The Spirit of the Dragon

by William Andrews

  Young-chul grew sullen the spring before he turned seven. Yoshiko and I tried to understand why. We asked him what was wrong, but he didn’t answer. We asked Fumiko, Ai, and Mr. Lee what they thought was happening to Young-chul, but they didn’t know. Then we started to notice that he was worse in the mornings when he had to go to school. He’d sulk and complain about having to go to the Japanese school in Sinuiju. Sometimes, he’d pretend to be sick, and Yoshiko would let him stay home. Then, after a short time, he’d run around the grounds playing or beg to go to the city pond with his boat, saying, “I feel better now.” Yoshiko and I did our best to encourage him to go to school. Though he was diligent about doing his homework, we concluded there was something going on at his school.

  One day when Yoshiko was away, Young-chul and I had a picnic in the orchard behind the house. The peach trees were in bloom, their pink and purple flowers filling the air with a sweet scent. I remembered how Mother had told me that the peach was the fruit of happiness. I wanted to teach my son this and other things about Korea, too. I wanted to tell him the folk stories my mother had told me when I was his age. I wanted to sing traditional songs to him and tell him about our festivals and beliefs. But we lived in a Japanese house at the charity of Yoshiko. And I knew that if I started teaching Young-chul about Korea, my curious son would only want to learn more.

  As we ate rice cakes and beans in the shadow of the fruit trees, Young-chul went quiet for a while. Then he said, “Tell me about Father.”

  It was the first time he’d asked me about Hisashi. I’d expected the question and was prepared to answer it. “He is a good man, kind and gentle,” I said. “He is clever and handsome, too. You are a lot like him. You should be proud of him.”

  Young-chul scratched at the dirt with a stick. “Why did he marry you?”

  “We met in the forest outside my village,” I answered. “I was picking strawberries and he surprised me and made me drop my basket. He was so nice to me that I liked him right away. I think he liked me, too, because the next time he saw me, he gave me strawberries.”

  “And then you were married?”

  “Yes. Not long after that.”

  Young-chul stopped scratching the dirt and looked at me. “But you are Korean.”

  This was a question I was not prepared for. We had insulated Young-chul from the hostility between the Japanese and Koreans. I didn’t know he was even aware that I was Korean.

  “That is true,” I said. “But if two people love each other, what does it matter where they were born? I cannot help that I am Korean any more than your father can help that he is Japanese.”

  “I wish you weren’t Korean,” Young-chul said, scratching the ground with his stick again.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I do not want to be a kimchi yarò,” Young-chul said.

  “Young-chul!” I exclaimed. “Where did you learn such words?”

  “I do not want to talk about it,” Young-chul said. “I do not want to have a picnic anymore, either.” He threw down his stick and ran to the house. I sat among the peach trees dumbfounded. “Kimchi yarò.” I had heard the term before. “Korean bastard.” How did my son know these words? Who would have called him that?

  School. It had to be at his school. But how would any of his classmates know he was half Korean? How did the word get out?

  I had to talk to Yoshiko as soon as she came home. I had to convince her that she should take Young-chul out of the Japanese school. I had to convince her we could no longer ignore his heritage.

  That night after Young-chul went to bed, I went to Yoshiko’s room. It was much like mine, only she had a working desk with books of her own. I thought she was meditating when I slid open the door and stuck my head in. She sat on a tatami mat with her legs crossed. Before I slid the door closed to leave, she said, “What is it, Miyoko?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should not disturb you. We can talk some other time.”

  “There is not much time to talk,” Yoshiko said. “Come in. Say what you have to say.”

  I told her about the questions Young-chul had asked me in the orchard. I told her how I thought the Japanese boys were bullying him in school. “I think we should tell him what it means to be Korean,” I concluded.

  Yoshiko didn’t move from her position on the mat. “Yes, you should,” she replied. “You should teach him about Korea. It is a good time for him to learn. And I will take him out of school.”

  I was surprised at how quickly Yoshiko agreed. I’d expected her to say that Young-chul should be raised as a Japanese and that he didn’t need to know about Korea.

