The truck arrives at the police station as the sun dips beneath the roof. A few of the girls’ eyes light up at the sight of the station. Hana gazes at the small building, her eyes narrowing into slits. There is nothing in there that will save them.
Four years ago, her uncle was sent to fight the Chinese in the Japanese emperor’s name. He was instructed to report to this police station. Few Koreans held official positions, and if they did, they were sympathisers, loyalists to the Japanese government, traitors to their own countrymen. They made her uncle enlist and fight for a country he despised.
‘If they can’t starve us to death, they’ll kill us on the battlefield. They’re sending him to die. Do you hear me? They’re going to murder your little brother,’ her mother shouted at her father when she found out they were ordering him to fight in China.
‘Don’t worry, I can take care of myself,’ her uncle said, ruffling Hana’s hair. He pinched her sister’s cheek and smiled.
Her mother shook her head, anger rising from her shoulders like steam from a boiling kettle.
‘You can’t take care of yourself. You’re barely even a man. You haven’t married. You have no children. They’re exterminating us with this war. There will be no Koreans left in this country.’
‘That’s enough,’ Hana’s father said in a voice so quiet that it demanded attention.
He looked pointedly at Hana and her sister. Their mother faced him, squaring off as though about to lash out at him with more words, but then she followed his gaze. Her mother’s face crumpled, and she sank to the floor, hugging herself, rocking back and forth on her knees.
Hana had never seen her mother behave like that before. She was always so strong and sure of herself. Hana would even have described her mother as hard, like a rock is hard against the deepest pressures of the ocean, smooth to the touch, yet unbreakable. But on that day, she became as vulnerable as a little girl. It alarmed Hana, and she reached for her sister’s hand.
Her father went to her mother’s side and held her. They rocked together until her mother finally looked at him and said something Hana would never forget.
‘When he is gone, who is left for them to take?’
Her uncle walked assuredly to the police station, carrying his spare clothes and food, carefully prepared by her mother’s hands, in a bag slung over one shoulder. He left for the war with a brave face, and he died on the front line, six months later.
Hana conjures up his youthful face. He was nineteen when he died. He seemed so old to her twelve-year-old self. She thought of him as a grown man because he towered over her and had a deep voice. Now she understands that he was too young to die. He must have been terrified, just like she is now. The fear a tangible pain pulsing through her limbs like electric shocks. Fear of the unknown future. Fear she may never see her parents again. Fear her sister will be left alone in the sea. Fear of dying in a foreign land. The Japanese army sent her uncle’s sword home, a Japanese sword that her father tossed into the sea.
Sitting in the truck outside the same police station, Hana understands why her uncle’s departure left her mother so bereft. She doesn’t want to think of her mother helplessly rocking on the floor again now that she is next to be shipped off for the emperor’s war.
‘Out,’ a soldier commands, letting down the truck’s tailgate.
He leads the girls single file into the station. Hana makes sure to be neither the first nor the last in line. Like in a school of fish, she hopes the middle is safest from predators. The station is quiet. She can’t stop shivering. Her hair is still damp with seawater and her diving clothes don’t cover very much of her body. She hugs her arms and does her best to keep her teeth from chattering. Silence, that is what she strives for, so that she can become invisible.
At the reception desk, a police sergeant looks the girls over and nods to the reporting soldier. He is Korean, a sympathiser, a traitor. He will not help them. The last flickers of hope leave the girls’ eyes, and they all stare at the streaks in the newly waxed floor. The desk sergeant tells the girls to write their names and family names into a ledger, along with their ages and parents’ occupations. Hana already lied on the beach, telling Morimoto that her family is dead, and she hesitates, not knowing how to keep the lie going.
