"For weeks afterward my mother had to pick hair out of the kimchee. She tried to do it without my father seeing, but no matter how careful she was, there was sometimes still hair in the servings of kimchee. And every time this happened, my father could not eat.
"A few months later, he took ill and died. I do not remember what illness he had, but it does not matter. He died of a broken heart."
***
I remember Uncle's eyes glittering with pain and anger. I remember something else, too. How I'd felt hearing about Abuji, the way he'd done nothing to help. Back then I couldn't understand it. Why hadn't he done something?
Those soldiers tonight, tearing apart our house. And me? I'd stood there, frozen. I hadn't done anything—I hadn't even said anything. And I'm three years older than Abuji was then.
I know now. What could he have done? What could any of us do?
19. Sun-hee
When the officer asked, "Whose scribblings are these?" I'd answered at once. And right at that moment I hadn't felt afraid. I'd felt proud—proud that those were my words on the pages he was holding.
Now all the words I'd written for so many months were lost. My thoughts and feelings—they were a part of me, and it was as if that part had burned up in the stove, too. There was an empty space inside me where those words had been.
Besides, I'd been keeping the diary especially for Uncle. It was going to be sort of a present for him. And now it was gone. Would I fail at everything I tried to do for him?
After the soldiers left, no one said anything about what had happened. Omoni wrapped my burned hand, and we all went back to bed. But a few moments later, I heard Abuji's quiet voice. "Sun-hee, I am sorry about your writing."
In the dark I could feel my heartbeat speed up. My diary wasn't exactly a secret; I often wrote in it in the evenings when we were all in the sitting room together. But I'd never shown it to anyone and never realized that Abuji had noticed me working on it.
I felt a pulse of pride in my throat; I swallowed hard and managed to reply. "Thank you, Abuji. But it was nothing, really."
"No," he answered. "It was not nothing." He paused a moment, so his next words seemed to fill up the darkness. "But do not forget, Sun-hee—they burn the paper, not the words."
I woke the next morning with Abuji's words in my head. I started a new diary that very day; not even the pain of my blistered fingers could stop me.
You burn the paper but not the words.
You silence the words but not the thoughts.
You kill the thoughts only if you kill the man.
And you will find that his thoughts rise again
in the minds of others—twice as strong as before!
Abuji was right. While I couldn't remember all of the diary entries, I was able to recall many of them, especially the poems. The pages were filled even faster than before, old words and new ones mixed together. I had that Japanese officer to thank for making me more determined than ever to write things down.
I realized something else, too. I thought about Abuji's promise to teach me Hangul one day. And now I knew exactly when that would be: when the Japanese no longer ruled Korea. When we were our own country again.
For that to happen, the Japanese had to lose the war. If they won, they'd be here forever. I thought back to the airdrop of leaflets—how glad I'd been to find out that the Americans knew that Koreans and Japanese weren't the same. I remembered hoping the Americans would come fight the Japanese and throw them out of our land. But I hadn't realized until now what it would mean to have them gone.
If the Japanese lost the war, Uncle could come home. If they lost, Abuji could be principal of his own school. We could learn Korean history. We could use our real names again!
And Abuji could teach me the Korean alphabet.
How could an alphabet—letters that didn't even mean anything by themselves—be important?
But it was important. Our stories, our names, our alphabet. Even Uncle's newspaper.
It was all about words.
If words weren't important, they wouldn't try so hard to take them away.
20. Tae-yul
A neighborhood accounting. It's chilly outside. I hope we won't have to stand around too long.
The block leader takes the count. Then he hands the megaphone over to an army officer who starts shouting about Japanese victories at sea.
"The flower of Japanese youth has blossomed into victory!" His voice is excited. "A Special Attack Unit of the Divine Imperial forces has inflicted terrible damage on the enemy fleet. Our military leaders are geniuses! And the young men who serve under them are heroes in the truest sense of the word!"
