YoonHui was surprised when he suddenly bowed to the statue, a deep, low bow full of filial respect. He lowered his face all the way to the ground, rose, and repeated this bow twice more. YoonHui grasped Lane’s hand, watching with stunned pride. When he stood up, his shoulders slumped a little, from embarrassment or grief, YoonHui didn’t know, but it made her love him even more. He wiped his nose before turning to her.
‘Someone left flowers,’ he said, pointing to the statue’s lap.
White blooms poked out from beneath a knitted blanket someone had left to keep the statue warm. Nearing the statue, YoonHui lifted the blanket and revealed a bouquet of mourning flowers, white chrysanthemums. The petals were still supple, and she leaned down to touch them to her cheek.
In the days following her mother’s funeral, Lane had tracked down the artists who created the statue. After a few email exchanges, they shared with her their inspiration. A black-and-white photograph, aged with time and stained with blood, that had found its way to the House of Sharing in Gyunggi-do, a home and museum for some of the ‘comfort women’ where their health is looked after and their stories are shared with visitors from all over the world.
The daughter of a woman who was captured by Russian soldiers during World War II had donated it to the Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japanese Military housed within the House of Sharing, and the artists had come across it during a research visit; it was labelled Haenyeo girl, 1943. The girl’s expression had captured their attention, and so had the fact that her hair was tied behind her instead of cut short as it was in most of the other photographs of the girls they had seen. Of course they had changed her hairstyle for the statue to suit the true look of ‘comfort women’ at the time, but they had kept her face, her sombre expression, because something about the look in her eyes had touched them.
YoonHui gazed at the face that brought closure to her dying mother.
‘Goodbye, Aunt Hana,’ she whispered to the statue. ‘I wish we could have met sooner.’
Lane stands on the shore. She has already made friends with the haenyeo women. She looks up and waves. YoonHui waves back above the water, her hand arching across the sky so the elderly women can see her, too. She sees her mother in their faces, in their resting bodies, in their kindness. She feels her mother among these women, and she will remain here awhile and burn incense to her ancestors until she can be certain her mother’s spirit has found its way back home to her island.
YoonHui turns back to her mother’s oldest friend, and together they dive into the ocean’s depths, the pressure pulsing against her eardrums like a heartbeat beneath the waves.
Hana
Mongolia, Winter 1943
Cold air brushes against Hana’s skin. She can taste the grasses turned brown on the tip of her tongue. Her hair flies loose and tendrils lash against her face. Altan’s hand wipes the wisps away, securing them behind her ear. His touch is gentle. He pulls the fur pelt snug around her shoulders.
‘Cold?’ he asks, one of the growing cache of Mongolian words she now recognises. She shakes her head.
The dog rests its head in her lap. He smells like morning dew. His wet fur brushes against the backs of her hands. Once she returned to the Mongolian camp, the dog refused to leave her side. It was as though it adopted her, a lost child returned, her spirit broken from the wilderness. Its favourite resting place is the tops of her hands quietly folded in her lap. Her bony knuckles poke the soft folds beneath its muzzle. Its eyes roll upwards as though to check on her well-being. She bends her neck downwards and gazes back into the dark puddles, which blink each time she does. So much care and kindness have flooded into her since her return. She is born anew.
Altan leaves her side. They are packing up again. This is the fourth time they have moved location since they left the Soviet camp. She suspects they are playing it safe in case the Soviets change their minds, or they could be running from the Japanese. They don’t share this information with her.
The dog licks her hand. It is time to go. A pony stands in front of her, waiting. Altan helps her to her feet. He has been treating her like an injured infant since the moment they arrived back at the Mongolian encampment. It took a few days after her return for her vision to grow clear once again, but the headaches sometimes come back, agonising migraines that knock her off her feet for hours on end. The swelling in his face went down quickly from poultices his mother applied each day. The bruises around his eyes have faded to a sickly yellow. He is nearly himself again.
Hana climbs aboard the speckled pony. It snorts and nods its head, shaking the fringe from its eyes. She reaches forward and gently combs its mane to one side. The stiff hairs slide through her fingers, and she is reminded of something from another time, the feeling of rough weeds beneath the sea gliding over her hands, dark waters surrounding her, floating. The pony shakes its head and starts its slow march. The image is gone, replaced by the vast blue of the sky above her and the brown of the grasses all around her like a moving tide.
The great beauty surrounding Hana envelops their small travelling group as though they are in a painting. She saw a caravan once in a schoolbook the teacher showed to her class. Peasants moving to a new home, a new land.
Hana remembers feeling grateful she would never have to see her home packed up into a cart like those children. She felt superior in her status as a haenyeo’s daughter, with the knowledge that she would one day, too, become the breadwinner in her family, matriarch of her home, and master of her own destiny. She would never be forced from the sea because it would always sustain her. She pushes the image out of her mind.
Early snow blankets the Mongolian steppe. They make camp at the foot of a low and ragged range of bare-topped hills. A large lake shimmers blue and green on the horizon.
