Gary Pak
The Ocean, the Land, the People and a Story
excerpt from a work-in-progress
Chapter One
She loves watching her Mama’s older brother play over the large wooden tray of lead type. The small shop with screened windows smelled of black ink that Uncle Gu made himself, grinding kīawe charcoal in the back room and mixing it with a gooey substance he concocted from cowhide and water from the brook that ran in the back of the association’s printshop. He would spend an entire day mixing and mixing until it reached a semi-glossy consistency, and then he would let it sit for several days, maybe a week, and then put a cover over it to prevent further evaporation. He had several jars of ink, in chronological order of his making, and Aulani loved the printshop and would smell the ink in brown ceramic jars from Uncle Gu’s home country. She loved the smell. It reminded her of days spent with her Hawaiian family near the ocean at Laupahoehoe. Her aunties and uncles would make roaring fires with kīawe and huli beef from Kamuela, and fish and taro and sweet potatoes, and with her cousins she would climb a tall kukui tree and play cowboys and Indians in the thick, itchy buffalo grass. She remembers those times as she watches Uncle Gu play with his type, but later as an adult these pictures will become hazy, though one thing she would always remember is the smell of Uncle’s ink.
Aulani cannot read what the type says, mainly because she doesn’t know the Korean alphabet nor Chinese characters, and she knows, too, whatever language it is, the figures are backwards. That’s what Uncle Gu told her to help her understand what he is doing. But not knowing does not stop her from watching him play with the lead type. He can spend hours over the tray, picking type from various slots and forming them in a string on a metal table. Sometimes he is fast picking the lead bits, and sometimes he is slow as if he is thinking more than playing, and then sometimes he just stares at the tray for minutes, his face with a scowl, and does nothing, then says something Aulani should not hear. At first when Uncle Gu said those things, Aulani did not know what they meant. All she knew was Uncle was angry, sometimes very angry. Then, after a while, he would take off his ink smudged apron and walk away. Aulani would try to follow him, but Uncle would tell her, in English, “Go away. Go play someplace.” But when he was in a good mood, he would take her to the kitchen of the headquarters and make her something to eat. Her favorite snack was a simple rice ball covered with roasted sesame seeds. Uncle would wash his hands at the kitchen sink, dry them, pour sesame oil in one palm, spread them evenly on both, then take a large handful of rice from a pot on the black gas stove and shape an egg-shaped rice ball, sprinkling them with seeds. He’d give it to a smiling and hungry Aulani, then he’d make one for himself, and together they would sit outside the kitchen on a split log and eat the rice balls while listening to the gurgling brook under the shade of tall ironwood trees.
If there was one thing Aulani would remember for the rest of her seventy-eight years of life, it was what Uncle Gu talked to her about when he was in a good mood and composing over the type tray. He would talk to her partly in Korean, but mostly in English. “Kippum-ni, you listen Uncle. Uncle tell you how this world work now. Ada-seo? You understand?” Standing straight, Aulani can barely see the top of the tray. Uncle’s hands are moving fast over the type, picking up lead quickly and placing them in line. He isn’t angry. Uncle Gu is happy. He is talking to me. “Kippum-ni, you listen careful, okay? Uncle teach you today. Right now. You know, your Mama and Uncle work with Joseon freedom. You understand? No more freedom Joseon right now, but Joseon…right here.” Uncle slaps his chest and leaves another ink smudge on his already dirty apron. “Joseon right here. Your Mama and Uncle…we fight for Joseon. Joseon not ours because Japanese. And your abeoji, your father, he is fighter too, for Hawaii working class people. You understand? You Mama and your Papa, they not same-same—uh, how can say this?—not same-same country…but…but…we same-same. Ada-seo?” Aulani bows her head, but no, she doesn’t understand. But she knows Uncle is very smart because he writes and makes his own newspaper. “Kippum-ni, you smart-smart girl. You know? Because your Mama and your Papa very smart.” Uncle smiles warmly. “They very, very smart. They understand why…why…world is like…like bad. In Joseon, in Hawaii, in America. Very bad. War. People dying. People no have to die. Why people die because…because Japanese colony making. You understand? This we call…we call…imperialism. And America too…America too is imperialism. No good. Rich man get more rich. Poor working people more they work and die. No more future in imperialism world. You understand imperialism? This important word know. Imperialism. Your Papa and your Mama and Uncle Gu, we all fight imperialism. Your Mama and Uncle Gu we fight Japanese imperialism. Your Papa, Mr. Kahuamoku, he fight Hawaii and America imperialism. But we all fight imperialism. Ada-seo?” Aulani nods, her eyes wide and searching.