  “Why is it a good time?” I asked. “You said we had to be careful about Korean things.”

  Still sitting on the mat, Yoshiko turned her head to me. “Our navy has been destroyed,” she said. “The Germans are all but defeated in Europe. There is talk that when the war ends in Europe, Russia will turn against Japan. We are doomed. It will not be long.”

  I sat in front of her. “What will happen when Japan is defeated? What will happen to you and this house? What will we do about Masaru?”

  “I have to return to Japan. When Japan falls, the Koreans and Chinese will kill the Japanese here. I must get out while I can.”

  “Yoshiko,” I said, “you have been kind to me. I will speak for you.”

  Yoshiko gave me a half smile. “You will have your own trouble, Miyoko. Remember who you married.”

  “Maybe they will understand,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll tell them I was with the rebels.”

  “You escaped from them, and for the past years you’ve been living in a Japanese house. A Shinto house.”

  “I was here to be with my son! They cannot blame me for loving my son.”

  “Ah, yes. Your son,” Yoshiko said, the smile dropping from her face. “Masaru. Or . . . what is it you named him? Young-chul, your half-Japanese son. Have you thought about how your people will treat Young-chul? No better than the Japanese students at his school, I think.”

  “Then we will go with you to Japan,” I said. “I can bear any hatred the Japanese have for me. They do not have to know that Young-chul . . . Masaru is my son.”

  “No,” Yoshiko said, shaking her head. “Japan is no place for a boy now, even if he is half Japanese. I have decided he must stay here with you. You can live in the house. I will leave the household valuables for you—the silver chopsticks, the gold incense bowl, some jewelry. The ivory carving in the kami dana altar is especially valuable. You must wait here for Hisashi to come home.”

  Hisashi. I hadn’t thought what would happen to my husband when the war was over. He might go to prison or the Russians might shoot him. I didn’t even know if he was still alive.

  I nodded. “You are right. I should stay here with Young-chul and wait for Hisashi. When will you leave?”

  “I do not know. Soon. I will not say goodbye to Masaru when I leave. Tell him I’m on a trip and you don’t know when I’m coming back. He will ask about me for a while—months, maybe a year. Eventually, he will stop asking. I have thought a lot about it. This is the best way.”

  “He will think you left him because he is Korean,” I said.

  “You must tell him otherwise,” Yoshiko replied. “I ask for only one thing,” she continued. “I would like to have something of his to remember him.”

  “How about the toy boat you gave him?” I said. “He does not play with it anymore.”

  “Yes,” Yoshiko said. “It would please me to have it.”

  For the first time since I’d met her, I saw a tear in Yoshiko’s eye. She drew a breath and lifted her chin to try to disguise her sadness. I threw my arms around her. “Thank you for everything you have done,” I said.

  Yoshiko put an arm around me. “Now then, Miyoko. There is no need for this. What has happened cannot unhappen.”

  She held me for a few seconds, then gently pushed me away. She’d regained her composure and was the Yoshiko I’d always known
. “I will not say goodbye to you when I leave,” she declared, “so I shall say it now. Take care, Miyoko . . . Suk-bo. And take care of Young-chul. Promise you will.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  She tried to give me her imperturbable smile, but her lip quivered and her eyes betrayed her sadness.

  Two days later, she was true to her word and left without saying goodbye as if she was going to take care of another of her father’s affairs.

  With Yoshiko gone, Fumiko was the one who went into the city to buy provisions and take Young-chul to the city park. I still had to be careful not to venture out. I was afraid of the Japanese soldiers and Koreans who might see me as a chinilpa. When the Germans surrendered in Europe, Fumiko reported there was a feeling in Sinuiju she’d never known. “People everywhere are walking around with their heads up!” she reported. “We are speaking Korean again instead of Japanese. Koreans have started radio broadcasts. We use our real names. I think, someday soon, we will be free!”

