Site Ed. Note: The following are selections from an oral history of an elderly first-generation Korean woman in Japan. The subject of this interview by freelance writer Jackie J. Kim is Pak Hui-Sun, who became a member of the Osaka Korean Christian Women’s Group and used the Japanese name, Uehara Tamae. Circa 2000, when this interview was conducted, Pak lived with her son and daughter-in-law in Ōsaka, but laughingly commented that she did not know who was taking care of whom. In her case and her family’s, things, she says, got a little better over time. Unlike several other women interviewed for Kim’s project, she learned to speak Japanese fairly easily, perhaps because she came in the late 1930s, at age twelve. As in other interviews, Kim fails to draw out extensive memories of the Occupation years. In addition, she does not get Pak to say how and when she became a Christian. The interview begins with Pak making some interesting comparisons between Koreans who emigrated to the U.S. and to Japan.

It seems that the Korans who emigrated to America were fairly well-off in Korea, and also were better educated. But the Korean people who came to Japan had a different background. Many people didn’t want to come to Japan, but after their land was taken away during the colonial period there was no way out. Also, many were brought by force to become laborers.

Once when I visited Korea, a person whom I knew spoke well of Koreans in America but thought little of us Koreans in Japan. So I told him that before he makes judgments, he should know something about the different histories of Koreans in America and those in Japan. I told him off like that. Really, those who went to America didn't experience the kind of prejudice that we in Japan have experienced. I guess, when you think about it, there really was no need for Koreans in America to encounter such prejudice, because many of them had money after selling their property in Korea. I'm sure they also had some education, so they were able to learn English without too much trouble. But us first generations here, especially those who are even older than me—I guess people like my mother—we didn't know West from East. We didn't know the letters of either language. Can you imagine the kind of frustration that we must have gone through in our everyday life?

People of my generation, when I was a Miss, weren't allowed to speak Korean freely. We were told to speak in Japanese. At home we could wear Korean clothes, but when we went to work or stepped outside, we were told not to wear Korean clothes. We didn't have freedom to do what we wanted to. (1) All such things are forms of prejudice. So when our children visit Korea, people there say that they don't even know the language of our kohyang [birth place]. But the children are not at fault. When we were little and came to Japan, we didn't know how to speak Japanese and we spoke in Korean. But after living here for about ten years, we slowly started to forget our Korean, and spoke Japanese naturally. So even when I got married and had children, most of the time we spoke Japanese.

I have four sons. My oldest child understands a little bit of Korean, but if he is asked to speak, he cannot. Although he knows how to read Korean letters, still he does not know the meaning. Even my daughters-in-law-at church, although they sing the hymns in Korean, they neither know the meaning of the words, nor understand what they are singing. There are many frustrating things like that.

My name is Pak Hui-Sun. I have a Japanese name—Uehara Tamae. When I was young, I used it for everything, but that is also a funny story. My oldest son doesn't care whether or not we use our Korean or Japanese names, but my youngest is different. Maybe it was because he grew up in Osaka. He was raised here and went to school here. At church, he was involved with the youth group, and one day, he suddenly said that he was going to use his Korean name (2). He was in junior high school. He said that he didn't need a Japanese last name. He wanted to be called by his Korean name, "Kim." Then, when he was attending a technical school, one of his teachers called him aside. "Kin-kun, if you go out into the society and use your Korean name, there will be times when you will run into problems. Right now at school you can use your Korean name, but on your graduation certificate, do you want me to write your Japanese name?" Then my son said, “Well, if I run into problems, and people don’t like me because I am Korean, then I don’t want to deal with that kind of person.” He later married a woman from Kyoto, who also thought like him and wanted to use her Korean name—Yi Kyong-Ja. Whenever she goes somewhere and they pronounced her name in the Japanese pronunciation, “Ri Kyoko,” she makes a point telling them to read it in the Korean reading. So I told her that she shouldn’t make such a big deal about it. But she says that you nave to tell them at least once how to say it in the Korean reading, otherwise they could continue pronouncing it in Japanese.