“Kippum-ni, when you grow up, big and strong, you grow up and fight imperialism, yes. Ada-seo?”
Aulani acknowledges Uncle silently, then says, “Uncle Gu, I am hungry. You make me rice ball?”
Uncle Gu smiles. “Uncle Gu make Kippum-ni rice ball. I make you nice rice ball. But Uncle finish first. Okay? Then I make Kippum-ni rice ball. You like with kkae-seogom all over?”
Aulani gives a yes smile.
“Okay. But you wait little bit. Uncle finish first. Tonight newspaper we print. Newspaper must go deliver tomorrow morning. You wait little while and Uncle make Kippum-ni nice rice ball.”
And Aulani gives Uncle another beaming yes smile.
Many mornings Aulani is on the half-sawn log looking and listening to the brook. Sometimes the morning cardinals sit above her and chatter, and sometimes the mynah may come and chase the cardinals away, and other mynahs will come and their contentious, nervous chatter would chase all other sounds away. But many times Aulani would be by herself under the eaves of the gentle swaying branches of the ironwood, and she’d gather a handful of brown needles and play a game with her other self by separating and replacing the needle segments and then guessing where the separations are. Uncle taught her, too, to turn leaves, especially long ones like the California buffalo grass, into flutes. She’d pick a fresh blade of grass and press it between her thumbs, stretching the blade tightly, then blow and blow until it tweets. Uncle told her whenever he did this it reminded him of his childhood village in Jeolla Province. “Is Mama from there?” Aulani asked Uncle Gu once. He shook his head. “No, your Mama, she Seoul girl.” He explained that Aulani’s maternal grandfather was a schoolteacher but a rascal one, and when he joined a farmers’ resistance against the royal family and the colonizers from Japan and China, he was caught, imprisoned, then escaped, and, when a sliver of opportunity came, he took his wife and two sons, Kim Gu-sang and Kim Gu-myeon, the latter Uncle Gu to Aulani, on a long train ride to Seoul. “Your Mama born in Seoul. She not Jeolla girl. But she fight like Jeolla saryum. No mistake. No mistake.”
“Where is eldest uncle?” Aulani asks.
“Eldest Uncle in China. No know what him doing. He very, very smart. Nomu teok teok-hae. Adaseo? He very, very smart. More smart than Uncle Gu.”
“More smart than Mama?”
“No-no-no. Your Mama, I think, more smart. She read more books than Uncle Gu or Uncle Gu Sang-gi. More, more smart. Your Mama, one of kind, American say. One of kind.” “Where my Mama?”
Uncle Gu is silent. Aulani knows this mood. He will not answer. She hesitates to repeat the question. If she asks the question again, Uncle Gu will get very, very angry. But Aulani, being a stubborn and intelligent girl that she is, will repeat the question. She knows inherently that taking a stand, a risk, is important. Something Uncle Gu and Mama have shown her by example. And Papa, of course. She asks, “Where is Mama?”
Uncle Gu continues to drop type in slots, sorting them at a breakneck speed. Aulani sees he is not concentrated on the task. He makes mistakes, must take type from one misdrop and place it in the correct place. He sorts more type, takes a deep breath, then says, “Your Mama here. She busy…working. She working for large, large reason. That why I watch you. Ada-seo? If you no understand what Uncle Gu say, then no ask me. Ada-seo?”
