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IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE that there were Asian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, not only because of the geographical distance, but also because of the political situation in Asia at that time. In Indonesia, Sukarno was leading an independence movement against Dutch colonialism. Gandhi was waging a nonviolent, "non-cooperative movement" against British rule. In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh was struggling against French colonialism. Burma was filled with unrest against British rule. The Filipinos were fighting for their own independence from the United States. Korea had already been swallowed by Japan, and China was fighting for her own survival against Japanese invasion.
Clearly during the Spanish Civil War, Asians were preoccupied with their own national crises. Yet, 15 years ago, when we began the project described in this article, we were amazed to find out that there were several Chinese volunteers who fought for the Spanish Republic. In our subsequent quest for information about them, we faced the reality that although there was vast literature about the International Brigades, there was only scant mention of the Asian volunteers. They were rarely identified and personal information about them was almost nonexistent. This prompted us to seek archival materials throughout the world, and to urgently search them for evidence of surviving International Brigadeers who fought alongside Asian volunteers, and also their relatives and friends.
The research took us from New York to Europe and Asia. Archival research was carried out at the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) at Brandeis University,1 the New York Public Library, the National Archives in Washington D.C., the Yenjin Library at Harvard University, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the International Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (IISG) in the Netherlands, the Bibliotheque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine in Paris, the Marx Memorial Library in London, El Archivo Historico Nacional Seccion Guerra Civil de Salamanca, El Archivo General Militar de Avila, La Hemeroteca Municipal in Madrid, El Archivo General in Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores in Madrid, La Biblioteca Nacional in the Ministerio de Educacion y Cultura in Madrid, and the Archive of the International Brigades of the Spanish Republic Army at the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History (RGASPI) in Moscow.
These archival materials show that Asian people were...