Now he tells a story from the past. Something that happened centuries ago. I'm tired of learning Japanese history, but this story is interesting.
"...an enemy navy invading from the west. More than three thousand powerful ships sailed across the sea, determined to land on our shores. But just before they reached the coast, there was a terrible storm—a typhoon! The wind raged and battered at their sails, and every single enemy ship foundered and sank. It was a kamikaze—a divine wind, a sign that our people are indeed favored by Heaven.
"The Emperor has honored the heroes of today with this glorious memory of the past. The pilots of the Special Attack Unit are to be known as kamikaze. They are the divine wind that will blow us to victory over the white devils!"
Pilots! The Special Attack Unit are pilots who fly airplanes!
"The kamikaze have made the ultimate sacrifice. They displayed the utmost in skill, and their bravery is all but impossible to imagine! No enemy will be able to withstand such power..."
He talks about how the sickly pale Americans cowered before the courageous kamikaze. He says the same thing a dozen different ways. But for once I don't mind. As long as he's talking about airplanes and pilots, I'll keep listening.
Then he says something I can hardly believe.
The kamikaze pilots flew their planes toward the Americans' ships. Each plane was equipped with bombs. The kamikaze deliberately crashed into the ships so their bombs would explode and cause maximum damage.
The kamikaze are commanded by their leaders to fly straight to their deaths.
They're suicide pilots.
***
I'm amazed at their bravery. It's one thing to know you might die in a battle—but choosing to die is something else, something special.
I do everything I can to find out more about the kamikaze. I read the endless stories about their bravery in the newspapers Abuji brings home. I even start talking to a guard whose regular beat is our street. His name is Shinagawa-san, but I always think of him as "Spade-face" because his face is so flat. He wanted to be a pilot but was disqualified—poor vision. When he tells me that, I quickly look down the street toward a shopfront with signs. To make sure I can read something far away.
Spade-face talks about how tough it is for the kamikaze to hit their targets. They fly their planes hundreds of meters above the sea, hidden by cloud cover. "Just imagine," he says. "They come out of the clouds and have to dive at once, before the enemy spots them and starts to fire. From that height the targets look no bigger than grains of rice! Once a plane is in a high-speed dive, it's almost impossible to direct its course. Can you imagine the skill?"
Only the best pilots are chosen for these missions. The kamikaze are treated like princes. They get the best of everything the Imperial forces can offer—the best food, the best accommodations. Their final meal before a mission is rice with red beans, a grilled bream, and sake.
Rice with red beans is a dish Koreans eat, too, for special celebrations. I haven't had it in a long time, but I still remember. The little red beans turn dark purple as they cook—when I was little, that always seemed like magic to me. The white rice is dotted with bits of color. Delicious—those beans hiding in the middle of a mouthful of rice.
I love fish. But there hasn't been any in the marketplace for ages. Not since Pearl Harbo
r. Every boat and ship has been taken for the military.
Sake is rice wine, like our Korean sool. Spade-face tells me that the pilots each drink three cups of sake. They bow before drinking each one. First toward the shrine on the base. Then to the Emperor, in the direction of the palace. And the last drink for their families—they bow toward their hometowns.
Then they march out onto the airstrip to their planes. The whole base salutes them as they fly off.
I pretend it's me drinking sake, heading out onto the tarmac, and then taking off. Nothing but air underneath me and my plane.
21. Sun-hee (1945)
It seemed as if the war would never end. Day after day of too much hard work, not enough food, constant exhaustion—and no chance to make or do anything beautiful. If a war lasts long enough, is it possible that people would completely forget the idea of beauty? That they'd only be able to do what they needed to survive and would no longer remember how to make and enjoy beautiful things?