The officer behind the desk doesn’t know her but probably knows her parents, at least by their Japanese name, Hamasaki. Her mother’s Korean surname is Kim, her father’s is Jang; married women always keep their surnames. The two girls before her want to please the soldiers and act like dutiful subjects by writing their colonised Japanese names, but Hana suspects it is too late for such manoeuvres. Instead, she combines her parents’ names into one, Kim, JangHa. She hopes this false name will keep them from finding out her family is still alive and perhaps returning for her sister, while a small part of her hopes that her parents will read the name in the ledger and know that she passed this way. This last hope keeps her from faltering.
After they write their names, the girls are led into a small office. The dingy beige walls are plastered with propaganda posters proclaiming the benefits of volunteering for Japan’s war effort. Similar posters decorate the market where the haenyeo and fishermen sell their daily catch to villagers and Japanese soldiers alike. The people on the posters are drawn with smiling faces and bright Japanese eyes. Hana never liked these images. They remind her of the false expressions everyone wears when the soldiers come near their stalls.
Her father is the only grown-up Hana knows who cannot put on this false expression. Instead, anger from the injustice of his brother’s death radiates from his face, plain and unyielding. Whenever a soldier approached her family’s stall, picking through the seafood with the tip of his rifle, he would catch sight of her father and suddenly lose focus. The soldier’s hands would begin to tremble, and he would simply walk away, wordless and confused.
Hana has witnessed this peculiar transaction on many occasions, and each time she wondered if it was the pain in her father’s eyes that the Japanese soldier saw, or something more sinister. Did the soldiers see their own deaths foretold in their reflection? It always pleased Hana to watch the soldier scurry away as though singed by magic.
As she stands with the other girls, surrounded by posters of loyal subjects with false expressions, she does her best to arrange her features so she exudes wrath, so that any soldier who gazes upon her face will scurry away from the flames within her eyes. Perhaps she, too, possesses her father’s magic. The idea gives her a small amount of hope.
‘Put these on, hurry up,’ a soldier shouts at them. He gives each girl a beige dress, nylons, white knickers and a cotton bra. The dresses vary slightly in style, but they are cut from the same cloth.
‘What are these for?’ one of the girls whispers, careful to only speak Japanese in the presence of the soldiers.
‘It must be a uniform,’ a second girl answers.
‘Where are they taking us?’ comes a terrified voice from the girl Hana thinks is barely older than her own sister.
‘It’s for the Women’s Patriotic Service Corps. My teacher mentioned they were recruiting volunteers,’ says the girl beside Hana. She sounds confident but still quivers with nerves.
‘Volunteers for what?’ Hana finally manages to ask. Her throat is parched and her voice raspy.
‘No talking,’ a soldier shouts, and pounds on the door. ‘Two minutes left.’
They hurriedly dress and stand in a line on the far side of the room. When the door opens, they shrink away. Morimoto enters and eyes Hana up and down before commencing his visual inspection of the other girls. He brought her here. He is sending her away. She memorises his face so that she will know who to blame when she returns home.
‘Good. Very good. Now, go and find shoes that fit. Then get back into the truck.’ He waves them out the door but grabs Hana’s arm before she can pass. ‘You look much younger in these clothes. How old are you?’
‘Sixteen,’ she answers, trying to yank her a
rm out of his hand, but he digs his fingers into her flesh. Her knees nearly buckle from the sudden pain, though she doesn’t make a sound.
He seems to think about her answer as he watches her struggle to keep silent. She lowers her eyes, but he lifts her chin and makes her look at him. He drinks her in as though his thirst will never be satisfied.
‘She’ll ride next to me.’ He releases her.
A soldier standing outside the office salutes him and then takes Hana to find a pair of shapeless shoes. An old man leans against the wall, and as she passes him, he turns his face away from her. She despises his cowardice in that moment, but then she forgives him for his fear. They are all afraid. A soldier can crush a Korean man’s skull with the heel of his boot, and if the family demands punishment for the crime, they may find their home burned to the ground or they might simply disappear, never to be seen again.
Outside, cold wind unfurls around them. It is as though the gods have confused the seasons and decided to send a lonely chill into the approaching summer night to accompany them. The idling engine drowns out the girls’ sobs as they realise they really are being taken away from their homes. Hana doesn’t want to leave the security of the group. When a soldier pushes her towards the front of the truck, she resists and tries to stay behind the last girl and climb into the back, too.
