ABSTRACT
This chapter moves from publicly available cultural artifacts to a private information source about World War II family oral narratives through a case study of three families in Yunhe County, Zhejiang Province, which was the target of the Zhejiang Jiangxi offensive, 1942, and Japanese biological warfare (BW) attacks. Through interviews with seven women about their wartime experiences, it examines the informational value of their private recollections voluntarily shared, and discusses the role of family oral narratives as a source of information about World War II. The chapter treats women's oral narratives as an information source parallel to youth literature and discusses the historical accuracy of this source, its availability to young people, and the implication of its patterns. The general wartime history of Zhejiang and the specific history of BW attacks, which saw an inestimable number of victims in the province, are hardly visible in Chinese youth literature.