‘The sea,’ Hana says, forgetting they are in a landlocked region.
‘No, that is Lake Uvs. It was once a great sea before the land appeared around it, separating it from the oceans. It’s salty like the ocean.’
Altan’s words are lost on Hana. She is already heading towards the familiar colours that beckon her. He calls her name, but she continues on, as though pulled by a magnetic force towards true north. Footsteps follow her, a guardian shadowing her, a light hand placed on the small of her back.
‘Where are you going?’ Altan asks. When she doesn’t respond, he tries a different approach.
‘We shouldn’t go so far away from camp. There are predators out here. They’re lured by the waterfowl in the wetlands.’
As though on cue, a flock of white gulls launches into the air crying as they spray across the sky. They startle a four-legged creature Hana has never seen before. She stops mid-step, staring at the intriguing animal, which resembles a sheep crossed with a deer.
‘Hello, little friend,’ Altan calls to the animal, sending it into a fast gallop away from them. ‘That’s called a dzeren,’ he tells her. ‘They’re good to eat if you can catch one.’ He laughs as though he has told her a joke, even though he knows she doesn’t yet understand much of what he says.
She watches it scamper through the tall grass, blending into the brown stalks until it disappears. Turning her attention back towards the lake, Hana continues on her trek to the blue and green waters behind the wetland reeds. Gulls float on the placid lake, calling to their mates hovering above them on a cold winter wind. Tiny snowflakes melt on her lashes. Her boots sink into the sandy earth with each step. She is once again walking on a beach. The wind rushes through her hair; the fur pelt around her shoulders tickles her neck. She breathes in the salty air, and memories wash through her mind. Her first taste of the sea, her first dive, her mother’s sumbisori whistle after each plunge, exhaling oxygen from her lungs, her laughter above the wind, and Emi dancing on the shore.
Hana unties her sash and begins to remove her del.
‘What are you doing?’ Altan asks, trying without success to stop her hands from stripping off her clothing. ‘You mean to go in there? You’ll freeze.�
��
The call of the sea overpowers her and blocks him from her mind. She feels no sense of embarrassment from her nakedness, only a pull towards the water. Freed from her clothes, she pushes him away and heads down towards the edge of the lake. He follows, grabbing her by the arm, but she yanks it out of his grasp. She rushes into the lake and gasps as the cold water knocks the air from her lungs. He charges in after her, but she is too quick. Instinct kicks in and soon she is diving deep beneath the surface and disappears into the murky depths.
It was always a dream; even if Hana had managed to make the journey, returning home would never have been safe. If she suddenly appeared at her mother’s house, there would be questions. There is still a war on, the Soviets made that clear, and the Japanese are still in control of Korea. If they found her, they could ship her back to the brothel in Manchuria, or somewhere else even worse. She must remain in Mongolia with Altan and his family. She has resigned herself to this.
The realisation that she is content to stay with them relieves a burden from her bones. She is weary no longer. Instead, she feels weightless at the thought of this new life. Altan is the light summoning her towards the surface of the water. The light that will chase away the darkness she has endured for too long. A surge of energy courses through her limbs. Hana presses her feet against the soggy floor of the lake and thrusts herself upwards, trailing behind the rising bubbles.
Remembrance of My Beloved Sister (Je Mang Me Ga)fn1
You were afraid that the way of life or death had come,
So you went without even saying you were going.
Like falling leaves scattered by the early autumn wind,
Borne from one branch, no one knows where they are going.
Ah! I will wait for the day to meet you in Mitachal
While praying and seeking enlightenment!
Author’s Note
Some historians believe fifty thousand to two hundred thousand Korean women and girls were stolen, tricked or sold into military sexual slavery for and by the Japanese military during Japan’s colonisation of Korea. Japan’s armies were fighting for world domination, beginning in 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and ending in 1945 with their defeat by the Allies at the end of World War II. In that time, countless lives were destroyed and lost by all the countries involved.
Of those tens of thousands of women and girls enslaved by the Japanese military, only forty-four South Korean survivors are still alive (at the writing of this book) to tell the world what happened during their captivity, how they survived, and how they returned home. We will never know what happened to the other women and girls who perished before getting the chance to let the world know what they suffered. Many died in foreign lands, and like Emi, their families never learned of their tragic stories.
Many of the ‘halmoni’ (‘grandmothers’) who survived their enslavement were not free to tell their stories to their families or communities when they returned home. Korea was a patriarchal society based on Confucian ideology, and a woman’s sexual purity was of the utmost importance. These survivors were forced to suffer from their past in silence. Many were left with medical issues, PTSD and an inability to re-enter society. Most lived in abject poverty with no family to care for them in their old age. Some historians believe the issue of the ‘comfort women’ was never a priority for the Korean government after World War II, because very soon after, the Korean War broke out, costing so many more lives during the fratricidal war between the North and the South. The Thirty-Eighth Parallel was drawn across the peninsula, and Korea was forever cut in two. The South Korean government was then left to rebuild a country whose infrastructure had been demolished by war. There were ‘more important’ issues at hand. It took a further forty years before the issue of the ‘comfort women’ was raised, when in 1991 Kim Hak-sun came forward to give an account of her story to the press. Many more ‘comfort women’ came forward following her bravery, more than two hundred in total.
