A young girl under an authoritarian rule

I sit across of the table from Young Rae Lee. She was 13 when the Japanese took over Korea and now has 3 children, one of them being my mother. I notice my grandmother stare into space as if she knows already that the interview is going to bring back many memories. I watch her calmness, and I sense her melancholic eyes focus onto me. As I am about to ask her a question, I notice how she leans forward eager to share her memories.

When the Japanese were still in power us children would go to school and squeeze oil. We would take pine cones and sap to gather. They said they were going to use it on airplanes and would also make us cut grass for oil. They took us to the mountain to tell us to gather things and made us bring it back. There were many air-raid drills, although Korea wasn’t in a war yet. Japan was in war with other countries so they made us train in case of a war. We drilled on getting into the air-raid shelters. They trained kids to take protections and for the drill we had to make hats using fabrics-we made them at home. Also we had little sacks that we would wear along with the hats which held first-aid. At school they gave new names. My name um... it was Shiroyama. Although we had to change our family names, our first names would be simply said in a Japanese pronunciation. We were only required to use our Japanese names at school but naturally we called each other by it. They prohibited the use of Korean and took count of how many times we used Korean. Yes… they would mark that and if you did well in using only Japanese they would give you an award. They taught us… they taught us like hell; they were trying to change our language and trying to reshape the nation. Men were forced to shape their hair styles to suit as a Japanese. We had to memorize the names of their kings… I think there were thirty six of them. They didn’t teach any Korean history, we didn’t know anything.

The police treated people badly. The police beat Koreans for not giving up crops or whatever they wanted. There were more Japanese police but some were Korean. We hated the Korean police more because they were traitors and listened and followed the directions of the Japanese. They beat people; they took away crops and all our brass plates and bowls to use on airplanes. When they took our food, we had little to eat so we ate the leftovers from the squeezing of grains. The food conditions were so bad that black markets only sold grains and other necessities for life.

My mom would sell Dongdongju, in Japanese its called sake. Japanese people love that stuff and the water quality in Masan was good so the wine tasted great, very expensive.

Later, deeply in the war, they took girls. Girls fifteen and under who weren’t married were taken to Japan, they said that they would give them a job in the factory, and wage. Actually, the Japanese took them to use as “comfort ladies.” My aunt had two daughters that weren’t married. When the Japanese started taking girls away, their parents quickly matched them with a man and married them. That’s what my aunt did. The older daughter was four or five years older than me so my aunt forced her to marry because or else she would have been taken away.

I was young… I was young so I didn’t really know what was happening, I just thought everything was normal. I never felt that the Japanese were bad nor was I angry with them.

One day I went out of my house and I walked to town. There is a big field in the middle of town and they had a flag pole next to the field. That day when I got to the field, instead of a Japanese flag, there was a Korean flag. I heard around that the Japanese were defeated but I didn’t even know a Korean flag existed. In town, a grandma who was famous for cursing happened to be there. After she saw the flag she just started to dance in joy shouting “That’s our nation’s flag, they put it up because the Japanese are defeated.”

Interviewed by Chan Lee