Before my youngest son decided to use his Korean name, we mostly used our Japanese name. We are called “Uehara.” This is my husband’s Japanese surname. We Koreans here in Japan had to take on Japanese surnames. People used to make up their own Japanese names as they liked. They would choose one name and then change it soon afterward. So one person sometimes had three or four different last names. It seems that during the war if people refused to adopt Japanese names, they were denied food rations. Often, people would decide what names they would use in Japanese society after consulting with the elders of the family. My first name “Tamae” was given to me by my father, and my surname before getting married was “Asamitsu.” I was born in 1927, on January 2, in Kyŏngsanbuk-do [in a small village in the center of South Korea, deep in the mountains]. I came to Japan when I was twelve years old [1939].

From my village [in Korea] to get to the city we rode in what we call a taxi nowadays. It was a car that was high up, not as high as a bus. It was an old, old, black car that ran very slow. When we got to the city, my mother said, "I'm going to buy the train ticket with your brother, so you stay here with your sister, and don't go anywhere. If anyone comes and talks to you, don't answer. We'll be right back." So I did as she said and stood right where I was supposed to, holding my sister's hand and staring at our sacks. I was waiting for what seemed like a long time, every moment thinking that my mother would be coming. Then, from behind me, I heard a noise "Pah, pah, pah ... !!!!!" It sounded just like a wild pig! Then all of a sudden I heard a loud scream—"Kyaaaaaaaaaaa!" I quickly looked back and saw black smoke. I heard the screaming again. Well, the screech of what sounded like some animal screaming in death just gave me a scare of a lifetime. I was terrified. I thought never mind the sacks, and I took my sister's hand and ran screaming in the direction my mother had gone to buy our tickets. My mother and brother had already bought the tickets and were just coming back around from the other end. The sacks were right where my mother had left them, but neither I nor my sister were anywhere to be seen. She panicked, afraid that someone had taken us. She and my brother were about to go and search for us, but just then she heard my sister and I crying. We were shaking like leaves.... Ha, ha, ha.... What we thought was a wild animal was in fact a train. That was the first time I saw a train in my life. I was so relieved to see my mother running toward us, and I thought now everything will be okay. "Ŏmma!!!!!" I cried out. She rushed over to us. "Did somebody say something to you?" I was crying and I could barely get the words out. "1 don't know. But there's something black and terrible, shooting out black smoke and screaming out like a dying pig!" My brother started laughing. "Ŏmŏni must not have told you about the train." . . . Ha, ha, ha.... When I remember those times, I can't help but think how deprived us kids were, brought up in the mountains.

In Shimonoseki, there were about ten to fifteen households of people from our kohyang [birth place], and about three households were actually related to ours. So it was like one group. My father got everything prepared for us to live in Shimonoseki as soon as we arrived. In Shimonoseki at that time there were many Koreans. The people who had relatives elsewhere would take the train from there to Tokyo, Ōsaka, or out to the countryside. Back then, to go to Ōsaka by train took four days. When we were coming to Shimonoseki from Pusan, it took one night. We boarded the ship around six p.m. at night. It was I think about seven or eight p.m. that the ship left dock. Then, when we arrived in Shimonoseki, it was morning. The ship was called "Goan maru." It was a huge ship that also trans-ported Japanese soldiers to Manchuria and such places. At that time, there was a ship that sailed from Chejudo, and also there were ships that arrived in Niigata, or Yokohama. The ship that traveled between Shimonoseki and Pusan was the biggest, the "Goan maru."

The Japanese words "hai" for "yes," and "konnichi wa" for "good afternoon," were the first words that I learned from my brother before coming to Japan. My brother said we would have to know these words when we went to Japan. So what he learned in school, he would come home and tell my sister and me. Well, I was looking forward to coming to Japan, because I thought that finally I would be able to study. In my neighborhood back in Mosan there were seven girls who used to play together. Three of them used to attend school. One girl had a brother in Pyongyang, and one day he came to get her, saying that he wanted her to receive an education. I was so envious of the fact that she was able to go north to Pyongyang so that she could study. There were two other girls who attended night school. I was very envious of them for going to school with their little notebooks and pencils.

