From the S&S archives:
The Pearl S. Buck Center: Tragedies to triumphs

SOSA, Korea — "These children are continually subjected to ridicule. They have a hard time getting any schooling, but it has been my experience that if a man is educated, able and talented, discrimination ends — and these children are generally of higher than average intelligence, partly because only the hardiest live past their fifth birthday."

The speaker was Miss Pearl S. Buck, 76, who spent the first 40 years of her life in Asia and has written 76 books about her feeling and experiences. She now dedicates her life to helping mixed-blood children.

There are about 120 kids here, at a place she calls an opportunity center, who are getting a chance for the first time in their lives to learn and build. Until they found their way here they were rejects from society — because their parents "dropped out" — most of their fathers are Americans who never married their mothers.

The place is the first center set up by the Pearl S. Buck Foundation. Miss Buck, now visiting Korea, talked with Stars and Stripes about her foundation and her hopes for what she calls Amer-Asian children throughout the Orient.

"In Asian societies children traditionally and by law belong to their fathers," the Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning authoress said. "This fact leaves these children without a country; they are not Americans and they are not Asian — they legally don't exist."

"It is not my job to moralize and I do not place myself as a judge," she continued, "But I feel these children have a great potential and should be helped. No one knows how many children in Asia have mixed blood, but there are thousands, and in my experience each one of them has a tragic story."

The Pearl S. Buck Foundation, just starting its fifth year, was founded not as an orphanage or a welfare bureau but as an agency to give Amer-Asian children a chance to become useful citizens.

Miss Buck hopes that through her foundation's work Asian governments will be made aware of the problems Amer-Asians face, and take steps so that they may become a part of the society that lives around them.

As her work continues, many will be helped to reach their full potential. This is what they may someday demand.

One young man, she said, now studying in the United States on a Buck Foundation scholarship feels this very strongly. Before he went to the foundation he was the leader of the Amer-Asians in the Seoul area.

Miss Buck related, "I asked him what he would have done if he had not come to us and gotten the chance to improve himself. He said, 'I would have organized all the Amer-Asians in Korea and gone to the government. If they did not give us help, I would have threatened that all Amer-Asians would turn Communist.' "

The foundation, which she named for herself because her name is so well known in Asia, is working in six countries in various stages of a three-step program — research, mobile unit aid and opportunity centers where kids are given a chance to earn their keep and learn a trade at the same time.

So far, Korea has the only opportunity center. (None is needed in Japan because of government-supported education). Mobile units are operating in Thailand, Taiwan and the Philippines. Research teams are studying the situation in Vietnam.

In the first stage of help, the research teams estimate the number of Amer-Asians, their condition, the number in schools, the local feeling toward them. Determine what their mothers are doing and if any other agency is helping them.

In the second stage, three-man teams tour the country in vans to nurse and counsel the mothers and children. A monthly subsidy of $7.50 provided by sponsors around the world is given the mothers for food for one child.

"Our main job now is working in the communities to get the children into schools," Miss Buck said.

At the Korea opportunity center, stage three children, most of them alone, are taught a trade while living at the center and going to schools in the local community. They sell what they build, and the money they make goes into the cafeteria fund and for new equipment.

"It is very easy to see the pride in these children when they know that they are earning their own way," she smiled.

If a child is behind his age group in schooling, he goes to an "acceleration school" at the center until he catches up with the others. This school can teach three years of learning in the time-span of one.

Miss Buck added, "we give the children as much schooling and training as they can handle. At this time, we have three boys and four girls going to colleges in the United States."

She estimates 5,000 children are being helped in Asia by her foundation.

"It hurts my pride as an American to see these children living in such poor conditions," she said. "Unless something is done they will probably become a criminal class."