Boolim's Days in Nagasaki

7
The Boolims' Days at Sakitoma-chi, 1940~1942

There was no empire and no colony, either. There were only people there, greeting with handshakes and friendly talks. There were smiling human faces, melodious human voices and brisk human steps. The transmarine couple, who could have turned scandalous if their true relationship had been bared to the cruise passengers, arrived at seven on a spring morning of 1940 on the site of a Mitsubishi Mining Company at Sakitoma-chi, Nishisonoki-kun, Nagasaki-ken, Japan.

"Anatawa ri san deska?" (Are you Mrs. Lee?) a woman in his thirties in kimono dress asked Boolim, looking up and down at her as if to size her up. "Hai," Toung Jang came forward and responded on behalf of her. He had already familiarized himself in the community because he had been made a clerk at a Mitsubishi mining town of Sakitoma-chi. Michiko-san led Boolim to her "house" in the miners' quarters.

"Mr. Wang has gone to the coal pit," the woman said to Boolim at the threshold of her room, handing her a room key, with a female dependent of a miner's family acting as an interpreter. The room was small, with a low ceiling and two glass windows, one to the corridor and the other to the outside, or land side. Though unfurnished, it had room enough for two.

Left alone, with the door closed, she put the hand-held pack, which she had carried all the way from Danuishill to Nagasaki using both hands and shoulders, down on the room floor and unpacked it. She picked out first of all the wrappings of tuck (rice cakes) and smelled them to see whether they were all right. To her expected disappointment, they were going bad but she minded dumping them right now. She then sorted out her husband's sweatshirts and underwears which she had cleaned and starched, folded them, and put them in the closet.

The room was neither hot nor cold. It was adequately warm, floored with tatami mats and warmed with air-tight windows. She took a slow glance around the room, with her eyes focused on a pants on a clothes hanger on the wall. She got to it, touched it and got her nose to it. Although cleaned, it sort of smelled of coal. She got it off the hanger and sat down with it, putting it on her knee. She closed her eyes and pictured her husband far down the pit, crawling on his bended legs.

Toung Jang's wife Mrs. Guido Kwon called on Boolim and invited her to a lunch treat. But there were no familiar flavors scented of kimchi and toenjang (fermented soybean paste). There were no bowls of rice, either. Guido instead got bowls of hato mugi, or pressed barley steamed with a small amount of beans to be set out on a small dining table along with lukewarm vegetable soup. There also were plates of steamed sweet potatoes. Guido roasted the bad rice cakes which Boolim had handed her into the edible ones, which turned out a real treat.

The flamboyant words such as the allegiance to the High Emperor or the subjects' obligation did not pass their lips. The situation was that almost all the available resources human and material had been sent into the barracks at war. So, rice for the civilian use was in short supply. Other staples had been being rationed, of which pressed barley was one of them.


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Nocturnal lives posed a problem. They had not been "smart" from the start. But after a lot of trials and errors, they had adjusted themselves to "a smart mode." An old Oriental wisdom had it that the wife of a man should deserve the designation of a "smart" wife in so far as she did not "extract", or drain energy from her spouse. The very woman, who was destined or trained to deplete male stamina from amorous relationships with her counterpart, for the sake of satiating her own sexual impulses, should deserve the designation of "a bad woman."

Which had been nagged into Boolim's ears by her mother when she had been a beloved daughter, and after marriage by her mother-in-law, as "a dictum of a good housewife." She was naturally prepared to stem her husband's urge and subsequently to contain her own libido. Hugs and touches were O.K. Insertion was O.K. only if the stuff was immobile in there and pulled out in no time. Ejaculation was self-prescribed a prohibition, to which the couple progressively adapted and tempered themselves.

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Communal was the exact term which could categorize the life patterns of Sakitoma-chi coal miners. Three major modes of life at the coal mining town had been done communally: the distribution of food grains, laundry and bathing. Pressed barley and something were rationed; The washing of miners' work wear was done at communal laundry houses; And the miners and their dependents took baths at the town bath houses. The miners changed into their work clothes which had been cleaned and starched at communal laundry houses at men's locker rooms before going down the pits.

The scarcity of the farmland foods could be supplemented and made whole by foods from the waters. Boolim and her sister-in-law Guido frequented the shallow beaches off Sakitoma Island to collect various sea foods including brown seaweeds, seaweed laver, abalones and all assortments of shellfish.

The sea was really generous in offering and asked for nothing in return. She did not discriminate against the women from a ruined country, nor deride them. The sea winds were aptly fresh and the sea water was crystal blue. Boolim had a guilt feeling from time to time about having the luxury of peace and tranquility as a subject of a ruined kingdom while her husband was crawling on his hands and knees in the dark pits in the imperial country proper.

Boolim's guilty feeling about the bizarre or reverse euphoria, which she had had while gathering shellfish and strolling on the insular beaches of the Japanese mining town, was juxtaposed with her husband Toung Doung's elation and the subsequent guilt feeling he had experienced during routine commutes to and from the office, commanding the fine view. He took one and half miles' walk everyday to the office from which he descended to the pits by cable car.

Whereas they had been privately ashamed of the unexpected joy of life, which Boolim had found out from the tranquil seascapes and which Toung Doung had done from idyllic commutes, a quiet inner protest had erupted, which had dared to justify the jubilation by a supposition that they would have otherwise been working the harsh fields at an outback and sawing far into the night.

The excuses for the irony might have also stemmed from the history that the most recent ruined monarch and most of the monarchs before him had been incompetent and unsympathetic toward their subjects; That the elites of the ruling class had fought among themselves; That the lower officials had domineered over the common people, extorting them; And that the land owners had squeezed rents from the peasants.

It's not certain that the Mitsubishi Mining Company had aptly reimbursed for the labors of the miners. In fact, Boolim had not ever received envelopes of her husband Toung Doung's salaries because Toung Doung had gotten his paychecks mailed to his mother at home. The Toung Doung couple lived off rations and the hospitality of the neighborhood people.

The kindnesses of the Sakitoma-chi neighborhood seemed and sounded real; There had not occurred even once that the Boolim couple had suspected the towners might have been indoctrinated on the behavior modification toward the miners and their dependents from the colonial country. Their behaviors had been so sincere: Their attitudes and words had been so genuine.

The communal congeniality, or companionship had not come from wealth. A specific neighbor had not been rich enough to offer philanthropy, let alone throw a gorgeous town party. The folks of the small town had been prepared to share, or to divide among themselves, which had been the root of the communal camaraderie. There had been mutual concerns, considerations and worries about every gamut of human incidents ranging from kid ailments to births to scarcity of foods. Michiko-san, Saori-san, Hatori-san, Akiko-san, and so and so had stopped by from time to time, popping their heads into the room to know whether everything was all right.

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Point was that virtually every other hour did not get passed without getting noticed by his or her concerned neighbors. It was not into two years until Boolim ran into a shower of Japanese hospitalities. In the second year of Boolim's entry into the mining town, she had come to bear an offspring. Hardly had she entered labor when Saori-san stopped by to see what was going on in there. Seeing that Boolim started labor just alone, she jump startled from the pitiful scene. She intoned the impossibility of the condition. She turned into a town crier, rallied the neighborhood to help Boolim, called for a mid-wife, turning the town into a stampede.

The rescue party began to set in. Individual contributions were briskly "commandeered" to help ease off her labor; Blankets were collected to help warm the room floor; A portable fireplace was installed to heat the room; A middle-aged mid-wife got prepared for the emergency; The women of the neighborhood took every possible measure for after-birth treatment and nutritions. Whispers of surprise erupted when someone brought rice, though meager in quantity. Meat was rare like rice at the time: The sea fish would do.

Although her husband had gone to the pits and her sister-in-law Guido had not been available because the Toung Jangs had been away from the island, the repeated assurances from the kind-hearted neighborhood sisters and mothers gave Boolim a sort of peace and consolation. Surges of pain were swept away in the melodious soothing words. As noon passed and neared two in the afternoon, Boolim got her first child and son born. There was a momentary hustle and bustle. "Musuko desne!" (It's a son!), the women in the room shouted in unison.

The rescue people went back to their places at dusk. Guido returned to the town in the early evening and rushed to the scene in trouble, keeping vigilant all through the night. Toung Doung joined the scene late at night, excusing himself for the tardiness. He saw a cute little thing lying beside his wife and beamed a broad smile. “Meet your son," his wife said, still lying and smiling weakly. She did not say "our son." He did not get the reason that she said in such a mode of speaking.

"I am so sorry and thank you for the trouble," Toung Doung held her by the hand weak and wet with sweat, caressing her shoulders. "How do you like your son?" she asked, still lying and looking up with meek smiles. He threw a glance at his son but the little thing did not look him back, his eyes still closed. He did not know whether his son was sleeping or got his eyelids still shut.

Guido got all prepared for the Boolim fare and told him to serve it every other hour as she went back to her house. "See to it that you keep the exact hour," she asked of him as she exited the door. She also wanted to know whether Toung Doung would be able to get a few days off from the company. He answered in the positive.

With their two and a newly-born son left alone, Boolim rattled off Aunts' extraordinary efforts. "Let's keep in mind we‘ve owed them a great debt!" they vowed to each other. Even to her own surprise, Boolim ate out every soup and grainy meal offered with a great gusto. "I eat too much, don't I?" she said ashamedly. "Yes, you became a big eater, of course, but don't be sorry for that. Rather, I thank you for that," Toung Doung said, grinning ear to ear at his wife's enormous consumption.

