The Wood Bracelet: A Novel

By Dan C. Pak

Nan-hee Park left Japan in 1939 to join her fianc, Won-sup Shim, who lived in a port city on the East Coast of Korea, which was not yet divided into North and South.

As she was preparing to leave, her parents shared a premonition: Shed face tough times in her homeland. But it was just a vague, undefined fear that they did not connect to her fiancs ardent support of Koreas movement to break free from the control of Imperial Japan.

When Nan-hee boarded the train, she accepted a simple, wood bracelet from her sister, who said, Remember me whenever you wear this.

Neither sister knew it then, but theyd soon find their lives interrupted by a war that engulfed the worldone that would be quickly followed by a conflict that would separate the people of North and South Korealeading to even more bloodshed.

Though the war in Korea was forgotten by many, it swept away almost an entire generationand life was never the same for the survivors. Learn why their stories are worth remembering in The Wood Bracelet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781480813571

Dan C. Pak

Dan C. Pak, a native of South Korea, dreamed of becoming a physician before being interrupted by the Korean War of 1950-1953. He was a U.S. Army civilian employee, and after immigrating to the United States, he traveled throughout the Western Pacific representing American firms. He’s written numerous articles for newspapers.

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Copyright © 2015 Dan C. Pak.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

All of the names of the individuals appearing in this novel are fictitious except such historical figures as Chiang Kai-shek or Mao Ze-dong. No name refers to or implies any real person by the same name, living or dead; if a name happens to be the same, it is purely coincidental.

The geographic names of towns and cities in Korea appear in this story as they are known by the Korean people, not as spoken by the Japanese. The Japanese people in the story refer to towns and cities by their Korean names, as the author believes that most readers would be more familiar with the Korean names. For example, the city of Seoul was called Keijo by the Japanese at the time; the Japanese referred to Pyongyang as Heijo; Wonsan, a city in the eastern part of North Korea, has its Japanese pronunciation as Genzan. Lesser-known cities follow the same rule as these larger cities.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1358-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1356-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1357-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015900405

Archway Publishing rev. date: 01/06/15

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1   Secret Mission

Chapter 2   Escape

Chapter 3   Qingdao, China

Chapter 4   Returning to the Home Country

Chapter 5   Fleeting Reunion

Chapter 6   Invasion — Bridge Bombed

Chapter 7   On the Eve of the Fall of Seoul

Chapter 8   The Busan Perimeter

Chapter 9   Assassin

Chapter 10 Anastasia — Polonaise and Nocturnes

Chapter 11 Retreat

Chapter 12 Wonsan Hospital

Chapter 13 Herbal Clinic

Chapter 14 Showdown

Epilogue

Quick Reference Guide

To my wife of fifty-five years who left us

on November 8, 2013

M y special thanks go to Larry G. Johnson, author of the highly acclaimed epic novel The War Baby. He is my longtime friend and confidant and the editor who played the indispensable role of midwifery in producing this book, my first attempt at writing a fiction story. Without his help, my book would have suffered a miscarriage.

Prologue

S nowflakes swirled around the railroad station. A small group of passengers huddled together next to the tracks. Winter had arrived a little early at Engaru, a town in the northeast of Hokkaido, Japan. It was November 1939, still several years before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Two sisters held hands and waited for the train to arrive. Nan-hee Park, the older girl, was leaving for Korea where her fiancé, Won-sup Shim, was waiting for her. He resided in Wonsan, a port city on the east coast in the northern part of the country. Korea was not yet divided between the North and South. That division would come after World War II.

Jung-hee, the younger of the two sisters, was crying. Wearing a blue sailor school uniform, typical for girls at the time, she asked the same questions over and over: Do you really have to go? Can’t you just stay here with Mom, Dad, and me? Can’t you ask him to come over here?

Nan-hee, dressed in a light gray, two-piece suit and a heavy overcoat, squeezed Jung-hee’s hand, looked at her tearful eyes, and whispered soothingly in her ear, I am sorry! We are already engaged, and he cannot leave his job in Korea. Besides, he is involved with some other activities that are not for open discussion.

Nan-hee had met Won-sup the previous year in Wonsan, Korea. When the Park family was living in the port city, Nan-hee had fallen ill, and she had been admitted to the local general hospital. Miss Shim, the head nurse at the hospital, took notice of the beautiful young woman and visited her frequently.

In time, Nan-hee recovered and was ready to leave the hospital. Miss Shim arranged for her younger brother, Won-sup, to help get her home. This was the beginning of the relationship between Nan-Hee and Won-sup, and it did not take long for them to fall in love.

The Shims were Christians, and they invited the Park family to go to church with them. Jung-hee remembered the Sunday-school children singing, Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.

Won-sup worked for the municipal government’s Transportation Bureau. He often visited Nan-hee at her home and talked about his political ambitions. He was an ardent supporter of Korea’s movement for independence. At the time, Korea was under the strict military control of the governor-general of Imperial Japan.

Armed patriotic Korean partisans were operating along the northern border of the peninsula. These paramilitary outfits engaged in guerrilla warfare with the highly trained and well-equipped regular army units of Imperial Japan. Occasional sabotage missions disrupted Japanese incursions into Manchuria, the northeast part of China bordering Korea.

Seeking better opportunities, the Park family moved to Hokkaido, Japan’s second largest island. Before leaving Korea, Nan-hee and Won-sup were engaged. Won-sup wanted Nan-hee to come to Wonsan as soon as her family settled down in Hokkaido. As she was preparing to leave, her parents tried to dissuade her from going. They had premonitions of what she would face, although there was nothing to support their view at the time. It was just a vague, undefined fear. Nevertheless, Nan-hee was determined to go through with what had been decided the previous year.

With a forlorn look on her round face, Nan-hee sighed and murmured, Mom and Dad are not coming to see me off after all.

They will miss you, nonetheless, responded Jung-hee feebly, her silky smooth face twitched in pain. The two sisters hugged each other and cried together.

A loud whistle sounded as the train approached the station. The ground started to rattle, and people began to gather around the platform. Black smoke billowed over the locomotive, and the engineer sounded the whistle repeatedly as the train slowed down. When it came to a halt, the locomotive sighed heavily, white, hot steam shooting down on the frozen ground and blasting snow off the tracks.

The passengers started to board the train. The parting members shouted farewells, and the stationmaster waved at them all. The snow kept falling, scattered by the strong wind. Finally, only the sisters remained, still holding on to each other tightly. The stationmaster gently tapped the shoulders of the crying girls and said, Time to board.

Nan-hee nudged the young girl away slightly and whispered to her, I will write to you as soon as I get there. Take care of Mom and Dad for me, and take care of yourself!

The younger sister reluctantly let go of her hand, but the tears kept flowing.

Nan-hee took a few steps toward the train but then turned around when her precious sibling called out to her.

Just a minute! I have something to give to you! Jung-hee took a wood bracelet off her wrist and reached for her sister. As she handed it to her, she said passionately, Remember me whenever you wear this. It was a simple wood bracelet, which her mother had given her for her birthday. Carved inside was a tiny cross.

Nan-hee slipped on the bracelet and stepped up onto the train.

After all of the passengers were aboard, the stationmaster waved at the engineer to signal departure. The whistle blew loudly, and the wheels started slowly rolling away. Nan-hee stuck her head out of the window, waving to Jung-hee, who was running along the platform. As the train picked up speed, the waving hand began disappearing behind smoke, steam, and snow.

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A few weeks later, a letter arrived from Wonsan, Korea. Nan-hee and Won-sup had been properly married, even though the parents were not present for the ceremony. In her wedding photograph, Nan-hee was wearing the wood bracelet.

The Pacific War started with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. With military operations taking top priority in all aspects of life throughout the Japanese empire, including in the Korean peninsula, civilian mail service became erratic.

In the summer of 1943, another letter arrived, accompanied by a photograph of a baby girl. The girl was named after both her mother and her aunt—Nanjung Shim. Nan came from her mother’s name of Nan-hee and Jung came from her aunt’s name of Jung-hee.

To support the war effort, a large number of Korean farmers were conscripted from the villages and taken to Hokkaido to work in the coal mines. Jung-hee’s mother opened an eatery nearby, and business was brisk. Hokkaido, the northern island of the Japanese archipelago, was spared air raids by US planes since most military installations were concentrated at Honshu, Japan’s main island, and elsewhere.

The people in east Asia lived through one of the most turbulent times in history during and after the Pacific War. When the war ended in 1945, most of the Korean residents in Japan returned to their native land.

All too soon, however, an unexpected and unwelcome development gripped the peninsula. The land was divided along the thirty-eighth parallel. For all Korean people, the end of the Pacific War was not the end of misery. They had to suffer from yet another horrific conflict—the Korean War—which left an even more direct and tragic impact.