So I thought that when I go to Japan, I too will be able to study. But when we came to Japan, I was already twelve years old and too old to attend an elementary school. Of course, I didn't know any Japanese. For the kids who were about five or six, there was a small class organized by Koreans. It was kind of like a Mindan office, and within this organization they taught the children basic Japanese. At that time there was a teacher from Chejudo and a teacher from Seoul. Although I was a bit older than the other kids, I attended those classes for one year, and I thought that soon I would be able to attend regular school. By that time I was already thirteen years old, and I didn't yet know enough to attend junior high school. So, unfortunately, I couldn't go to school. But each summer some Korean college students came back home to their homes in Shimonoseki and formed a night school so that children like me could study. For three years I studied in these night classes. One day, one of the young teachers was taken away by the police. They said it was because he was reading a book on communism. It seems that somebody had reported him. After that our group was forbidden to gather. You know, the Japanese government at that time was quite frightening when it came to the question of communism. Even though it was a small book, the kenpeitai (military police) came to take him away. I heard that once they took you, there was no way for you to get out of prison. You were locked up for a long time without a reason and just left there to rot.

I don't know what it was, but every time I wanted to study, something bad like this happened. After the teacher was taken away, we were all crying, and hoping that we could get another teacher who could be as good as him. But not long afterward, Japan went to war. It was Shōwa 16 (1941). Then in Shōwa 20 (1945), on August 15, the war ended. When I was sixteen years old [depending on how Pak’s family counted the years, this would have been 1943 or 1944], I started working in a factory. I couldn't go to school anyway, and I thought that instead of staying at home doing nothing, I should help out with the daily expenses. In the beginning, I worked at a fish cannery. I got into that company through an introduction of a friend from the neighborhood. I hardly knew Japanese then, and I had no experience working. But that friend told me that the company hired other kids like me and offered to introduce me to the manager. So I went with her and got the job.

Several months later, one day, we were sitting to eat our lunch. We always got together and turned away from the others when we ate, because the Japanese workers would say, "Koreans stink of garlic." The workers, both men and women, would start to grumble even before we brought out our lunch boxes. So if the weather was warm, we went outside and ate our lunch. We would get the wooden crates in which the cans were shipped, and make a little table and put our lunch boxes up there. That day, after we all finished eating, I got up with my lunch box in hand, meaning to go back inside the factory, when I saw a Japanese worker sitting on the ground. I didn't know that he was drunk. I was just minding my own business and walking toward the back entrance, when he abruptly got up. He started yelling that I didn't say "excuse me" when I passed in front of him. He rushed over and slapped my face so hard that—I don't lie to you— I thought my eyes were on fire. The blow was hard enough to make me fall. I didn't even know why he slapped me. I was so shocked that I rushed back inside. But the thing was I had to pass by in front of him again in order to get to the work area. I was so terrified that I just huddled in the corner shaking. Then, some of the Japanese women who were sitting between the man and me must have told him not to get so upset because I was still quite young and didn't know my manners. They motioned for me to walk behind them in order to avoid passing in front of the man again.

In that factory, there was a young ajŏssi (young man) who had worked for that company for quite a while. The ajŏssi confronted that Japanese man. "What gives you the right to hit that young girl? Why didn't you just caution her in words instead of slapping her like that? You either go and apologize to that girl or, if not, you tell me that you are sorry and I'll tell her that you apologized." The drunk man yelled back at him. "A Chōsen jin shouldn't open his mouth!" Then the two men got into a huge fight. I could never forget that ajŏssi's name—"Chiba-san." Back then everyone used Japanese surnames. Well, anyway, I heard that the man went to Chiba-san's room that night where he was sleeping, and threatened to kill him with the knife that he used to cut fish in the factory. Chiba-san lived in the worker's dormitory.

Well, that day when I went home, I told my mother what had happened, and my mother asked me if I had done something or said anything to offend the Japanese man. I told her that I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't step on his foot or even go over his legs. All I did was pass in front of him. I told my mother that I wasn't exactly sure what he was saying, but I heard him yell "Chōsen-jin" a couple of times, and then he rushed over and slapped my face. The side of my face was quite swollen, so my mother held a cold wet towel to it. Then, the friend who had introduced me to that factory came to our house on her way home. "Hui-Sun, you must have gotten quite a shock today." She said that she talked to Chiba-san and he told her that the Japanese man felt angry because I passed by in front of him, and since I'm just a "Chōsen jin no ko" (a Korean child), I shouldn't be so cheeky as not to say "excuse me." The Japanese man said that Chiba-san was defending me because we were both Chōsen-jin and that he wanted to kill all Koreans. All I could think of was that I never wanted to run into that Japanese man again. I asked the friend to tell the manager that I quit. From that time on, every time I even passed by that factory, my legs shook. I heard later that Chiba-san couldn't bear to work for the factory after the incident, because the Japanese man gave him such a hard time. I heard that he ended up moving away in search of another job. I felt really bad about what happened to him. All I can do is feel grateful for what he did for me that day.

