When Meiko arrived at the table, the Japanese man sitting there made only brief eye contact before hovering his pen over the large ledger in front of him.
“Name,” he ordered.
“Meiko Teshiako,” she answered.
“Year of birth?”
“1928.”
He then asked for her parents’ names, their address, the name of her academy, and how she had come to learn about the day’s recruitment.
“Recruitment, sorry?” she asked. “No, I’m here only to get more information.”
“Any sexually transmitted diseases?” the man asked.
Meiko flinched, stared at him while he waited for her answer. “I … I don’t even know what those words mean,” she replied.
He gave the smallest smile, then motioned to the side. “Okay, go stand over there with the others. We’re done.”
“But I don’t —”
He looked past her and screamed at the next girl in line. “Please move forward! You’re next. Keep the line moving please.”
Meiko floated over in a daze to join the group of girls who had cleared the table and were now huddled under a metal awning by the railway tracks. She spotted one of her classmates, Huriko, standing with her chin buried in her chest, tears pouring over her face. “Huriko, what’s going on?” she tried to whisper to her. As soon as she did, a Japanese soldier stomped over and yelled in Meiko’s face. “No talking! Stand still and don’t talk, Chosunjin!” The word he spat at her, Chosunjin, was a racial epithet for Koreans, bastardizing the true name of their nation, Chosun. His use of it froze Meiko where she stood.
Once all the girls had taken their place under the awning, they had to wait several minutes in silence while the soldiers processed the names in the ledger and typed up small passports for each girl. When one passport was completed, a soldier would call out the girl’s name and then hand her the slip of folded paper. When Meiko stepped forward to receive hers, the young Japanese soldier handing them out leered at her. There was no kindness in his grin. “You’re very beautiful, Chosunjin. Look at you — like a little porcelain doll. You will do very well where you are going.” And Meiko thought, stupidly, What does beauty have to do with working in a factory?
When all the girls had received their passports, the soldiers herded them across the station platform and told them to board the waiting train. The girls were no longer making attempts at silence: they were crying, calling out for their mothers, pleading with the Japanese to let them go. Some tried to run, but soldiers chased them down and threw them gruffly back into the line that flowed into the open train carts. Meiko was squeezed through the door and pushed deep inside, nearly tripping on her hanbok in the swell of bodies. Soon she was pressed up against the far window. All the windows were covered by a canvas blanket tied loosely down with twine to hide the view outside. Once all the girls had squeezed in, the soldiers pulled the rattling metal door shut and locked it with an iron clunk. For a few seconds, there was an absurd silence as the girls stood stunned in the darkness. