“You naive fool,” her father spat at her.
“My little crane, this is not practical,” her mother said. “You don’t understand what is happening to our country. We must find you a husband right away. You shouldn’t —”
“Mother, it’s you who placed me in school. It’s you who always said it’s important to learn everything you can. Why has the blood between my legs suddenly changed that?”
Her father took two large steps across their wooden floor and struck Meiko hard on the face. She fell in a heap amidst her homework. He stood over her, trembling in rage. “What did my ancestors ever do to burden me with this life?” he quaked. “To live in a house full of vulgar whores? Am I not the head of this family?” He looked at his wife, at Meiko, at Meiko’s sister who was watching the fight from her bedroom door, her eyes filling with silent tears. “We’re all going to starve,” he said, then walked over to grab a jacket off the hook by the door. “Don’t blame me. We’re all going to starve.” And then he was gone outside, into a street vandalized with Japanese signs he could not read.
Meiko remained in school mostly by default because her parents refused to agree on what to do with her. School seemed to be the safest place to be, even if every class simply groomed the girls to serve the Japanese empire. By Grade Nine, Meiko and her classmates had flowered into silent and hardworking servants of the Emperor, skilled at music and storytelling, experts at keeping their faces pleasantly devoid of emotion. They came to class with their hair tied into the long, twisted braids that were the Korean symbol of chastity, and their developing bodies were covered in the unflattering tent of hanbok, the traditional Korean dress.
One day, their teacher announced they were having a special guest to class. She welcomed him in and told the girls he was a well-respected Japanese businessman. He took his place in front of the blackboard, his masculinity so foreign in the room. To Meiko’s eyes, he didn’t look like a businessman; he looked like an army sergeant. The teacher made some more introductions and then turned the class over to him.
“How many of you have older brothers?” the man began. Several girls, including Meiko, raised their hands. “And how many of those brothers have been shipped off to fight for the Emperor?” None of the hands went down. “And how many of you have fathers who work in factories or on construction sites, barely making enough to feed whatever remains of your families?” Most hands stayed in the air, including Meiko’s. The man nodded as if he knew all along what the answers would be. “Well, I am here today to offer you all an opportunity. An opportunity to provide for your families in a way that your men cannot.” He told them that Japan was prepared to offer each girl a year-long job in a new textile factory in the Japanese city of Shimonoseki. The government would cover everything: their transportation to and from Japan, their accommodations while there, their meals and clothes and entertainment. And the jobs themselves would be some of the highest-paying in the Empire. “You’ll most likely make more money than your fathers, and you’ll be able to send those earnings home each month to help out your families. There will also be extra pay for those willing to work extra hours.”
The girls were too frightened and excited to raise a single question. Meiko thought: Why us? Why not just send our fathers? But kept her “why” questions to herself.
“Go home tonight and discuss it with your parents,” the man said. “It’s a big decision. You’ll be away from your families for a year. But the journey will not be too arduous: Just a train ride south to Pusan and then a ferry across the Sea of Japan to Shimonoseki. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, come to the Tanghu train station two Sundays from now, in the morning, and we’ll provide you with more information. You won’t have to make any decisions then. But we can at least tell you more about this and begin filling out the necessary paperwork should you decide to say yes.”
For the next few days, Meiko could not keep Shimonoseki out of her thoughts. Walking the streets of her neighbourhood with the early January snow falling, she kept pondering what it would be like to live and work there and become the main provider for her family. Was this not what she had been training herself for all these years? It was a Korean girl’s duty to be silent, respectful, and hardworking. She knew she had probably failed at the first two, but at least she was capable of hard work. Her studies had proven that. She could go away and make enough money to put an end to her parents’ bickering.
She came home one afternoon about a week later to find her father home alone, sitting in his wicker chair by the door. His presence in the house startled her; he should have been at work. “Father, are you okay?” she asked, hanging her wool shawl on its hook. He raised his left hand to show her what had happened: streaking across his blackened knuckles was a dark paste of half-clotted blood. “I got careless with one of the machines,” he told her. “They sent me home to let this heal.” Meiko hurried to her mother’s washtub to fetch a clean rag. She brought the soaked cloth over, knelt in front of him and began washing away the oil and grit seeping into the wound. “There there,” she said with the gentleness of a nurse, “let me look after that for you. Here, turn your hand this way. There. Let me wash that …” She sensed him staring down at the top of her head as she worked on him, and that was when she caught the odour of soju on his breath. It filled her nostrils each time he exhaled. Ah, so you didn’t come straight home after your accident, she thought. Meiko would not look up at him as she washed his hand; she would not look up at him even when he cupped his other hand, also filthy but unmarred, to the side of her head and allowed his fingers to crawl up into her virginal braids. She froze. “My daughter,” he said. “I feel like I fail you every day. Do you know that?”
“Father, don’t say such things,” she swallowed.
He leaned back against the wall, the wicker chair creaking beneath his weight. “Did you find a job today?” he slurred. She resumed cleaning without looking up. He let out a laugh that was tinged with frustration. “Of course you didn’t. Because you’re just a girl. Your mother’s right. You need to be in school for a couple more years and we’ll arrange a chungmae. Then you’ll become some other man’s problem.” When he laughed, his grip on her skull grew tighter, as if he wanted to grind her head into the floor, or somewhere else.
“Father,” she said, “if I am ever offered a job, do you think I should take it?”
He looked down at her with his dark eyes and drew her closer to his lap. He leaned over her until his face was nearly crushed into hers. “I no longer care,” he whispered, his words as poisonous as his breath. “Whatever happens to you, I don’t care. As long as you become another man’s problem before these devils kill me.”
Outside, they could hear Meiko’s sister hurrying up the stone walkway to their house, her mother’s voice hollering behind her. Meiko and her father quickly released their grip on one another. She was just standing up and straightening her dress as her sister burst through the door, her mother appearing a moment later. She looked at the two of them over her canvas sack of vegetables. “What are you doing here?” she asked, and for an instant Meiko thought she had been speaking to her.
Y ou don’t have to make any decisions today. That’s what the man said. You can just come and get more information about the job in Shimonoseki. That’s all.
When Meiko arrived at the Tanghu train station, she found about forty girls standing in a line that snaked up to a long table manned by what were clearly Japanese soldiers. She recognized only a few girls from her class, standing up further in the line. They were dressed as she was — in full hanbok and braids, looking to make a strong impression on these potential employers. But the other girls here were clearly not from their academy or any other. They looked as if they had been shipped in from villages outside of the city. They