After I quit that canning company, I took another job. My mother was working at home, and whatever we sold from our farmland and other properties in Korea was pretty much used up. I was introduced to another factory. In that factory we bound pre-dried udon (noodles). It was quite far from my home, but I worked there for nearly two years. Then a factory making and packing cookies was built right near my house. The owner was a Japanese who was married to a German woman. I thought that this was a great chance for me to work closer to home and in a cookie factory. I went to the interview wearing the Korean dress that I usually wore at home. At that time Korean people, even though we were living in Japan, usually wore Korean dress. Some of the children of course at certain times wore kimono, but adults and especially older people wore the chŏgori [linen clothing]. In the market Koreans used to sell komushin (rubber shoes) and all kinds of other wear. In Shimonoseki, I guess because it was close to Pusan, there were a lot of Korean things out in the market. So it was almost the same as being in Korea. I guess the only kosaeng [hardships or suffering] was the fact that we had to speak a foreign language.

When I went to the Morimata cookie factory for the interview, the manager said that he would hire me, on condition that I not wear chŏgori to work. I agreed, because the factory was less than a ten-minute walk from my home. Be fore, I had to walk more than forty minutes each way to get to work. Also, the factory smelled so good, like cookies, and as a young girl, I guess it seemed the best place to work. At that time, even if we had the money, we couldn't go out and buy cookies freely. Back then, Japan was at war so there were no luxury items to buy, and also we were constantly reminded that whether we were hungry or not we had to withstand it for the sake of the country. At the cookie factory, all the cookies that we packaged were sent to the battlefield. I guess even though it was a privately run factory, the owner couldn't sell to any other place, but set a standard price for the government to buy and ship the cookies to the soldiers. At that time, there wasn't yet bombing going on in Japan, but soldiers were being shipped out to places like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Manchuria. After a while, the war started coming as close as Okinawa. Then, we saw the B-29, the kansaiki (carrier-borne aircraft) and such planes starting to fly around. When that kansaiki came and shot its bullets, it was like rain or hail. It would just continue to shoot until it flew away and the ground would burst into flames.

Well, at the factory, they told me not to wear the chŏgori, and so I would only wear its black skirt, and instead of its white vest-blouse, wear a pullover that my mother got at a secondhand store. At the factory, I was the first and only Korean. Then after a while, about a dozen other Korean kids came to work and naturally we spoke to each other in Korean. We always had a morning meeting before we started work, and the manager always ended the meeting saying that our Japan was one Japan, and therefore we should speak our country's language and we should not speak other languages like Korean. But still, whenever we gathered, we spoke in Korean. A while later the manager went as far as putting up a sign with a small can attached to a bamboo pole that read, "ONE SEN FINE FOR SPEAKING KOREAN." Sometimes, we would each have to put in five or six sen a day.

At that time I was making eighty sen for a whole day's work. It wasn't even one yen. We didn't get Sundays off, just two days off a month, the first and the fifteenth. I would start work at seven in the morning and work until five in the evening. Back then, there was no such thing as an eight-hour workday. That didn't start till the Americans came in and the labor unions were organized. It was almost like slavery. Whatever the factory told you to do, you had to do it. Meanwhile, the war was getting more intense and the factory was slowing its production. Many people were laid off or moved to other factories, and there were only five of us left in our group. Maybe we Koreans don't always speak Japanese, but no matter what the Japanese people say about us, when it came to work we didn't lag behind. We all worked well. So we five Korean girls became a five-member team. But the Japanese workers expressed so much dislike to-ward us that one day we all decided to quit together. Although searching for work elsewhere would be troublesome, and of course in the beginning we wouldn't receive much salary, still, we decided that less money was better than having to deal with so much discrimination. The five of us used to say, "When should we quit? When should we quit?" We went on about this for months, and then finally we decided that all of us were going to quit at once right after we got paid. At that time it was about three years before the end of the war and Japan's surrender [1942, if she remember accurately].

After quitting the cookie factory, we all got another factory job, this time making knitted work gloves for soldiers. We got in through the introduction of one of my friend's sisters. This factory paid us for the number of gloves that we produced, rather than an hourly wage. The factory was willing to hire all five of us, because at that time factories were short of hands with most men away fighting. So young women like us were welcomed. We worked in the new factory for about ten days. One day I returned home from work and my mother looked frightened and said that a postcard had come from the police station calling me in. I couldn't think of anything that I had done, and I thought that perhaps somebody had done something bad and used my name. That day I saw one of my friends from our five-member team and showed her the postcard. I told her that the police called me in to come in by 8:30 the next morning. Then, she said, "Hey, did you get one of those cards? I got one, too." All five of us had the same postcard from the police. None of us had any clue why. The postcards had nothing on them except our names and the order to appear at the police station. There was also a warning that if we didn't come by that time, they would come to our houses to get us. When I showed the postcard to my brother, he was very wor-ried. He told me to think carefully whether there was something that I could have done to break very worried. He told me to think carefully whether there as something that I could have done to break the law, because when the police called you in, it was pretty serious. No matter how much I thought I had broken no law.

The next day, my friends and I went to the police station quite early and waited outside until a policeman told us to come inside. Soon we were all called and taken into separate rooms where we were questioned. I was so scared, I couldn't think straight. The policeman asked me why I quit the cookie factory. I didn't know what to say. I sat there without saying a word. He said that I would spend the night there and they wouldn't send me home until I answered all of his questions. So I said that from the beginning, the factory treated us Koreans badly and made us pay a penalty for speaking Korean. The work itself was fine, but the atmosphere created by the other Japanese workers was hard to bear. They would speak to each other, but as soon as we came near them they would stop talking and turn away. I told him that there were too many incidents for me to tell him everything. The policeman asked me if I was willing to go back to that factory. I told him that I was already working for another factory. The policeman said that because I have just started working for the glove factory, my level of production was slow. Also because we girls all quit at the same time-it would take time and money for the cookie factory to hire new workers and train them. He said that because of our selfishness, we were committing a disservice not only to the factory but also to the country during this time of war when factories were short of workers. He said that if we refused to go back to the factory, we would be sent away as part of the teishintai (military "volunteer" corps).

The teishintai was sending young girls abroad to Manchuria and elsewhere to help the soldiers with cooking, cleaning, and running errands, including taking ammunition to the front lines. I didn't know it then, but I realized later that teishintai was actually ianfu ("comfort women," the sexual slaves of the Japanese military). [Note: Pak would not have known the term, “sexual slaves” in that period.] We were only seventeen or eighteen years old. . . . We didn't know anything. Just hearing the word Manchuria and thinking that I would have to leave my mother and go off to a faraway country made me want to plead for my life, and I begged to be allowed to go back to the cookie factory. Afterward, I was sent out of the room, and I was able to join my friends. I was afraid of what my friends would think about my cowardice. I confessed and found out that they had said the same thing. Just thinking about having to go off to Manchuria made me burst into tears. All of my friends and I were grabbing each other and crying. The policeman told us to stop crying and that we would be able to go back home after the police chief spoke to us. We waited a long two hours, and the chief came and told us that he wanted to buy lunch for us. Back then there was no place to really eat but anyway he took us to this place where we had something like noodles with some vegetables. It was quite good. He told us that we had caused a great deal of trouble, but that we should rest for the day and from the next day go back to work at the cookie factory.

Can you believe that the factory went to the police about us like that? All we could think about was leaving our families and being shipped off to Manchuria. Going back to work for that factory seemed like a much better idea. I felt so grateful that they allowed us to go back and work there rather than sending us off as they said they would. So we went to the glove factory and explained everything. The manager said that it was too bad, because we had just started getting used to the work and would soon do as well as the other workers. He said at least for us to come in a few days to pick up our pay, but because we were so embarrassed about the whole situation, we never went back. But my friend's sister brought all of us our pay. We went back to the cookie factory and tried our best to put up with everything. But it really was hard to deal with the people and the atmosphere. A few months later one of my friends quit, because she was getting married. All of us decided to quit, but this time one at a time with several months in between. We gave excuses such as marriage, and having to help out other relatives, and we all quit. Toward the end of the war, with the military situation getting quite serious, we heard that a cookie factory was being built in Manchuria. The factory recruited people to go and work there. Three other Koreans decided to go. A while later, the factory in Japan closed down. After it was gone, my friends and I were so happy. We were feeling guilty, because four of us had lied and quit. Because of that, even if I had to pass in front of the factory, my heart would start pounding. I was afraid of what might happen if someone saw me and decided to report me to the police again.

At that time I thought that teishintai was just a support group that helped out soldiers, but later I realized that it was young women who were forced to give their bodies to the soldiers. Aigu!!!! Can you believe that all I thought at that time was that I didn't want to leave my mother.... I could never have imagined that the teishintai meant helping out the soldiers by giving them my body. Can you believe that? It seems that these women who were serving as ianfu were about my age or maybe a year younger. After the war, about four or five years later, I remember there was a movie saying that some of the teishintai had become what we now call ianfu, but at that time they never mentioned the fact that they were mostly young Korean women. [Note: Here the interviewer, Kim, questions whether Pak could have seen a film of that sort at that time. However, here was such a similar film, Shupuden (Story of a Prostitute), in 1950; see Tamura Taijirō on this site.] All they said was that the soldiers sometimes, when they felt a tremendous amount of stress, couldn't fight effectively in the war, but when they were given women they could regain their strength and fight well. In the movie they showed a line of young women, and one woman would enter a room and it said that she would serve about three men. Then, when that group of men finished, the same women would serve another group. So this was what the movie called teishintai. I saw this movie in a Japanese theater. At that time it wasn't a secret, but I guess the only thing they held back was who they mostly sent—young Korean women—something we only found out recently. In the movie all of the women were wearing kimonos. The movie showed the soldiers looking so tired, but once they heard that the women were there, they became excited and looked as if they had renewed strength. It was a movie, so the scene was probably rehearsed. But anyway, after watching this movie, I really thought that men are so dirty. The women had no choice but to go. It seemed so terrible that the women didn't even have names and were called by number—number so-and-so to get into this or that room.

That the largest number of comfort women were Korean became known after a Japanese women's group brought this fact to public attention. They used the hall in the building right next door at the Korean Christian Center (KCC) [Osaka]. They made this known several years ago, and they were having a gathering to discuss what we needed to do in order to compensate these women. Attending these meetings, I found out that most of these women were Korean and some were Chinese, but there were hardly any Japanese women [Actually, the comfort women in the 1950 film she remembered had been changed to Japanese]. Before the war, Japanese women were sold and bought and sent out to Asia. They were called "ch'angnyŏ" (prostitutes). The women dressed up and men went to visit them for a few hours and paid them for their services. So before, I thought that it was these women who were sent. I found out only later that it was Korean, Chinese, and Filipina women who were sent to these places and made to wear kimonos in order to do such work. They said that if they were to send Japanese women, they might end up serving their brothers or relatives. So that was the reason why we Korean and Chinese women who looked Japanese, were sent to places like Manchuria and Southeast Asia. When I heard about this from women activists who came to visit the KCC, it really made me feel angry. Several years ago, the first woman who came out in the open about her experience talked in an interview about those times. I thought to myself that if I hadn't been so lucky, that woman on TV could have been me. If I had refused to go back to work at that cookie factory, I could have very well been sent to these places to do those kind of things. I just couldn't believe it....

During the war, if you were old enough to be in junior high school, you had to work in factories making all sorts of things in support of the war. Kids who were too young to work with complicated machinery were ordered to do simple things such as gluing things together or shaping screws with a senban (lathe). Such work was usually done by men, but when they were away at war, young women and children had to replace them. We Koreans were also trained to fight. My brother was called away for training. Those who were a year older than my brother didn't have to go to war. They were drafted as laborers. The men went to work wherever they were needed in support of the war. When the assignment came, you had to go. If you refused, they would come to take you away. So my brother was drafted to receive his training in the heitai (army).

Well, I was reaching the age when I needed to think about marriage and my mother was quite worried about me marrying a good man who would treat me well. She wanted to make sure that I didn't marry an eldest son, because she knew from her own experience about the hardships of becoming the first daughter-in-law. So whenever there were offers for me, she always asked first if he was a first son, middle son, or the last son. She was determined to give me away to a really good partner, and so she was very choosy. But the war was getting more severe and most of the men were called away to fight. One day, a distant aunt came to our house and told my mother that there was a household that she knew in Hakata, Kyushu, which was seeking out a daughter-in-law.

