“I… I don’t have it. I gave it back. Are you with the police?”
Mr. Kwan takes out his I.D. and shows it to me. It is in Hangul so I can’t read it, but it looks official enough. He tells me he’s with the National Police. He asks who I gave the comb to.
“There was an address with it,” I say quickly. “I went there and gave it back. Then I came here to visit my grandmother.” My knees are shaking and I don’t want Mr. Kwan to see so I move close to the table.
“I don’t believe you,” Mr. Kwan replies clearly noticing my move into the table. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. If the comb is here, we will find it.” He motions Bruce Willis over to me. As the policeman start to search the apartment, Bruce motions for me to raise my arms.
“Are you going to frisk me?” I ask unsteadily.
“Yes we are,” Mr. Kwan answers. Bruce has a metal-detecting wand so thank God he doesn’t have to touch me. He waves the thing over my entire body. When he’s satisfied that I don’t have the comb, he turns to Mrs. Hong. Her twisted grin makes me even more nervous. Bruce says something to her in Korean and waves his wand over her. He doesn’t’ find anything on her, either.
Mr. Kwan points to the table. “Both of you sit,” he orders.
We sit at the table and Mr. Kwan stands over us with his arms folded as the policemen search the apartment. They’re amazingly thorough. They disassemble parts of the stove, pour the bori cha down the drain and look inside the pot, remove the trap in the sink, wave the wand over every inch of the bed mat. They wand all of Mrs. Hong’s clothing, pour out the rice from the burlap bag in the cupboard, examine the light fixture in the ceiling, turn over the table and chairs. They look everywhere but when they’re done, they haven’t found the comb. I begin to wonder myself where it is.
Finally, the police are done and Bruce Willis shrugs. Mr. Kwan turns to me. He asks me if I remember the address where I took the comb and how I got there. I say I don’t remember and I don’t know where it was. He asks me to describe the comb and I give him a general description of it. He writes everything I say on his pad.
Then he asks, “Did the dragon have five toes? Try to remember. This is important.”
I remember Mrs. Hong’s story that Colonel Matsumoto was amazed that the dragon had five toes but I didn’t notice it myself. “I don’t remember seeing that,” I say.
“So you gave the comb back and then you came here?” he asks. “Why?”
“To meet my grandmother. To hear her story.”
“Her story?” he says. “I can only imagine what she is telling you. But you should know that if she was an honorable woman, she would live in the comfort woman home in Gwanju instead of this place.”
He turns to Mrs. Hong. “I have read your papers Hong, Ja-hee. What are you hiding? Why do you live in this place and not at the House of Sharing? You would be honored there along with the other comfort women.”
Mrs. Hong glares at him but doesn’t say anything. Mr. Kwan says, “Perhaps it is because you were a chinulpa?”
He turns back to me and I swallow hard. “Is she the one who gave you the comb? Answer me.”
I’m starting to panic. I don’t want to tell the truth, but I don’t want to lie either. Mr. Kwan motions to Bruce who comes and stands behind me. Mr. Kwan puts his hands on the table and looks at me straight in the eye. He’s scowling making me wish I’d never come here. He tells me people have stolen Korea’s national treasures from for hundreds of years. He says it’s illegal to take artifacts out of Korea and that I’ll be in a lot of trouble if I do. He says the comb might be very important to Korea. “Now I want answers,” he says. “I ask you again. Is this the person who gave you the comb?”
I feel the hulking presence of Bruce behind me and I’m about to cry. “I… I,” I stammer.
Mr. Kwan slams his fist on the table making both me and the teacups jump. “Answer me!” he barks. “You know where it is and I want you to tell me. Now!”
Tears are welling in my eyes. I can’t breathe. If these men want to hurt me, there’s nothing I can do to stop them. I take a deep breath and prepare to tell them everything they want to know.
Then in a flash, Mrs. Hong is on her feet pushing Mr. Kwan toward the door. “Get out!” she screams. “Get out of my apartment this minute!”