In December of 2015, South Korea and Japan reached an ‘agreement’ over the ‘comfort women’ issue, and both countries hoped to resolve the conflict once and for all, so they could move forward in more amicable international relations. As Corporal Morimoto did with Hana, Japan offered South Korea terms, and one of them was the removal of the Statue of Peace, erected on private land across from the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Removing this statue is the first step towards the denial of women’s history in South Korea. The halmoni rejected this ‘agreement’ and continue to seek a true resolution because they believe Japan wishes to simply erase the unsightly history of wartime military sexual slavery as though the atrocities never took place and up to two hundred thousand women did not suffer and possibly die in tragic, heartbreaking circumstances.
In March 2016, I travelled to Seoul to see Pyeonghwabi (the Statue of Peace) in person for the first, and possibly the last, time. It was a sort of pilgrimage for me to journey halfway across the world to set my eyes on the symbol representing, for me, wartime rape not only of Korean women and girls, but of all women and girls the world over: Uganda, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Myanmar, Yugoslavia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and more. The list of women suffering wartime rape is long and will continue to grow unless we include women’s wartime suffering in history books, commemorate the atrocities against them in museums, and remember the women and girls we lost by erecting monuments in their honour, like the Statue of Peace.
In the writing of this book, I fell in love with Hana, who for me came to represent all the women and girls who suffered her fate. I couldn’t leave her dead in the Mongolian dirt by a soldier’s hand; though the chances of the real-life Hanas reaching freedom are slim, my ending is what I wish could have happened to Hana and others like her. Writing Emi’s story was my escape from the horrors of imagining Hana’s world. Emi was my favourite character, and I think after all she suffered, it was only fair that, in the end, the statue was actually Hana. In real life, the statue was not sculpted in the image of a particular lost ‘comfort woman’, but it makes for a good story, one that I dedicate to all the women of the world who suffered in war and who suffer still.
The history of conflict in any nation is often mired in controversial truths and institutionalised falsehoods. The events I included in this book from South Korea’s and Japan’s histories are no different. I did my best to concentrate on direct consequences upon individuals rather than on an entire nation or people. I also hoped to impress that the wars in Korea were global in nature with many belligerents taking part, not just Korea and Japan. As this is a work of fiction, some historical inaccuracies may arise throughout, namely time and locations of certain events that took place. None were done on purpose or with intent. Growing up with a South Korean mother and influenced by her community of expat women friends, I am fascinated by their ability to overcome the hardships they faced as girls and young women in South Korea with laughter and community. As a tribute to those women, I included a song (‘Ga Si Ri’) and a lyric poem (‘Je Mang Me Ga’) in this book that were translated by my friend and teacher, Jeong Sook Lee. The song is of unknown authorship, originating between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, but it is well known among schoolchildren in South Korea. I wanted Hana to have a humorous memory during an uncertain moment by remembering her father being silly so that laughter filled their humble home. The lyric poem is about the loss of a dear sister and the hope to one day reunite with her in the afterlife. Losing a loved one touches each and every one of us at some point in our lives and, sometimes, the pain never diminishes. I know that for my mother and her friends, the pain will last a lifetime, but remembering their stories helps them to endure it.
War is terrible, brutal and unfair, and when it ends, apologies must be given, reparations made and survivors’ experiences remembered. Germany set a positive example, admitting to and compensating for their government’s crimes against the Jews perpetrated during World War II, while also committing to
the remembrance of this dark part of their history. It is my hope that subsequent governments would follow in their footsteps. It is our duty to educate future generations of the real and terrible truths committed during war, not to hide them or pretend they never happened. We must remember them so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. History books, songs, novels, plays, films and memorials are essential to help us to never forget, while also helping us to move forward in peace.
– Mary Lynn Bracht
Acknowledgements
A story often undergoes many transformations before it becomes a book, and I am grateful to have had the support of so many people during this amazing process. Double thanks to my editors, Tara Singh Carlson and Becky Hardie, for their support and suggestions throughout the editing process. I am so fortunate to have worked with you both, as well as with Charlotte Humphery and Helen Richard. My wonderful agent, Rowan Lawton, and the staff at Furniss Lawton, thank you for believing in my novel and in me. Liane-Louise Smith and Isha Karki, your dedication and positivity helped in so many ways, thank you. My friends in the Willesden Green Writers’ Group – Lynn, Clare, Anne, Lily, Naa and Steve – thank you for listening to the many versions of this work in progress, your comments were so helpful. To my teachers at Birkbeck College – Mary Flanagan, Helen Harris, Courttia Newland and Sue Tyley – thank you for your guidance and instruction. To all my family and friends, thank you for your love and support over the years. A heartfelt thank-you to Tony for encouraging me to pursue my dream. And most of all, thank you to my wonderful son whose love and acceptance helped me to reach it.
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