  And then in August, the news came that the Americans dropped powerful bombs on Japan and they surrendered. The war was over. As a condition of the surrender, the Allies forced Japan to give up Korea. For the first time, I was able to go out into the city with Young-chul. Japanese flags had come down and been replaced by the Korean flags that had been hidden away for years. We watched impromptu celebrations in the streets with singing of traditional songs that people hadn’t sung openly for decades. People were drunk with joy. They taunted the Japanese who remained, although they were careful because the soldiers still carried their rifles.

  A few days later, the Russians arrived in Sinuiju and disarmed the Japanese soldiers. The Russian soldiers were hard, rough-looking men with stubbly chins and dirty, tattered boots. They scared me almost as much as the Japanese soldiers. The patriotic celebrations stopped, and in hushed talk, many of us worried about the Russians’ intentions.

  The Russians marched the Japanese soldiers into a prison yard they constructed outside the city. They brought hundreds and then thousands of soldiers there from northern Korea and Manchuria. Ships arrived in Sinuiju to take the prisoners to Japan.

  I was anxious to go to the prison yard to look for Hisashi. Before I could, reports came in on the radio and from Fumiko that riots had started. Thirty-five years of rage erupted from the Korean people. And since the Japanese were under the protection of the Russian soldiers, Koreans turned against their own people to unleash their rage. They shouted “Chinilpa!” as they dragged people who’d worked for the Japanese out into the street and beat them. “Chinilpa!” they howled as they threw merchants who’d profited from the occupation off the bridge into the Yalu River.

  As mobs marched at night, hunting for anyone who they thought had been a chinilpa, I cowered with Young-chul in my room in the Saito house. I feared that Kiyo would lead them to me and my half-Japanese son. I was afraid that the rebels I’d been with would find me. Old Mr. Lee kept watch at the gate day and night. Young-chul asked questions about what was happening and why we couldn’t go into the city anymore. I did my best to answer his questions but I could tell he was troubled.

  One night, the mob came. Mr. Lee rushed to my door, followed by Fumiko. Mr. Lee said he heard rioters a few blocks away and that they were marching toward the house. “You must run, Suk-bo!” he said. “They are coming for you and your son.”

  I was prepared. I’d taken the valuables Yoshiko had given me and packed some clothes and a blanket in a rucksack. Fumiko handed me a sack of food and a skin of water. She cried as she hugged Young-chul and then me.

  “What will happen to you?” I asked.

  “I will be all right,” Fumiko replied. “I’ll go back home. Take good care of Young-chul,” she cried and then hugged me again. “Go! Quickly!”

  I started for the door. Before I left, I said, “Wait.” I went to the desk and opened a drawer. I took out the silver hairpin and slipped it inside the rucksack. And from the top of the desk, I took Les Misérables and Romeo and Juliet.

  “Hurry,” Mr. Lee said.

  I led Young-chul out of the house, through the orchard, and over the back wall. Behind us, torches lit up the night sky, and peopled shouted, “Chinilpa! Chinilpa!” We hurried along streets to the main road leading to the hills. I looked back at the city and saw flames from where we’d come. The mob had set fire to the Saito house.

  Seven-year-old Young-chul walked alongside me with his eyes set forward. He seemed angry. We walked until the glow of the fire faded in the distance. Finally, he said, “They came because I’m half Japanese. I am a kimchi yarò.” His jaw was tight and anger filled his eyes.

  I stopped and made him face me. “That is not why, my son. They were coming for me because I married your father. It had nothing to do with you. Do you understand?”

  He turned away and said, “Let me carry the rucksack.” I gave it to him and we walked on.

  I thought of going up into the hills, back to my house where I’d grown up, but I couldn’t bear to see it again. So I stopped before the road began to rise. “Why are we stopping, Haha?” Young-chul asked.

  “Ummah,” I said. “Call me ‘ummah.’ That is the Korean word for mother. We are stopping because I have something to do before we go on.”

  “What is it, Haha . . . Ummah?”

  “I want to look for your father among the prisoners.”

  “Why?” Young-chul asked. “He is Japanese and you are Korean.”

  “Because I still love him,” I replied. “Love is not something that you can just toss away.”