I was determined not to let this happen to me. At school every day, while I was working with my hands, I let my mind float away to think of something beautiful. The dragon pin, buried safely in the backyard; the way the little pearl ball shone, white but with a hundred unnamed colors gleaming. How the row of rose of Sharon trees had looked when in full bloom, each flower like an open mouth, singing. Or the mountains outside town—how they used to turn green a little at a time in the spring, the color climbing higher with each warm day.
I was afraid that if I didn't take time now to remember these things, I'd wake one day unable to recall them at all.
Jung-shin had avoided me ever since the incident in the schoolyard with her sister. We hadn't spoken even once, and this left a large, ragged hole in my life.
The days of defense-preparation work without her company were truly miserable. And as unhappy and uncomfortable as I felt, I could see whenever I glanced at her that she felt a hundred times worse. Her shoulders were always slumped and her eyes dull.
What Jung-shin's father did was the responsibility of the whole family; her father's shame was hers as well. That was why she couldn't face me.
I was sure she hadn't known her father was chin-il-pa before the day when I guessed, for she had seemed completely bewildered. I thought again of Uncle—how he'd never mentioned anything about Jung-shin's family.
Now I thought I knew why. I hadn't known then what Uncle was doing, nor had Jung-shin known what her father was doing. We were just two girls playing together. That must have been what Uncle had thought.
It was what I thought, too.
After school one day I rushed out and found the popcorn man. If he was anywhere in town, he was easy to find; you just followed the sound of the loud banging noises—the popcorn inside the cannon. I bought a bag, then hurried to a street corner Jung-shin would pass on her way home.
Soon she came along, walking slowly, with her head down. She saw me standing there and her steps slowed even more. "Hello, miss," I called as she approached. "I hear you are good at cat's cradle. I would like to learn some new patterns. Don't worry, I can pay for the lesson." And I held out the bag of popcorn.
It was a wonderful sight, the way her eyes instantly regained their sparkle. Right away she began to play along. "Well, I don't know," she said, striking a contemplative pose. "I am very good at cat's cradle, and I'm not sure if one bag of popcorn is enough payment."
"Who said anything about one bag?" I said indignantly. "Some of this is for me, you know! I was offering half a bag!"
We laughed together, and I knew in that moment we could still be friends.
One evening late in winter Tae-yul asked to speak to Abuji alone. After supper Omoni and I immediately rose from our seats and left the room. We took the dishes to the back of the house under the eaves and washed them there, so the men would have some privacy. I was dying to know what Tae-yul had to say; I couldn't remember any other time that he'd asked to talk to Abuji privately.
There was quiet in the house for a little while, but as we were finishing the dishes we heard Abuji's voice. He was shouting. "What do you mean by this? You would deliberately disobey my express command?"
I was stunned—Abuji never shouted. Omoni immediately covered her ears with her hands and hissed at me to do the same. Reluctantly, I raised my hands to my ears. I knew it was rude to eavesdrop, but I couldn't help it: I covered my ears without completely blocking my hearing.
I couldn't hear the words—only quiet, then more shouting. They argued for a long time—long enough for my legs to cramp. At last there was silence. Omoni cautiously lowered one hand. Then she told me to empty the water basin while she took the dishes back to the kitchen.
"Yobo, Sun-hee," Abuji called in a stern voice. I dropped the basin and hurried inside.
Abuji was pacing back and forth in great agitation. Tae-yul had obviously just bowed to him; he was on his knees on the other side of the low table. Unhappiness seemed to fill the space between them, the whole room. Following Omoni in, I took only one step past the threshold and stood next to the sliding door, making myself as small as I could.
"Tae-yul has something to say," Abuji said.
Tae-yul swiveled on his knees and bowed his head to the ground toward my mother. Then he raised his head but kept his eyes down as he spoke.
"Omoni, today I enlisted in the Imperial Army. I leave for training in Seoul tomorrow."
My legs turned to paper. I grabbed for the door frame to keep from falling as Omoni cried out. "Why, why? You're too young—how—"
Tae-yul's face was pale, but his voice was steady. "I volunteered."