Aulani does not understand what Uncle Gu is saying. She keeps silent. The tone of his last word is raised. She knows this is a sign for her to be quiet. She continues watching Uncle work. Then, surprising Aulani, he starts a lecture about the evils of imperialism, about what the Japanese are doing in Korea, about what America is doing in Hawai‘i, about why a war has come to some parts of the globe, why a world war is an imperialist war, why the imperialists claim it is a fight for democracy against fascism, that yes, fascism is bad, but democracy is a false claim by the imperialists to cover their evil deeds, and so on and on. Aulani can only listen. She doesn’t utter a sound or move an inch. Just her eyes are moving, from Uncle’s fast hands and fingers sorting the type to his exclamatory lips, to his gesturing hands and back to his words and back to the lead type being dropped into this slot and that, and so on and on.
Aulani will hardly understand what Uncle Gu is saying. She never can understand completely what Uncle Gu is saying. For one, she is too young to understand the nature of Marxist political economy, one of the most difficult topics to talk about because, mainly, not very many people, even those who profess to know the topic, can truly understand what this “political” and “economy” is about. It is perhaps one of the most difficult subjects in the social sciences, perhaps in all of knowledge because it is so nuanced and so modified and so manipulated by good intentioned and not so good intentioned thinkers. And two, many of the few people who deeply and truly know the basic living and righteous tenets of Marxist political economy don’t know how to address or explain these visionary principles in languages that everyday working people can understand—and this doesn’t mean to “water down” the science but means rather to break it down into analytical parts better understood. Years later, when Aulani is in a Marxist study group as part of a Hawai‘i-based revolutionary multinational organization, she will understand what political economy is about, even much better than Uncle Gu who at the time of the printshop lecture to Aulani is considered to be one of the leading Marxist theorists, especially on Marxist political economy, in the Asia Pacific. If fact, he has led many a workshop and study group on political economy in Korea, China, Japan and—yes—in America and Hawai‘i. But call it development-in-action or the dialectic of practice and theory, as knowledge, according to Marx, Lenin and Mao, is always transforming relative truths though never reaching absolute truths because the world is always fucking changing. Yes, Aulani is too young at the ripe age of four-and-half-years old to understand this. And later, when she is in her mid-thirties and in the middle of understanding the advanced tenets of Marxist political economy, she could argue that Uncle Gu’s political analysis is arcane and incorrect or at least inaccurate, but she would never do so because she has a good grip on the ideological understanding of dialectics after reading Mao Tse-tung’s pamphlet entitled On Contradiction that analyzes primary and secondary contradictions as relative and changing truths. Simply and organically stated, Uncle Gu’s knowledge is timely, real and passionately genuine. She will never question what kind of Marxist Uncle Gu is/was because her feelings for him run very deeply. She has the highest love and respect and love for a man who has shown in his practice the highest and ultimate love for humanity.
Yes, Aulani is too young, but later she will become objectively more knowledgeable than Uncle on the practice and theory of Marxism, the science of making a revolution in an imperialist country, though she too will fall into dogma as judged by the principles of the relativity of time. But leave her alone. Like her Uncle, her love for humanity is most genuine and most passionate.