  Young-chul thought about this for a moment. Then he pointed to a willow tree a little way off the road. “We can hide there until morning.”

  We went to the tree and spread the blanket. It was a clear night and crickets chirped all around us. And there under the twinkling stars, we tried to sleep.

  The next morning, the sun came up bright yellow, promising one of the last hot days of summer. The prison yard was only a mile farther from where we’d stopped. Flies buzzed around our heads as we walked toward the camp. A barbed wire fence enclosed the yard, and there were rows and rows of tents inside. Men in dirty uniforms milled about. Some hung on to the fence looking out. Others sat in small groups. Russian guards patrolled on the outside of the fence.

  As much as I hoped to see Hisashi, I was afraid to go farther. I was afraid I might not find him there, or that if I did, he wouldn’t want to see me. But I’d yearned to see him for so long, I set my fears aside. I went to the fence as Young-chul followed.

  “You there,” I said to a group of prisoners. “I am looking for someone.”

  A Russian guard studied me, and I was afraid he was going to tell me to go away, but he didn’t. He just watched as I tried to talk to the prisoners.

  “Help me, please,” I shouted. “I am looking for Hisashi Saito. Does anyone know him? Is he here?”

  A soldier left the group and came to the fence. His uniform was dirty and his face was sunburned. A white crust covered his lips. “Why do you want him?” he asked. His eyes darted back and forth as if he was afraid someone was coming up from behind him.

  “This is his son,” I said, showing Young-chul to him. “I want him to see his son.”

  The soldier glanced at Young-chul and then asked, “What did you say the man’s name was?”

  “Hisashi Saito.”

  The soldier nodded. “What will you give me if I find him for you?”

  “I have some dried meat in my rucksack,” I answered.

  The soldier’s eyes went wide. “Show it to me,” he said excitedly. I reached inside the rucksack and took out a scrap of meat Fumiko had given me.

  The soldier licked his lips. “Give it to me and I will find Hisashi Saito for you.”

  I put the meat back into the rucksack. “Find him and I will give you the meat,” I replied.

  The soldier stared at the rucksack and then at me. “Wait here,” he said and hurried into the crowd of soldiers.

 
Young-chul and I waited for several minutes. Then, the soldier came back, followed by a tall bald man.

  “I have not found Hisashi Saito,” the soldier said, pointing at the man behind him, “but this man says he knows him.”

  The bald man stepped forward. “Haru!” I gasped. Mr. Saito’s aide stood in front of me wearing a Kempei tai uniform. His uniform was not dirty like the others. His face was clean, too.

  From behind Haru the soldier said, “You must pay me. I brought you this man who knows the one you’re looking for.”

  Without taking his eyes from me, Haru said over his shoulder, “Go away.”

  “But sir,” the soldier protested. “She said she would pay me with meat!”

  Haru faced the soldier, who took a full step back. “I said, go away.”

  The soldier gave Haru a quick bow and then ran back to the group he’d been with. “Miyoko,” Haru said, facing me again, “I hear you are looking for your husband.”

  “Yes, Haru. Please, tell me where he is.”

  “He is not here,” Haru said evenly.

  “He is alive?” I gasped, bringing my hands to my mouth.

  “Yes, he is. But you will not see him again.”

  “Why? Please tell me.”

  Haru didn’t answer. He inspected Young-chul. “Is this Hisashi’s son?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You knew him as Masaru, but his name is Young-chul.”

  “Young-chul. I see. So he is fully Korean. We were right about you and Byong-woo.”

  “No,” I exclaimed. “He is Hisashi’s son. Please tell me what happened to my husband.”

  “Hisashi’s son.” A slow grin spread across Haru’s face. “Tell me, Miyoko, do you know what your husband, this boy’s father, has been doing for the past years?”

  “He worked for Doctor Ishii in Manchuria. But I do not believe the rumors about what they did there.”

  “Yes, Doctor Ishii. We called his camp Unit 731. And everything you heard about it is true.”

  “No,” I cried. “I do not believe you. You are saying this to hurt me.”