There were six siblings, three sons and three daughters, and the mother while giving birth to the last child had a partial stroke, and now could only speak very little and couldn't work. What was worse, the man was the first son. Al though the situation was everything that my mother was against, with the war getting more serious and with no other prospects, I guess my mother was worried that I might not be able to marry at all if we waited too long. The only positive thing was that my future husband-to-be was twenty-three years old, which meant that he had just reached the age limit where he wouldn't be sent off to war. Let's see, I was born in 1927, and my brother was born in 1924, and luckily my husband was born in 1923. When they made the law to draft Koreans, it started with men who were born in 1924. So I guess my mother felt safe in the fact that I wouldn't lose my husband in the war like many women did at that time. Without even consulting me, she told my aunt that she was willing to give me away. That was when I was nineteen years old. The government was sending men off to gunji kōba [war plants], to places like Osaka and Hiroshima. You know the place where the atomic bomb was dropped? Right below that there was a city called Hikari where there were many gunji kōba. We heard that men, young boys, and even girls who were of junior high school age were being sent for chōyō (conscription). We heard that the only way to get out of this was to be married. So back then a lot of women were married off to men who were more than ten years older than them. After meeting my future husband-to-be just once, I had to marry him in March. When I saw him for the first time, I thought he was quite okay. Ha, ha, ha....

When I got married [age 19, and so approximately 1946, during the Occupation] my sisters-in-law were quite young. Two of them were going to school, and the youngest one was six years old. At that time I didn't work, because I was too busy looking after my big family. My mother-in-law was really a good person. I never received harsh words from her. She was so kind to the point that I thought when I myself have a daughter-in-law, I hoped that I could treat her as nicely as my mother-in-law treated me.

Well, I remember that when the war finally ended, all the Japanese were crying on the road, because they had lost, but we Koreans were so happy. My family and all of my neighbors were saying, "Sara ta, sara to . . .—We have been saved, we have been saved. ..... Our neighbors the Kobayashis were crying, because they had lost their son in the war. But in my family, we were so happy, especially my mother, because my brother was saved from going to the war. He had gotten basic training, but the war ended before he was sent off to the battlefield. She was so happy that she didn't know what to do. "1 never knew whether your brother would live or die, but now I feel that your brother has been given life again. There is nothing that 1 could feel happier about." I still remember when I first heard that the war had ended. My mother and I were riding the train to go to the countryside to buy some rice to sell in the black market. Sitting in the train, we heard that the war had ended and Japan had lost.

I remember that in the middle of August when the war had just ended, there were no ships going out, but by September the ships were running again. Many of the Koreans who were living in Shimonoseki, and others in the countryside, left everything they had or took whatever they could in sacks. My father too was saying that eventually Koreans were going to be chased out of Japan anyway, so we might as well go on our own. That was why my ch'inchŏng [women’s parents] left Japan to go back to Korea in November of that year. The government provided a ship to carry all the Koreans back to our country. If we applied, within three weeks we would be able to get the tickets to go on the ship. But for my husband and our family, there was my mother-in-law's condition, and also we didn't have enough money to buy the train tickets to take all of us to Shimonoseki from Fukuoka. There were nine of us, including me. We just didn't have the money on hand then. My father-in-law used to always say, if only we had enough money for the train ticket to get to Shimonoseki, all we would have had to do was get on that ship to get back to our own country. We didn't own anything there, but if we at least had the strength to dig the ground, then we wouldn't starve. My father-in-law felt really bad for me that my ch'inchŏng went back, but we couldn't. He promised that we would all work hard and save enough money to go by the following year. So I took his word for it. But you know, things are not as easy as, that. As time passed, we heard all sorts of rumors from people who had gone to Korea but returned starving. They said there was no food, and that people would steal just about anything. We decided to take more time to consider whether we wanted to go back to Korea. Then while we were still trying to make up our minds, the Korean War started. After that we decided that it was best for us to stay put in Japan.

