When My Name Was Keoko (13 page)

The officer picks up the papers and looks over them quickly. Documents and lesson plans for Abuji's school. But the officer doesn't care about these—he looks at them, then crumples them and tosses them on the floor.

Finally, he reaches for Sun-hee's diary. He flicks through the pages. Sun-hee clutches at her nightshirt, just like Omoni.

The officer looks up. "Whose stupid scribblings are these?" he asks abruptly.

Sun-hee answers at once. "Mine," she says. I'm surprised by her voice—it's strong, not shaky. And she's stopped trembling.

He sneers. "Idiotic thoughts written in a beautiful hand," he says. "Do not waste the glory of fine kanji on such nonsense—it is a crime against our Divine Emperor. You are fortunate that I will grant leniency this one time. Any more of this and I will not be so merciful."

He hands the diary to another soldier and makes a brusque gesture. The soldier takes the diary to the kitchen and throws it into the stove.

Sun-hee takes one step forward. I pull her back.

The officer finishes his inspection of the papers. He tears the last few into shreds. "We know that this town breeds a worm of treason!" he shouts. "We will hunt it down and grind it under our heel! All of you have been warned—if we find later that you knew anything of this treason, you will suffer the same fate as the traitor himself!"

Then he stomps out in fury, his men behind him.

The gate clangs shut. Sun-hee breaks free of my grasp and runs to the stove to try to save her diary. She reaches right into the fire.

Too late. There are only a few burned scraps of paper left. She kneels on the floor, holding them, Omoni next to her with a wet rag, wiping away the soot and ashes. Sun-hee's fingertips are turning red, starting to swell. It must hurt, but
she doesn't cry. I pace and clench my fists, wishing there were something I could do.

Abuji comes over, his face worried. He watches Omoni tend to Sun-hee but doesn't say anything. He just stands there.

Seeing him like that makes me remember one of Uncle's stories from years ago, when he'd been hurt, after the Olympics. He couldn't work for a few weeks, so he stayed home. Sun-hee and I loved that—he was always around to tell us stories.

"My father—your grandfather—was a great scholar," Uncle had said. He was resting on his mat. Sun-hee and I were sitting on the floor to one side. "He devoted his entire life to studying. It took him many years and many attempts, but late in life he finally passed the difficult examinations and was appointed a scholar in the royal court.

"I was only a small boy, but I remember well how proud he was the day he put the jade button in his topknot. The button meant that he had passed the examinations. He let me touch it just once—to feel how smooth and round it was." Uncle smiled, a sad smile, then shook his head.

"Only a few weeks later the Japanese ordered all men to cut off their topknots and to wear their hair short, in the Japanese style. They said topknots were too Korean. Your grandfather would not do it. He had worked too hard for the jade button."

He looked away from us. At nothing. Like he was seeing something inside his head, a place or a time far away. His voice seemed to come from far away, too.

"One day three soldiers came to the house. They burst in without being invited and found my father in his room. Two
of them held him down while the third one cut off his topknot. And one of them stole the jade button.

"I was young, only four or five years old. I hid behind my mother's skirts—so frightened! I wanted to help somehow, but what could I do?" He shook his head again.

"But it wasn't enough, just to cut off his beautiful topknot. One of them took a big handful of hair and threw it into the kimchee pot. He stirred it for a while, and all the time he and his friends were laughing..." Uncle's voice was so angry that he had to stop speaking for a few moments.

The kimchee pot. Every Korean home has one. A big ceramic pot sunk into the floor of the courtyard, so deep a man can almost stand inside. The pot keeps the spicy pickled cabbage from freezing during the winter. The kimchee is scooped out with a huge wooden ladle. The pot is always carefully covered because anything that falls in is hard to get out. Strands of hair—it would have been impossible to get them all out.

"But where was Abuji?" I asked. "He was a lot older than you—maybe he could have helped." Abuji is ten years older than Uncle.

Uncle frowned. "I think he was there too, but maybe not. Maybe he was at school—I don't remember.

"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?

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.

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 Harbor. 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.

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.