starts, we think, "It will be over soon. We think, "It can't get any worse. And so they were forced to live under the extraordinary circumstances of war for four years. I was horrified to hear this. I was horrified to hear that, because I could imagine the reality of being caught up in the war without realizing it. The experience described by the translator was exactly what I experienced.
I was told the exact same thing by a local guide who had experienced the Bosnian conflict. It is amazingly the same. My experience at that time was.Crossing Even a Single Alleyway is a Risk to Your Life! Learning about the Bosnian Conflict in Downtown Sarajevo, Bosnia Part 6"I summarized it in an article in the "The first time I was told about it," and it still left a very strong impression on me. And shortly after I was told this, I was reminded in a disgusting way that violence can happen to you at any moment. I will never forget my experience in Bosnia.
This book is written with a very different flavor from ordinary history and reference books.
But it is very distinctive in that it gives a straightforward sense of the horror of the conflict.
I would highly recommend this book.
The above is "J. Halilovic, "We Grew Up on the Battlefield, Sarajevo 1992-1995," What the Bosnian Conflict Looks Like from the Children's Perspective.
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