***
Gu Jung-hee is chilled by the ocean wind blowing on her cheeks. The wind carries a heavy smell of fermented fish. She is three days out of Incheon harbor, and the ship, Hawaii Maru, has stopped in Yokohama harbor where it is picking up many young women, the majority if not all perhaps as picture brides to Japanese plantation workers in Hawai‘i. Gu Jung-hee, too, is a designated picture bride, though from Chosen, which is what her papers are documenting. She is to be transferred in Honolulu Harbor to a Mr. Suh Hyun-nam from South Pyeonan Province. Mr. Suh is a sugar cane worker in Waiālua, ‘Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. Mr. Suh has paid $75 in hard-earned cash from his job working six days a week on a sugar plantation for $18 a month to bring his bride to Hawai‘i. These are the facts that persuaded the authorities of the Territory of Hawaii to stamp his official documents. He is very youthful in the reciprocal photo Gu Jung-hee received. According to her official story, she had no choice of husband; everything was decided for her, including the sealing of the deal. What she does know, however, is the story about this transaction is almost entirely fictional. She is not going to Hawai‘i to marry a Korean immigrant worker. She is not a picture bride. She doesn’t want to marry Suh Hyun-nam whom she has never met. She is not leaving for dire economic reasons. Rather, her purpose is to join her brother Gu Ki-nam. And her real name is Kim Jung-hee and his real name is Kim Gu-myeon. And in her possession are documents sown into her travel hanbok that will help to strengthen the independence movement against Japan’s imperial power, documents that she will turn over to her brother once they are reunited in the Territory of Hawaii. One of the documents is a directive from Pak Yong-man who now lives in Shanghai where the Korean Provisional Government has taken temporary residence. About the only thing that is not fictional about Gu Jung-hee’s voyage is the anxiety and fear she has. They are real. She has never taken a long sea journey, and her nerves are wracked just as much, or more because of the purpose of her trip, as felt by the hundreds, maybe thousands of picture brides from Korea and Japan. This is real, and this she must suppress by the powers within her that she has never had to use nor never knew she had.
Clutching her long woolen coat and facing the wind, Gu Jung-hee sings a song she is creating at the moment. She sings of love for her home town, of her play in making a flute from a willow leaf, of joy she had in spring days swinging from the ancient gingko tree behind her family home; and she sings of the bright future of a unified Korea under a revolutionary Pak Yong-man government. A burst of wind chills her neck and she clutches her coat. She continues singing, then hears the clang of the ship’s bell. The boat will finally depart Yokohama harbor. Her anxiety increases. Her heart palpitates. Her breathing stiffens. A chill sinks into her body. Her head swoons and her feet become numb of feeling. But overriding all is a tepid lightness of certainty and, of course, a passion for the future. And, of course, there is the anticipation of seeing her older brother for the first time in nearly a decade.
The horn resounds again, and the boat slowly reverses from the wharf. Soon, the boat moves sideways, then forward…and now, ahead of them, is the open sea, the Pacific Ocean, and the end result of the trip will be the Hawaiian Islands where a branch of the provisional government gives life to hope in the Korean peninsula. She returns to the steerage where her floor bedding and everyday items are. Her passport, money and the important documents she keeps on her at all times.
In the steerage she was given space among the many Japanese picture brides. She is the only picture bride from Korea. Two of the Japanese brides come to her and touch her face. “Kirei ne!” they say, referring her unblemished and fair complexion. Almost all of the brides have sun-darkened skin as perhaps they are daughters of farmers. All of their fates are sealed: they will be wives to Japanese plantation workers whom they have never met. Some will escape the brutal and racist feudalism of the Hawaiian plantations as a few will have husbands who will take advantage of their trades in carpentry, husbandry, gardening and so on, and take the risk of venturing into small businesses. A husband may be prompted into a new career by a persistent wife who knows the art of cooking, sewing or the like and will urge her husband to become a restaurant owner, a tailor or another occupation other than a deadend indentured servant for the haole plantation bosses. A wife will mostly be very supportive of her husband whether she likes him or not. Romantic love is never a consideration in any marriage. A few of the brides have very dire futures like Tamiko who was one of the two to touch Gu Jung-hee’s face: she will die in childbirth while delivering her third child, and the newborn, too, will not survive. However, Natsuko, the other to befriend Gu Jung-hee, will do very well for herself; her husband will escape the plantation and establish a small general store in Waipahu. The store will prosper, will temporarily fold during World War II because of U.S. race practices, then re-open in 1946 and quickly become the largest merchandise market in the plantation town. Kimiko who was five beddings away from Gu Jung-hee would be able to celebrate her ninety-one-year old birthday; three years before her passing, she would be proclaimed a literary treasure for her hole hole bushi contribution to the culture of Hawai‘i. Michiko, who was eleven beddings away from Gu Jung-hee would become one of the richest women in Honolulu. Upon meeting her picture husband on the wharf in Honolulu harbor and becoming devastated that he wasn’t the young dashing man that was portrayed in the exchange photo—yes, he was fifty-one years old to her eighteen, and the photo exchanged was not of himself but of another, much younger and much handsomer man on his work gang—would not dare to look a third time at her supposedly future husband, and when they crossed the street to head to the ‘Iwilei train station, she dropped the bundle she was carrying and ran into the crowded sidewalk of Chinatown and was never to be seen again by Mr. Furumoto Kenichi. Luckily she had hid her papers and money in silver and gold coins in the inner sanctum of her garment. Fate met and rode with her: by the ending of World War II, as a silent owner of a renowned brothel, she had accumulated wealth to be unofficially considered the second richest independent woman in Chinatown.