Mr. Kwan steps back, surprised at her rage. “Ma’am, do not get in our way. This is an official matter.”
She takes an angry step toward him. “Do you think I’m afraid of you?” she growls. “Do you think you can do anything to me that has not already been done? You are nothing! I have suffered all my life for Korea. I can suffer a lot more.” She steps in to Mr. Kwan’s face. “She doesn’t have the comb and you have searched my apartment. Now go, find who has it instead of threatening me and my granddaughter!”
Mr. Kwan locks eyes with Mrs. Hong. Then he blinks twice. After a few long seconds, he turns to me and asks what my plans are for the rest of the day. I tell him after I’m done here, I plan to buy a celadon pot and then go to the hotel to catch the bus for the airport.
“Good,” he says. “Be sure you are on your flight tonight or I will have you arrested. Is that clear?”
I assure him he’s very clear and he shoots another look at Mrs. Hong who hasn’t backed away an inch. He turns to leave but stops mid-step. “Oh and by the way, the best place to buy a celadon pot is at Kosney’s Department store, not from the shops on the streets. The quality is much better. It’s worth the higher price.”
“Thank you,” I say. He gives me a diplomatic smile and then he and the others leave.
Mrs. Hong comes back to the table. All the anger she showed only seconds earlier is gone. She asks if I’m alright.
I shake my head. My heart is pounding. The apartment is shrinking in on me and I’m suffocating. “They… they were going to hurt me,” I gasp. “I have to go.” I grab my purse and push away from the table.
“No, stay,” she says. “You will be fine.”
“No I’m not fine!” I cry. “I have to get out of here.” I head for the door.
“If you leave now Ja-young, you will prove that I was wrong about you,” she says.
I quickly turn back. “Look, my name is Anna and I’m sorry if I’m afraid, but I can’t do this.” I fight back tears as I march to the door and pull on my shoes.
As I reach for the door handle, she says, “It is your fear that will prevent you from becoming who you are meant to be.” I grip the door handle hard but don’t turn it.
“Don’t you want to know, Anna?” she asks, gently.
E IGHTEEN
Mrs. Hong tells me to come back to the table. “You are safe here,” she says. I let go of the door handle and slowly push my shoes off. I go back and sit with her. She’s perfectly composed which is only a little reassuring. She points at the blossom in the bowl on the windowsill. “It’s beautiful in the sunlight, don’t you think?” she asks.
“Yeah, I guess,” I say.
“Every two or three days I get a new one at the market even though I can’t afford it. Notice how the sun brings out the colors. You can see the veins in each petal.” I don’t look at it that closely.
“That blossom started as a seed,” she continues. “It was buried deep in the cold, dark ground. One day when the soil was warm and moist, the little seed split apart and began to climb to a world it could not see. Imagine the courage it had! It did not know what it would find when it broke through the surface. The scorching sun? The gardener’s blade? The crushing hoof of a cow? But the seed courageously pushed on so that one day, it could become a beautiful flower.”
She points a finger at me. “You must have the courage of the seed, Anna. Without it, you will stay buried. You will rot and die. It does not matter how smart you are, or how pretty, or if you have money and many friends. If you do not have courage, you will never blossom into the flower you were meant to be.”
“I don’t have much courage,” I say.
She raises an ey
ebrow. “You have more than you think. It took a great deal of courage to come here today. And you didn’t tell that awful man what he wanted to know.”
“I was about to tell him everything,” I admit.
“Perhaps. But you didn’t.”
She goes to the stove to put on another pot of bora cha. “Tell me Anna,” she says from the stove, “do you know what kind of flower it is?”
I glance at it. “It looks like a hibiscus,” I say. “We have a bush in our back yard.”
“Very good. You are correct. It is in the hibiscus family.” She turns on the stove and comes back to the table. “In Korea we call it a mugunghwa blossom. Have you ever heard of it?”
“I think one of our tour guides told us it’s used in Korean architecture. Something about the House of Yi.”
“Did the guide tell you anything more?”