At this Omoni threw her apron over her face and collapsed, sobbing wildly. Abuji thrust out his hands in anger and shouted, "Look at her! Look what you have done to your mother!"
Tae-yul rose to his feet and bent over her. "Omoni, please," he whispered.
This was an old trick of Uncle's. When we were younger, crying over some small hurt or disappointment, Uncle would lower his voice and speak to us in a whisper. We had to stop crying in order to hear what he said. It always worked, and now here was Tae-yul doing it, as if he were the adult and Omoni the child.
It worked this time as well; Omoni stopped crying and sat up. Tae-yul bowed before her again.
"I ask all of you to try to understand," he said. "The war is going badly for the Japanese. We know this—we can see it everywhere. They talk a lot about those kamikaze successes, but you can tell from that very tactic how desperate they are. The soldiers at the airstrip don't even have ammunition for many of their guns anymore. One more soldier, and an unwilling one at that, isn't going to make a difference in the outcome. The Japanese are losing. It's only a matter of time.
"But if I join the army, things will be much better for you. Families of volunteers receive rice rations and other considerations. Look at Sun-hee's clothes," he said bitterly, glancing over at me. "It's a wonder they hold together now—there are more mending stitches than cloth. They'll give you clothing, better food—they'll treat you better."
He was speaking to Omoni; he'd probably said all this to Abuji earlier. "I'm eighteen years old now. I'm not a child anymore—I need to help the family the best way I can."
Omoni stared at him. "And what help will you be to us if you die?" she asked quietly.
I knew what she was thinking. We'd heard rumors that Korean recruits were sent in at the start of any battle, to clear the way for the Japanese soldiers behind them. The Koreans were always the first to die. If Tae-yul were sent into battle, he'd be in the front line....
For the first time Tae-yul shifted uncomfortably. "It's a real possibility that the war will be over soon. I'll have several weeks of training before ... before they send me anywhere. Perhaps the war will have ended by then...." His voice trailed off.
Omoni shook her head dazedly. Abuji had stopped his pacing and was standing with his shoulders bowed.
It was impossible to even imagine Tae-yul disobeying our parents in this wa
y yet here it was, happening before my very eyes. And for what reason—to join the army and fight on behalf of the Japanese!
Suddenly, I was shouting. "You—you pig head! Don't you know I'd rather have a thousand patches in my clothes than lose my brother?"
In the next instant I saw the shock on all their faces. I was a girl, a younger sister—I had no right to express my opinion. But I didn't care. Omoni and Abuji weren't going to do anything—they weren't even going to try to stop Tae-yul, so it was up to me.
In the brief silence that followed I realized I didn't know what they could do. Lock him in his room?
It was so cruel. All of it—the occupation, the war, Uncle in hiding, Tae-yul going into the army ... I needed to get out of that room; the unfairness of it all was choking me. I whirled and bolted out of the house.
I ran out into the garden, all the way to the back, dropped to my knees and slammed my hand against the stone wall. Over and over I struck it in fury, hardly knowing what I was doing.
In the midst of my frenzy my wrist was grabbed from behind and held in an iron grip.
I wrenched it free and turned around. Tae-yul was standing there.
"Don't talk to me," I snarled, raising my hand toward him.
"Shut up, you stupid girl, and listen," he said roughly.
I was so stunned by his rude manner that I froze as I was, my hand in the air and my mouth open.
Tae-yul knelt beside me. "I'm sorry I spoke to you like that—it seemed like the only way to get your attention." His voice was gentle now. "There's more that I haven't told our parents. But I want to tell you because—because I want someone to know the truth."
I lowered my hand but said nothing.
He leaned toward me and spoke softly. "Sun-hee, Uncle is still alive and still working for the resistance."
22. Tae-yul
Today a schoolboy ... tomorrow a soldier. Just like that. I can hardly believe how it happened, but at the same time I remember every last thing.