The trip over the Pacific took over two weeks. It was a terrible journey. Many people became ill. Seasickness was the most common variable, but an outbreak of diphtheria killed two women. Fortunately for Gu Jung-hee, she did not catch the disease, mainly because her training as a nurse’s aide made her isolate herself from the Japanese women and to cover her face with her clothing. She did have a small bout with diarrhea, which weakened her. The total boat trip was one of the worse experiences in her life, worse than the time she had to leave Korea to go to Harbin at the start of winter. Many times during that journey she thought she would fall to the Siberian cold. But she made it to the destination, and it helped that her brother Gu Ki-nam was there to encourage her progress. But on this boat trip, there was no Gu Ki-nam to console her. She counted the days, the monotonous days mostly spent in steerage, hearing the cries and laments from the women, each time the wails of agony intensifying when one of their own fell ill or passed away from disease. To distract herself, Gu Jung-hee tried to imagine the kind of world promised by a Pak Yong man government, with no royal decrees from the king, that spineless sidekick of the Japanese emperor.
Why is it throughout history that Korea has always kowtowed and paid tributes to the Chinese, or to the Mongolians, and now the Japanese? Koreans are a peace-loving people. But as her brother often blames, it is the royalty that made Korea weak with their lavish lifestyles and stupid directives that were always paid for by the labor and suffering of the common working people. “The king and his gang are never, were never, for Joseon people,” Gu Ki-nam would say. “Down with the Yi dynasty and all other dynasties! They are the reason Joseon is a crippled nation. That’s why the Japanese bastard dogs have their way with Joseon. We are not Chosen! We are Joseon! And we will be a socialist Joseon whether they like it or not!”
Twelve days or so into the journey when the disease was under control, the captain allowed passengers in the steerage to visit the deck. Passengers in first class and second class were not allowed to mingle with steerage passengers during those brief times to prevent the spread of another outbreak. Gu Jung-hee took advantage of those visits to the deck, taking in as much of the fresh sea air as she could. Breathing the salty air, she could feel her lungs clearing themselves of contaminants and staleness from the steerage. She would look over the ocean and at the clouds on the horizon, and breathe and sing songs lifted by the wind. One of those outings was windy but sunny, and Gu Jung-hee closed her eyes and faced the sun for as long as she was allowed on deck.
Back at Yokohama harbor, the captain through the first mate had told the picture brides that the expected duration of the voyage was seventeen days or longer if the ocean conditions were bad. As Gu Jung-hee was fluent in Japanese, she understood everything that was said.
Around the fourteenth day of the voyage, Gu Jung-hee noticed a change in the scent of the ocean even with the mixing of the outside air with the terrible smells and miasma in steerage. She thought she smelled a faint redolence of wood. What is this? Is it seo namul? No, it can’t be. The ship was too far away from her homeland. As the ship distanced itself from Korea, she could feel the attachments she had with the Korean landscape—its mountains, its streams, its fields of ssal and kkaenip, its seo namul with its heavy resins being aspirated in the air—stretch thin, and now there was just a thread keeping her connected to the homeland.
What is this scent?
Whatever it was, it was enough to lighten her heart. She counted again the days to the expected landfall, a task she repeated several times during her waking hours, and each time she imagined her reunion with Gu Ki-nam a smile would come to her face. No one on the boat could see her smile because of the cloth mask, but that was fine. What was it like to be in Powha? How long will she stay there? Her only purpose for going there was to deliver the documents to Gu Ki-nam, and it was never discussed what she was to do or where she would go afterwards. How long would she stay in Powha? She was not given money for a return passage. Was Powha safer than her homeland?