In my life to make ends meet, I did everything you can think of. During the time when Japan was at war, tobacco was hard to find, and only a small amount of it was passed out in rations. So I got in contact with a couple who introduced me to a farmer in the country who was growing tobacco leaves. I would get some of the leaves from them, roll the leaves, cut them with a slicing machine, tie the ends, make a bundle of them, and take it to the black market to sell. I made good money from that. In the evening I worked in the docks where the fishing boats came in. I had to clean all the fish and put them in boxes to get ready for the morning market the next day. I worked until dawn, and then I went to another job from early afternoon. All the Japanese people were having a hard time, too. We all received rations from the government.

Many Japanese, in order to get some more money, took all of their old kimonos to the market and sold them. Then they had enough money to buy some white rice on the black market. Many women, who had lost their husbands in the war and had to support themselves and their children somehow, did such things. Well, my husband would take the kimonos that he bought in the market from these women for a very low price, and take them to the countryside and trade with the farmers for food. He also bought shoes, socks, and gloves and traded them. He was able to get all sorts of things like white rice and vegetables. That's how he started in the wholesale business. Then, after we came to Shimonoseki, my husband opened a small store in the countryside where he sold items that he had bought at low prices in the city.

After my second brother-in-law got married in Fukuoka, my husband, our children, and I moved back to Shimonoseki. In Shimonoseki, although there were big factories, they didn't usually hire Koreans. This was also true of schools. Back then even if you were really intelligent and wanted to enter one of the better schools, it was almost impossible. My youngest son wasn't such a good student, but my eldest son was quite smart and he wanted to try out for the best school. But he wasn't accepted. He was very disappointed and sad because he had done the best that he could, but because he was Korean, he was not accepted. At times like that I used to think that even if we would have been struck by thunder in Korea, we should have gone back to our own country. In Japan, even if a Korean graduated from a university, when the company did a background check and found out that they were Koreans, they were not hired. After coming to Osaka [date is unclear], we never experienced such things personally. But while we were living in Shimonoseki, I felt very sorry for my kids, because they had to go through such things so many times. Then, eventually we moved to Ōsaka, because we felt that it would be better for our children's future.

You know, when I was growing up in Shimonoseki, after eating kimchi [pickled vegetables] we couldn't even go out of the house. The Japanese would say "Chōsen-jin kusai—Koreans stink." Although there were many Koreans in Shimonoseki, still the Japanese people would say such things. They said that they, the Japanese people, were too clean to eat something that smells as bad as garlic and kimchi. Now these days they say garlic is full of vitamins and kimchi is sold practically everywhere. But back then there was no such thing as a market that would sell kimchi and Korean food openly. If there were such places, they would only be drinking establishments where they sold the Korean liquor makklli. Then, also there were hanba [boarding houses] where Korean laborers slept and ate, and there you could find Korean food. But at that time there was no such thing as a Korean restaurant. Even if there had been, no one would have eaten there. Koreans didn't have money to spend in restaurants, first of all, and the Japanese people thought that it would make them smell like Koreans. Now things have changed. The Japanese have come to know the taste of Korean food and to know that garlic is good for you.

But over the years I came to realize that those Japanese people who are un-educated are the ones who go around calling us "Chōsen-jin, Chōsen-jin." I got into a big fight with a Japanese guy once, because I was sick and tired of him calling my family and me "Chōsen-jin, Chōsen-jin." I yelled back at him. "Hey, do you think we Koreans wanted to come to Japan? You Japanese forced many of our people to come here to work to our bones!" Ha, ha, ha.... When I think about those times, we Koreans have really come a long way....

(1) In 1939 the "Kyōwa Association" was organized under the direct supervision of the Ministry of the Interior with branches in each prefecture and smaller units in cities and towns. Its main purpose was to assimilate Koreans as well as to control subversive activities. The program encouraged changing of Korean names (soshi kaimei), the acquisition of Japanese language and culture, and Shintō worship. Membership was mandatory, and all Koreans were required to carry their membership card at all times.

(2) Recently, for third and fourth generation Koreans, the need to discover their eth-nic roots has encouraged them to go through the legal process of changing their Japanese names to their Korean names. Some who neither see themselves as purely Korean nor Japanese have kept the Japanese readings of their first names while keeping the Korean pronunciation of their last names.

Kim, Jackie J. Hidden Treasures: Lives of First Generation Korean Women in Japan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; 136-37, 140-151.