Toung Doung dozed in fits and starts. Tried to keep himself awake. And sat up with starts and rushed to prepare bowls of soup for her. She was sorry for his lack of sleep. The newly born had fits and starts, too. Then and there she started reaching for it to feed. It did not cry, in a true sense of the word. The little thing cried, of course, but gave little noise so much so that his parents did not get on nerves.

Her breast was really good. Her breast milk was always superfluous at a feeding. Her breast milk could feed her son to his full content and made a leftover. She pumped all that had been left and collected it on a big bowl and made his husband "eat" it. "Eat," she said. He hesitated at first, saying "How can I?" But she insisted, saying "It's very good for you, darling."

Months passed. Toung Doung didn't know what made him think so suddenly. He didn't know why anyway. If asked, he wouldn't know, either. He was tempted to have a conversation with his newly born nevertheless. A confession session, that is. So, using a comparatively long interval in which his wife had gone out to release, he briskly started having "heart-to-heart talks" with his fresh new son, baring his bosom.

The young confessoree, who would accept the session, appeared to be at ease. On the confessor's part, too, the initial shyness was replaced by chutzpah. He dared to raise his face, yet with lower voice. Look him straight in the eye. Sure. He was sorry for the gloomy condition which he would be put in anyway but they had to carry on a karma in which they had been destined to become his mom and dad. The people of a ruined country could not and didn't have to commit mass suicide. Or go single rather than go double.

There was a profound and calm stare which struck him as a sort of infantile insouciance. The confessoree appeared to be smiling albeit faintly. There was an inquisitive gaze, too. The little son seemed to be asking unfathomable questions. Seemed to say that the precious encounter of theirs couldn't have been a mere accident but an inevitable predestination.

He didn't have to be sorry. He didn't have any idea why his dad let himself down. He had had a long journey from a far-away land through whirlpool by whirlpool of what you don't know, cliffs and valleys. He appreciated the light his dad had enabled him to see. He didn't get distressed by what had happened. He would have to face the music. Thanks, Dad.



8
Toung Doung Brings Stick Matches, 1949.


Dano started walking down a slopy hill of Sun Valley (short for Sun Bang Valley), Baikja-dong, Andong, South Korea. An afternoon vernal wind was crisp enough with a faint fragrance of pines blowing from the bottom of the far-down valleys. The pines were rustling with a sound of sea waves. The solitary boy of dokka-chon, that is, a mountain village consisting of the only cottage, stopped from time to time to inhale and savor the fragrance of the pines in the valley. He was on his way from Oksan Elementary School, seven kilometers from his home. The hut was seen from the top of hill, nestled far below.

He was a loner of eight with the height of four feet and three inches in simple starched cotton wears. He saw well, heard well and smelled well. He was a country boy, that is, a mountain boy. He did not give a laugh often and did not make a face, either. His facial feature was kind of solemn with an aura of coldness.

Boy Dano was the very person who had been born at Sakitoma-chi (or Sakitama-chi), Nagasaki, Japan. He did not know it. He did not remember it. He did not have any memory related to his childhood years from his birth to age six. Many a man and woman of the world takes a great pride on their early memory of his or her childhood years dating even to age two or three. But Dano's memory used to be shrouded in murky fogs. In the whirlpool of the black hole of amnesia.

The discontinuities were irritating, The vacuums were intolerable. There grew inquisitiveness for the quest of his identity and self-doubts about his own origin. Seemingly unrelated images were tantalizing. Murmurs...Unidentified noises...Muted footsteps....Unidentifiable cracks...Mystic crashes...What happened and how did it happen anyway?

Boolim began to unravel the threads of memory on a spring afternoon when left alone with her seven-year-old son Dano who started tormenting her again about his blacked-out memory of the earliest years. Her husband Toung Doung had gone to a local bazaar four kilometers away to buy some things including farmland tools.

"Where am I from, Mom?" Dano asked his mother casually in front of the barnyard, where she was fixing a wooden feed vessel. "Was I brought away from a bridge? Grandma told me."

"You've not been brought from anywhere. You were born from me just like calves are born from mother cows," Boolim answered. He was not convinced.

"Where was I born, Mom?" Dano asked. "Here or At Danuishill?"

"You're not born here nor at Danuishill," she said. "You were born in Nagasaki, Japan."

There used to be not so many things he could handle. He couldn't decide on the place of birth and the parents he would like to be born from, which was destiny. His father was a great man of a stout build, strong will and hard work. Dano had to look up to him.

Dano had been born Japanese by the Japanese name of Masao. But now he was Korean by the proud name of Wang Dano. The United States of America was a liberator, emancipator and savior that enabled him to live as a citizen of an independent nation.