In her waking hours, she reminded herself what day it was, how many days out of Incheon it had been, and how many days more before the boat would dock in Hawai‘i. What would it be like in Hawai‘i? Are there many Koreans? Who are the Hawaiian people? What are they like? Would she recognize her big brother? Would he be well? What is he doing? What is his work in the provisional government? What kind of directive is in the document? Is Pak Yong-man asking him to return to Korea or to move to Shanghai?
On the fifteenth day out, Gu Jung-hee heard an excitement in the talk of the sailors. From the bits and pieces she heard, she found out they were hours away from docking in Hawai‘i. This was joyous news. The weeks on the ocean was a depressing time. She had witnessed many women suffering and two dying of diphtheria, as well as another going crazy. Yuriko was one of the quietest on board, but halfway through the trip, she began to talk almost nonstop, and then she took out a knife and tried to cut the person next to her, which prompted two sailors to forcibly remove her from steerage.
Despite it all, there was now hope among the remaining brides. They began to roll up beddings and pack their belongings, and Gu Jung-hee followed their actions. Then, after eating their lunch ration of a rice ball and a cup of weak hot tea, the first mate entered the steerage and announced Hawaii Maru would be docking later that afternoon, that all passengers in steerage should get ready to leave but only after the passengers in first and second classes had disembarked. He also informed them after leaving the ship they were to be inspected by a Hawaiian medical officer and interviewed by a government official, so it would be necessary that everyone ready her papers.
Though still with anxiety, Gu Jung-hee’s heart was singing with anticipation of finally uniting with older brother. That would bring much joy to her. The women were busily talking to each other. Over the journey she had become friends with Tamiko and Natsuko, and the three had talked about their lives and dreams and aspirations, though Gu Jung-hee was careful about what she said as she could not expose the fact she was not a picture bride. The two Japanese women talked about how each other’s husband was more handsomer than her own, and when they asked about Gu Jung-hee’s future husband, she showed them Suh Hyun-nam’s photo and said the only thing she knew of him was the province he was from, which was truthful. Both of the brides had nothing to say about their future husbands background as they, too, did not know much about them, only that they were workers on a Hawaiian plantation. Tamiko talked about her true love back in her home village and how her heart broke into pieces when his family had an arranged marriage with an ugly but rich girl, and Natsuko told a similar story.
“I want to be a dancer in a big house show,” Tamiko said. “Natsuko, what is your dream?”
“My dream? What is that?”
“You know, what you want to do the rest of your life.”
“I want to be happy and married. I want to have many children. I want to go back to my village and help my parents.”
“And you, Jung-hee, what is your dream?” Tamiko asked.
I want Korea to be liberated from the evil rule of Japan. I want an everlasting peace for my people. I want the brutal Japanese government and soldiers to be kicked out of my beloved country!
“I…I also want to be happy. I want my husband to be a good man. I want many children. Many children. I want to be happy.”
“Yes…yes,” Tamiko said, rather aspirated. “We all want to be happy. Happy and not hungry. We want husbands who are good men. And we want many, many good children to take care of us when we are old and cannot take care of ourselves. This is our dream.”
[end of excerpt]
Author’s Bio
Gary Pak has published seven books. His latest publications are Borderless [novel] (Kāneohe, HI: Wake Up Press, 2022) and Kewalo Blues and Echoes [poems] (Kenmore, NY: BlazeVOX, 2024). He directed, wrote and co-produced a documentary, Huli: Kokua Hawaii and the Beginning of the Revolutionary Movement in Hawai'i (Kāneohe, HI: Wake Up Productions, 2018) as well co-scripted Songs of Love (Honolulu: NOW Productions, 2023). Besides writing, his passions are playing jazz piano and woodblock printing. He is Professor Emeritus of English at UH Mānoa.
Photos by staff