And in the end, they won. The bastards won. My mother agreed to go to North Korea with my father. I was astounded. And distraught. What was my mother thinking? Why on earth did she decide to go with him? Was it love? After all he’d put her through? Or had she agreed out of some strange sense of duty? Did she actually buy the promises of a better life? I’ll never know.
Our departure was scheduled for January 1960. When the day finally came, my father, my mother, my sisters, and I left our home for the last time and made our way to Shinagawa Station, where a large crowd had gathered. Though I knew better than to expect them, I scanned the crowd for a glimpse of my grandmother and my uncles and cousins, but they were nowhere to be seen. My grandmother had announced that she was done with my mother and would never speak to her again. I had nonetheless hoped that one of them—any of them—would come to say goodbye. A brass band played and marched in stiff, heroic formation as an earsplitting din blasted out of a speaker above the crowd. Everywhere people shouted, “Hooray!”
My friend Lion pushed his way through the crowd. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, his face streaming with tears.
“Are you really going?”
“I’ll write to you. And I promise to come back someday.”
That was all I could manage to say. My stomach was twisted in knots. So many emotions were churning inside me as we boarded the train. When I looked back at him from my seat, his face was pale. I suddenly knew I’d never see him again.
When the train started moving, a great cacophony of cheering and screaming seemed to come from everywhere. All at once the adults on the train started crying. I wondered why. After all, they were going back to their homeland, so why were they sad? It seemed to portend bad things to come.
CHAPTER 2
We shuffled off the train and were ushered into the chaotic and crowded Japanese Red Cross headquarters, where we spent the next three nights. We were then shunted and rubber-stamped through the official process of “repatriation” to a country that none of us had ever lived in. Some Japanese wives discarded their Japanese passports when presented with Korean papers, but my mother kept hers. There was a sentence, buried somewhere in the paperwork, that stated, “Once you have settled in North Korea, you will not be allowed to return to Japan without official Japanese authorization.” I tried to convince myself that since I was Japanese by birth, it wouldn’t be a problem for me to come back someday. But as we went through the various bureaucratic steps, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of dread.
Finally we were bused to the port, and we clambered aboard an ancient-looking Soviet passenger ship, the Kuririon. The Red Cross staff struggled with the staggering amount of paperwork and simply let people traipse on board. The ship set off shortly after we embarked. There was no returning. I stared forlornly back at Japan as we left the port of Niigata, then watched the dull, leaden waves crashing against the ship’s bow. The spray spewed and foamed and soaked the Soviet seamen working on deck, who wore only T-shirts despite the cold wind that lashed the Sea of Japan.
I looked around. Incredibly, some of my fellow passengers had boarded the ship without any luggage at all. What on earth were they thinking? I remembered the ridiculous public notice issued by the League of Koreans in Japan: “If you go to North Korea, you will be able to obtain everything you need.” That was blind faith for you.
After two long days at sea, I was in my bunk when someone called out that we were approaching the North Korean port of Chongjin. We all rushed up on deck. I spotted a mountain off in the distance. It looked miserable and bare. There was hardly a tree to be seen. Someone cried, “Hooray to Grand Marshal Kim Il-sung!” Some of the other passengers got caught up in the mood and joined in with more cheering. But another sound welled up from others, a sort of combined groan and scream that quickly grew louder and more terrifying. An elderly man standing next to me clutched the ship’s rail. “This is . . .” His words trailed off. “This isn’t what I expected,” he gasped. His body grew rigid, and his knuckles turned as white as his ashen face. His ghostlike appearance made me shudder. I huddled close to my sister Eiko, for warmth, but also for some measure of comfort. As I stared out at that barren mountain, I couldn’t help but wonder what would become of us.
As we approached the port, I noticed several rusty ships anchored nearby. They looked completely abandoned. No cargo was waiting to be unloaded. No longshoremen were on the quay. A ghost port. The bald hills in the background made everything look even more desolate and bleak.
An orchestra was playing on the dock, its music thin and haunting. Welcome to North Korea! I remembered the ghastly brass band back in Niigata—its jaunty, preposterous, inane pomposity. And now here was this sad orchestra, scraping away in the icy wind. As the ship edged closer to the quay, I saw that the players were all schoolgirls. Although it was midwinter, they wore little more than the thin jacket of the Korean national costume. The sharp wind blew in my eyes. Then I took a second look. Their faces. Their phony smiles. You must have seen them on TV. Those grotesque displays of schoolgirls—automata wheeled out in Pyongyang to celebrate the birthday of the Dear Leader or some other such dismal anniversary. And there they were, in prototype. The rictus grins of the brainwashed. Of course, I didn’t fully understand what I was seeing at the time, but even then, I knew it was nonsense.
When we pulled up to the quay, several North Koreans came on board to help with our disembarkation. Their clothes, their shoes, everything about them, made it clear at once that these denizens of paradise were infinitely poorer than we’d ever been during our tough life in Japan. As we trudged down the gangway, I kept thinking about one of the documents we’d received. It referred to some kind of “application for return” and said something to the effect of, “If you wish to return to Japan at any stage, even if you are on the verge of entering North Korea, inform any member of the Red Cross staff around you immediately.” I looked around frantically for a Red Cross employee, but my father placed his palm against my shoulder blades and pushed me forward. I had no choice but to keep walking down that gangway.
Born again.
We were shepherded onto buses and taken to reception centers in the city. I stared out the window, feeling desolate as I looked for anything that might give me hope. I saw only a few houses on the way into town. The landscape was dreary, still scarred by bomb craters left over from the Korean War. Once we arrived, we were interviewed by officials who decided each person’s future occupation and accommodation. Just like that. I couldn’t believe how casual my father was. When he was asked where he wanted to go, he simply said, “Anywhere is okay. I don’t know the names of any places in North Korea. I’m happy to go wherever.” He was so confident and optimistic, but I couldn’t believe he had just placed us at the mercy of the officials.
My mother, however, was racked with anxiety. I’ll never forget the look of sheer panic and terror on her face. “What’s going to happen to us?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Never mind. It’ll be okay,” my father kept saying. I kept silent. How could he be so confident that everything would be fine? Looking back at that day, I think language played a role. At last, he could speak his native Korean again. At last he belonged. This sense of relief seemed to seep into the rest of his thinking. I could see him relaxing into his mother tongue, and this gave him confidence about everything else.