Korea was a land situated between strong neighbors fighting fierce ideological battles that reshaped the course of history. Caught in the middle, it was now a divided country. All communications between the North and South were cut off. It was as though an endless spider web hung over that imaginary boundary line, ensnaring every butterfly that would try to pass through. Wonsan, where Nan-hee lived, was north of the divided line. Jung-hee’s family left Japan and moved to Seoul, south of the thirty-eighth parallel.

Would the two sisters ever meet again?

I have taken it upon myself to record the journey of courage, triumph, and tragedy as traveled by the compelling and intriguing characters appearing in the story. I am Byung-sik Kim, a major in the army of the Republic of Korea—South Korea. I am the husband of Jung-hee Park, the younger sister in this amazing story.

The journey begins now.

Chapter 1

Secret Mission

T he director’s office of the Transportation Bureau in Wonsan was spacious, with a large window facing the east. Won-sup Shim and his boss, Hirota, the chief of the administration department, had been called to meet Nagano, the director. Nagano’s assistant had told them to wait as the director was in another meeting at the time.

Both men were dressed in military-style khaki uniforms as required of all government officials. On their right sleeves, they wore armbands that read, Transportation Personnel.

Won-sup Shim was short and stout and carried himself about with energetic steps. In contrast, Hirota was timid and cautious, typical of a low-level bureaucrat.

A large mahogany desk sat at the far end of the room. Behind it, on the wall, a photograph of Emperor Showa was decorated with chrysanthemums, the royal household emblem. Under the photograph was calligraphy written by Director Nagano in Chinese characters or kanji. It read Nai Sen Ittai, meaning Solidarity of Japan and Korea. Nagano was proud of his calligraphic skill and often challenged others to compete with him.

A plaque with a bronze plate on it hung on the opposite wall. Nagano had received it from the master of the famous dojo, or training school, in Osaka, Japan, in recognition of his winning a second-degree black belt in judo.

Won-sup looked out the window and saw schoolchildren on the playground across the street falling into formation. It was time for the morning ritual to begin. He remembered his own school days years earlier.

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At eight o’clock each morning, the Korean students at the school Won-sup attended lined up on the playground. They wore black school uniforms with stiff collars, caps, and boots. Won-sup fell into line military-style with his fellow students, facing east toward the emperor of Japan. The student leader stood in front of them. The teachers congregated separately, watching the students and waiting for the principal to appear.

A few minutes later, the principal strode in with an air of great dignity. He entered ahead of a training officer, a reserve army officer of Imperial Japan, a short, stout, middle-aged soldier in a khaki uniform, with a Japanese sword around his waist. The principal climbed on the wooden platform, and the army officer stood alone on the ground, facing the students.

The student leader barked an order to the students: Take off your caps and bow to the principal! The caps came off and heads bowed.

Next, at the cue from a loudspeaker, everyone began singing Kimigayo the national anthem of Imperial Japan. In a music class, the teacher had gone to great lengths to teach the students how to sing Kimigayo properly—not too fast, not too slow, but reverently and solemnly. If anyone deviated from the strict rule, he had better be prepared to meet the consequences.

When the singing was over, the speech by the principal began. His message was more or less the same every morning: extolling the virtues of dying for the emperor. It is the glorious death, worthy of manhood, befitting the sons of the great Japanese empire!

Throughout the speech, the students stood at full attention. Afterward, the most solemn moment was reserved for the deepest bow to the emperor. Before dispersing, everyone shouted "Banzai" [long life] three times for the victory of the Japanese empire. The daily morning ritual lasted about half an hour. Military training was a part of the regular curriculum at the time.

Won-sup Shim felt that the entire ritual was nothing but an empty charade. But he knew better than to openly voice an opinion of mockery—the consequences could be dire. When he was with close friends though, they mimicked principal’s speech in disdain. One of his friends feigned the straddling stance of the self-important principal. Each boy came up with unique ways to ridicule the meaningless daily routine. The most innovative performer got the loudest applause. It was a private way of venting frustration toward the repressive school authority under colonial rule.

The complete colonization of Korea had been taken a step further in the mid-1930s. The students had been forbidden to speak their native Korean language at the school or at public gatherings, and family names were changed from Korean to Japanese.

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As Won-sup and Hirota waited in the director’s office that morning, the Japanese empire was headlong with the United States in the Pacific theater of World War II. Everything changed after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.

Japan was losing the deadly struggle in the island-hopping war in the Pacific. The Japanese high command announced that the final decisive battle would be fought on the Japanese mainland itself. As the tide of war was turning against Japan, the colonial governor-general of Japan in Korea accelerated the pace of militaristic oppression against its population. The police detectives kept a close watch over the people. Even the slightest deviation from the strict rule was the cause for punishment.