“I don’t remember,” I say. I’m losing the battle against my nerves. I don’t want to talk about the mugunghwa blossom or the House of Yi. I’m afraid that Mr. Kwan and Bruce Willis will come crashing back in and arrest me. I just want to get away.
Mrs. Hong frowns. “You need to pay attention. The mugunghwa was the symbol of the Chosŏn Dynasty of Korea. The House of Yi was our ruling family from the fourteenth century until the Japanese annexed our country in 1910 and turned Korea into a slave state.”
“Yes, it was a terrible thing the Japanese did,” I say.
“The Americans, too,” Mrs. Hong says.
“The Americans?”
She sighs. “Ja-young, for all of our history, world powers, including America, have exploited us.” Do you remember how the Russo-Japanese war ended?”
“No. I haven’t studied history.”
“You should,” she says. “The U.S. negotiated the treaty in 1905. However, to get the Japanese to sign, and so Tokyo would not challenge America in the Philippines, your President Roosevelt secretly agreed to let Japan occupy Korea. And that is just what they did. They took our country and said Korea was now part of Japan. Of course, because of that secret agreement, America did nothing. The result was thirty-five years of horrible oppression of my people—like being raped by their soldiers
“But Americans didn’t rape you,” I say.
“No,” she snaps back, “but they let it happen to protect their own interests.”
She lets her point sink in. Then she goes to the stove, pours two cups of bori cha and brings them to the table. The aroma fills the room. I take a sip and immediately the strong, bitter liquid calms my nerves. Mrs. Hong sits in her chair, relaxed and poised.
She turns her attention to the blossom again. “The mugunghwa is not only beautiful, it has a pleasant fragrance, too. Smell it.”
“What? You want me to smell it?”
“Yes,” she answers.
I lean over and take a sniff.
“No, no,” she says. “Take the bowl in both of your hands and smell it that way.”
I lift the bowl from the sill and bring it to my nose. The fragrance is earthy and sweet. “I see what you mean,” I say.
Before I can put the bowl back, she lifts an end of the windowsill. There’s a small compartment underneath. She reaches inside and lifts out the package of coarse brown cloth. I have no idea when she put it there. It must have been sometime during her story about the comfort station when I wasn’t looking. Dumbstruck, I continue to hold the bowl with the mugunghwa blossom in my hands.
She giggles like a kid who just got away with something. “I have lived in this apartment for thirty-five years,” she says. “Practically since the building was new. I have hidden the comb here all that time. I knew they wouldn’t find it.”
She sets the package on the table and pulls on the twine. The cloth falls open, and there’s the comb with the two-headed dragon.
“By the way,” I say setting the blossom back on the sill, “you said there were two things you wanted me to do. One was to hear your story. What’s the other thing? You haven’t said yet.”
She moves the mugunghwa blossom to the table next to the comb and the two photographs. “Listen to the rest of my story first.”
I’m still a bit shook up but her confidence reassures me. I lean back, ready to listen again.
“Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?” she asks.
“The Japanese left and the Russians had come.”
“Ah yes,” she nods. She holds her teacup in both hands. “The communists. How disappointing.”
N INETEEN
September 1945. Dongfeng, Manchuria.
For two years in Dongfeng when I dared to dream, I dreamed of the day I’d be free and could go back home. I thought it would be the happiest day of my life. But when the day finally came, I was lost and alone. With the Japanese, I always knew what I had to do—laundry in the morning before the soldiers came, cooking on the days the geishas assigned it to me, servicing the soldiers all afternoon and night. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere outside the comfort station except the infirmary for my monthly inspection and the officer’s quarters at night. My routine was simple and my world was small. But now it was gone and I didn’t know what to do.
And I was afraid. I was afraid of the Russians with their strange, guttural language. I was afraid the Japanese might come back and kill me.
So for days I hid among the low stucco buildings of Dongfeng still dressed in my green yukata. I snuck from empty house to empty house, always staying far away from the comfort station. I ate what food I could find and each night I took shelter in one of the abandoned houses, curled up in a dark corner, and tried to sleep.