Boolim felt it necessary to stop then and there. She would not have to mention the Big Bomb which had been dropped by the U.S. Bomber on Nagasaki City on the 6th of August, 1945. And a nano- second snap on the face she had had on the horrible morning just like you have had a big bee sting. And an instant flash which had whacked the entire town of Sakitama-chi (Sakitoma-chi) which was about 100 miles or so distanced from the tragic city. And the melee from the crash which had almost sunk the homecoming ship when she had hit a live torpedo off the shore of Busan Port.

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It was a terrific day, the 9th of May, 1949, on which stick matches took the place of flints which had been used to start fire. Toung Doung bought seongnyang, or stick matches from the bazaar which used to be open at Kilan, Andong-kun. "This is it," Toung Doung produced a small match case from which he picked out one match and started fire with it. It smelled of sulfur, which was very good. A fragrance of civilization. Then boys and girls had been chasing the exhaust fumes which had spewed from the tails of the ancient trucks, shouting with joy.

They might have thought it their obligation to exert their utmost to "educate" Dano who had been cast into a rugged valley. A prime conspirator used to be Boolim's mother-in-law and Dano's Grandma, that is, Grandma Nagging who had been so named after her constant nagging. And his son Toung Doung who had been her loyal follower. So Grandma Nagging and her son had made it a rule to send Dano to Danuishill, their clan village, on every available opportunity with a view to training and enlightening Dano, letting him have a wide range of experiences about manners and customs of the clan.

He was a lone pedestrian traveler just like his father had been. The entire route from Sun Valley to Danuishill was seven more kilometers. He had no road companion for the entire journey. The mountain trail of the initial two kilometers was a creek road which had been resultingly serpentine, rocky and thorny. The road, on which the creek used to run most of the season, was pocked with rocks. Thorny bushes stood just human height long. Dangers rarely lurked that snakes attacked the traveler from the bushes. But he could hear the reptiles hiss among the bushes. He did not have a close encounter with mountain boar hogs. He could, however, see them rush up from down the creek more than once, hiding himself behind a huge pine, which was really frightful.



Words of invitations from a clan family were most of the time a lip service just like most facades used to be deceptive. The young Dano, ages 7, of course hadn't known that at that time. Hardly had he arrived at the village of the Wang clan the remote "relatives" five or more times removed came to him and "invited" him to lodge at night at their home or to dine with them the next morning. There used to be many a time that he was ashamed to be there and rebuking himself for appearing there at all.

Formal coughs had been given by him, of course but the intervals between warning and opening the door must have been too short. He had more often than not run into the relatives in trouble, who had been hiding some things hastily behind them and wearing awkward expressions on their faces. He had not known at that time but he knew later what that had been at all. They had been eating some delicacies.

Dano had a good supper meal at Sol Halbae's, the previous evening. He had a good night's sleep there, specifically at the halbae's (grandfather's) sarangbang, or guest room. The room was spacious enough to board tens of male guests at one time. Dano was honored to have the night‘s rest beside the halbae who had been the patriarch of the clan. Since Dano got the next morning's breakfast appointment "booked", he went to Daechu Ajimae, or Aunt Jujube. He was guided to the sarangbang of the house on which he found the room floored with clay and of which he also found the ceiling so low that Dano's height almost reached it.

The room reeked of clay and dust. While a modest breakfast meal, which was served on a small portable wooden table separated from the ajae's (the uncle's), was in progress, a very perplexing scene unfolded before them. A toddler son of theirs began to defecate and the ajime called in a mutt who was playing on the front garden. Then he rushed into the room to relish the shit droppings. After he was done with the feast with smacking lips, he attacked at the butt of the child who burst out crying.

Dano thanked them for the nice treat and headed for the West, which had been named after the location of the residence, in which a distant brother five times removed, who had been reputed to hold lofty moral standards, had been living. Dano ruminated the live scene which had been disclosed before his eyes a few minutes ago. The mongrel, who had been attacking at the asshole of the child, did not look disgusting at all, which had been a usual canine-feeding practice at the time.

Guest Dano naturally did not throw up. What actually irked him then was the white rice on the ajae's spoon he had spotted in a flash of a nano second and the confused and awkward expressions on his face. The crux of the matter was that the granary meal on Dano's bowl mostly contained husked and steamed barley with a meager mix of steamed rice among them whereas the ajae's meal bowl contained complete rice beneath a thin layer of the crude grain meal.



Kids, who were older than Dano, were gathered in front of the wooden portal of the West. What a view! They did not completely understand what it meant by the scene. But Dano of 7, who had been sent by his parents, grandma and great-grandma to be trained to learn from the great places of the clan, did know the meaning of the scene of the moment. Just like he had known the meaning of the whiteness on the uncle's spoon. He could not explain in concrete words to the people around about the ramifications of the scene, of course, but he intuited the context of it. Which was that the woman proprietor of the mansion was sending a woman serf away with comforting words, who was parting with her generous master. A poignant vestige in a landed gentry of a ruined country.