Shortly, the heavy door swung open, and Director Nagano barged in and declared loudly as he wildly gestured, Sorry! I am late! That annoying wolf would not let me go! His obsession with saboteurs is eating him up. The coward is frightened of his own shadow.

He was shaking his head, and he wiped sweat off his forehead with his bare hand. The director wore the same khaki military-style uniform. Hirota and Won-sup exchanged a quick glance before Hirota mustered up enough courage and timidly asked, Who are you talking about, sir?

Ah! You have not noticed the vermin—Yamada! He is worse, much worse than the fellow he just replaced.

You mean Captain Yamada of Kempeitai? The Kempeitai were the military police.

The wolf is convinced that someone in our bureau is leaking information to the guerrillas operating across the Korean border in Manchuria near the Russian territory. By the way, that’s the subject I wanted to discuss with you two this morning.

Nagano slowly moved his muscular body behind his desk, opened the top drawer, and picked up a stash of papers. He motioned to his subordinates to take a seat on the comfortable sofa. After he placed the papers on the table in front of them, he brought out his favorite pipe from the inside pocket of his jacket. As the director puffed on the tobacco, a pungent smell from the white smoke filled the air. He spread the map of Korea on the table and spoke slowly and deliberately.

As you know, we are responsible for the efficient operation of the railroad line that starts here in Wonsan and runs through the east coast of the peninsula. Nagano’s stubby finger pointed at the map as he spoke. He turned to Hirota, the department chief, and asked plainly, Do you know what is bugging Kempeitai?

Sir, I assume it’s the security of the military munitions being transported in the freight trains. This has always been a matter of concern for all of us because the line connecting Wonsan, the major port city on the east coast, to the northern-most border town on the peninsula goes through the most rugged terrain in Korea. The numerous tunnels make it vulnerable to sabotage.

That’s right! But in the past few years since I have been in charge we have not had any problems. Is there any reason to raise concern now?

If I may say so, sir, I think the fact that the war front is approaching closer to the homeland may be making Kempeitai a little more nervous, said Hirota. He turned to Won-sup for his comment.

Won-sup swallowed hard, cleared his throat, and spoke clearly, Captain Yamada may still be suffering from the memory of the disastrous combat loss of his outfit in October 1920.

That may be the case, Nagano briefly agreed. They were referring to the fight of Korea’s independence army in the Kando area, a small rugged territory between Korea and Manchuria. The Japanese government did not announce the incident but it has become common knowledge among Korean people as the most successful combat victory by the Korean patriots.

Nagano tapped his pipe on an ashtray and turned to Won-sup. As he did, his face tightened, and he fixed his gaze on him: Shimizu! You are the only non-Japanese staff in the upper level of management in my bureau. I have a reason to believe that you may be the target of Yamada’s suspicion, although he did not say so outright. I have confidence in you, and I count on your loyalty.

Shimizu was the Japanese last name of Won-sup Shim. At the beginning of the Pacific War, all Koreans came under heavy pressure to change their last name to a Japanese-sounding name. Won-sup decided to add a few words behind his original Korean name of Shim to make it sound Japanese. The result was Shimizu.

Abruptly, Hirota stood up, assumed the posture of full military-style attention, and announced, Sir, I seek for your permission to speak on behalf of my subordinate. Hirota, a former second lieutenant of the army, had once served in southern Manchuria as a supply officer.

Sit down, Hirota, shouted Nagano.

However, Hirota continued standing and said with passion, I have recommended Shimizu for a promotion. He is the most capable and loyal subordinate in my department. If Captain Yamada brings him in for interrogation, I will volunteer to go with him, sir!

As if ignoring Hirota, Director Nagano raised his hands and clapped loudly. The assistant rushed in, and Nagano told him to bring hot tea for all three of them.

When the tea was served, the room became quiet as the three of them sipped. Nagano started talking in a low voice. His countenance changed, and he seemed somewhat subdued.

"Listen carefully—both of you. In modern-day warfare, it is not only the frontline soldiers who fight and die for the country; the noncombatants in the rear are also fighting the war in their own way. As you may know, I fought for the Imperial Navy in my younger days. Now, in my old age, I am serving my country in a different capacity.

I have close friends in the high command. According to my source, there is quite a difference between what has been publicly announced by our government and what is actually happening in the war zone. America is not the same kind of adversary as the Chinese. Here, in Korea, there are people who are just as much committed to their own cause as we Japanese are committed to ours. No one can be certain as to the ultimate outcome of this great conflict.

The old man paused, and he seemed to sink deep into his