‘Hey, not you. You’re in there,’ he says, pointing to the passenger door.
The other girls clamp their eyes onto Hana, their expressions a mixture of fear and desperation. Starting towards the open door, she thinks she also sees relief in a few of their eyes, relief that it is not them.
Hana climbs in next to the driver. It is no warmer inside the truck. He glances at her and returns his attention to the windscreen as Morimoto slides in after her. He smells of tobacco and liquor.
They drive through the night in silence. Hana is too afraid to look at the soldiers on either side of her, so she sits still as a rock, trying to avoid notice. The soldiers don’t talk to one another or to her, preferring to stare blank-faced out the windscreen. As the seaside slips away, Mount Halla grows into a looming darkness in the sky, before falling away as they reach the other side of the island. The driver rolls down his window and lights a cigarette. The scent of the ocean rushes in, and Hana drinks in the comforting aroma as the truck winds down narrow roads leading to the coast and the channel between Jeju and the southernmost tip of mainland Korea. Nausea roils in Hana’s stomach, and she clutches it, willing it to settle.
Far beneath them along a rocky shore, Hana spies the awaiting ferry docked in the port. The truck’s engine grumbles over the empty road, but Morimoto’s silence permeates even that noisy space, and Hana senses the power of his rank.
The driver drops them near the docks and salutes Morimoto before racing away. New soldiers armed with clipboards process them and mix them in with other girls huddling inside a makeshift corral beside the docks. Seabirds soar overhead, oblivious to the scene below. Hana yearns to sprout wings and join them in their flight. A soldier shouts orders to the growing group of young women and girls, and they are led towards the ferry. No one utters a word.
As Hana climbs the stairs leading up to the gangway she stares at her feet. Each step takes her further away from her home. She has never left the island before. The realisation that she is being taken to another country terrifies her, and her feet freeze, refusing to take another step. She might never see her family again if she boards this vessel.
‘Keep moving!’ a soldier shouts.
The girl behind her nudges her forward. There is no choice. Hana steps forward, while saying her silent goodbyes. To her sister, she will miss her the most, but Hana is thankful to have saved her from this fate, wherever it leads. To her mother she wishes safety in her dives. To her father she wishes courage on the sea, but secretly she also wishes he will find her. She imagines his small fishing boat trailing after the ferry, determined to bring her home. It is a hopeless sight, even in her mind, but she wishes for it nonetheless.
The ferry has small cabins below deck, and Hana and the girls from the truck are placed in one packed with at least thirty others. They are dressed in similar uniforms and their faces wear the same frightened expressions. A few of the girls share what little food they have tucked into pockets. Some of the soldiers felt sorry for them and gave them tokens of sustenance during the journey: a few rice balls, a scrap of dried squid, one girl even received a pear. Most are too distraught to eat, and sharing the food gives them some relief. Hana accepts a rice ball offered by a young woman who looks at least twenty.
‘Thank you,’ she says, and nibbles at the hardened rice.
‘Where are you from?’ the woman asks.
Hana doesn’t answer; she isn’t sure she should talk to anyone yet. She doesn’t know whom to trust.
‘I’m from south of Halla Mountain. I don’t know why I’m here,’ the woman says when Hana doesn’t answer. ‘I told them I’m married. My husband, he’s fighting the Chinese. I have to return home, for his letters. Who else will receive them if I am not there? I told them I am married, but …’ Her eyes plead for understanding, but Hana can’t help her. She understands nothing.
A voice joins in. ‘Why did they take you if you’re married? Is your husband in debt?’ A small group gathers around the married woman.
‘No, he’s not in debt.’
‘That you know of,’ another woman says.
‘She said he’s not in debt. He’s at war.’
Others voice their opinions and soon the questions grow into a debate. The younger girls refrain from joining in, and Hana edges away from the women, seeking solace with the quiet ones. Their eyes are large with fear, while the older girls and women fill the small room with anger and incomprehension.
‘Then why are they here, if this is a debtors’ ferry? They’re just children.’
‘Their parents are in debt,’ comes one answer.
‘Yes, they’ve been sold, just like us.’
‘That’s not true,’ Hana says, her voice shaking with resentment. ‘My mother and I are haenyeo. We owe no man a debt. Only the sea can claim a debt from us.’
The room grows quiet. A few of the women are surprised to hear a girl so young speak with such authority, and they say as much to her. The younger girls shift closer to Hana, as though hoping to soak up some of her strength. She sits against the back wall and hugs her arms. A few of the girls follow her and do the same. They sit in silence, and Hana wonders what their fate will be when they reach the mainland. Will the soldiers ship them to Japan or somewhere deep in China among the fighting?
Hana replays the moments in the truck sitting between the two soldiers. The driver never acknowledged her presence, even once, but Morimoto seemed to notice her every movement. If she shifted, he shifted; if she coughed, his arm moved against hers. His body, even his breaths, synchronised with her own. It took every ounce of restraint to keep from looking at him, and she failed only once.
He had lit a cigarette, and the heat from the flame warmed her cheek. She had turned in fear that he would burn her, and their eyes met. He had been watching her, seeing if she would look at him. She stared back at him, examining his face, until he exhaled a lungful of smoke into her eyes. Coughing, she quickly turned away and resumed staring out of the windscreen.
The ferry slides slowly into the channel and the choppy sea turns Hana’s stomach. She wishes she was diving beneath the ocean’s surface, swimming back home. Her sister’s terrified eyes flash in her mind. Hana closes her eyes. She saved her sister from this uncertain journey. At least her sister is safe.
‘Do you think they’ll take us to Japan?’ a girl asks her.
Hana opens her eyes, and she feels the gaze of the others on her. She sees their expectant faces and wonders why they are asking her.
‘I don’t know,’ she answers apologetically.
They seem to shrink into themselves, swaying with the movement of the ferry. She feels powerless to console them
. Stories from the villagers surface in her mind. Once taken, girls never make it back home. There are no swords with notices of appreciation sent to the grieving parents of girls. Girls disappear. Only rumours reach home, rumours that can never be shared with the remaining children.
Not long after Hana became a fully-fledged haenyeo, she overheard two women in the market speaking in hushed tones about a village girl who was found on the north side of the island.
‘She’s riddled with illness and driven mad by rape,’ one of the women said, catching Hana’s ear. She didn’t know what the word meant. She leaned in, hoping the woman would explain.
‘The father had to hide her in the house. She’s wild now … like an animal.’
The other woman shook her head sadly. She lowered her eyes. ‘No one will have her now, even if she manages to get well. Poor girl.’
‘Yes, poor girl, and her poor father. The shame will follow him to an early grave.’
‘Such a heavy burden for him.’
The women continued consoling the girl’s father as though he were there to hear them, and Hana was left wondering what could make a girl turn wild and drive a father to an early death. Later that night, Hana questioned her mother.
‘Where did you hear that word?’ her mother asked, agitated, as though Hana had committed a grave offence.
‘In the market, these women were talking about a girl who was taken by the soldiers.’
Her mother sighed and turned away from Hana to resume her stitching. They sat in silence, Hana watching her repair a tear in her swimming shorts. Her needle dipped in and out of the shorts at speed, mesmerising Hana. Everything her mother put her hands to she performed with absolute precision. Diving, sewing, cooking, cleaning, repairing, gardening – her mother was flawless in them all.
‘Perhaps you don’t know what it means?’ Hana shrugged, knowing this would get a rise out of her mother and force her to answer the question.
‘Once I tell you, I can never un-tell you. You’re certain you are ready to know?’ Her mother didn’t take her eyes off the task at hand, leaving the question hanging between them like a thundercloud.
White Chrysanthemum Page 3