One day, I went inside a house that had a mirror and I saw my reflection. At first, I didn’t recognize myself. But gradually, I could see it was me who was dressed in the green yukata. I was horrified. I immediately stripped off the yukata and searched the house until I found regular clothes.
I do not know how many days I lived like that. It might have been weeks. But eventually, the Russians caught me and took me to their headquarters in Colonel Matsumoto’s old office. The thick-browed Russian officer sitting at Colonel Matsumoto’s desk spoke Japanese and asked me what I was doing in Dongfeng. I couldn’t answer his question. I honestly didn’t know what to tell him. He asked me where I was from.
“Korea,” I answered.
“You were one of the Korean girls,” he stated.
“Have you found Soo-hee?” I asked. “She is two years older than me.”
“We only found the bodies by the burned out barracks. You’re the only one we found alive.”
I was too numb and confused to put together all that had happened those last days at the comfort station. I must have looked confused, too, because the officer said, “The Japanese have surrendered. They’re gone. Go back to your home. You can’t stay here.”
I didn’t know exactly where my home was from Dongfeng, so I asked the Russian officer. He told me it was two-hundred-eighty miles to Sinuiju and there was no transportation there. Apparently, I’d have to walk the entire way. The Russians gave me some rice which I wrapped along with the comb in a wool blanket.
I was afraid to go back home where I would have to tell my mother and father I had been an ianfu. How could they possibly understand? But I longed to see them again and have things the way they were before. So on a clear morning, I lifted the blanket sack to my shoulder and asked an old Chinese farmer which way it was to Korea. The farmer nodded down the road and I set off.
After a mile, I turned onto the main road. I looked back at the low, tile-roof buildings of Dongfeng and thought of the eleven girls I knew there, my ianfu sisters. I thought of my onni, Soo-hee. Somehow, I had survived and I wondered why. Perhaps it was because I had been born in the year of the dragon. Maybe the comb had brought me good luck after all. Whatever the reason, I had to go on. I had to go on for them. So I joined a thin gray column of refugees with bundles on their backs, pots and utensils tied to their waists and children in tow. There were young and old, Chin
ese and Koreans, bent under their loads, going east, going south—going home.
*
I walked for many miles each day. Then on the third day, a Russian soldier offered me a ride on the back of his flatbed truck. I was tired and my feet were sore so I climbed up and hung on. After a few miles, the driver stopped where there was no one on the road. He pulled me off the truck and led me to the ditch. I lay in the dewy grass and opened my dress as the driver unbuttoned his trousers. He went to mount me, but he wasn’t stiff yet.
“Slap me,” I said in Japanese.
He looked at me confused. “Slap me hard!” I yelled. I took his hand and made him slap my face. “Pinch me!” I demanded. I brought his fingers to my breasts and made him pinch me. “Come on!” I screamed at him. “I know what you like. Aren’t you a man?”
He pulled back confused and started to button his trousers. I flew into a rage. I jumped on him. I scratched his face and spit on him. I screamed at him, nasty words that I learned from the Japanese geishas. I punched him in the nose making it bleed. He punched me back throwing me hard to the ground.
“What’s the matter?” I said looking up at him. I’d never had anyone pull away like that before. He walked backwards to his truck mumbling something in Russian. He climbed in and drove off, leaving me alone in the ditch.
I sat in the tall grass and watched the truck disappear down the road. And then I laughed. I laughed out loud at the stupid Russian driver who thought I wouldn’t know what to do. I faced toward Dongfeng and laughed at the thousands of Japanese men who had raped me, slapped me and pulled my hair. I laughed at the arrogant geishas who did exactly what we did, only they volunteered. I laughed at all of them without covering my mouth. And then I stood up and screamed. I screamed so hard that it hurt my throat. My scream echoed off the hills, and I laughed again at the echo of my scream, this time careful to cover my mouth as I did. After a while, standing there in that field with my dress wide open I wanted to cry. Instead, I buttoned my dress and lifted my sack and I marched on.
Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story Page 10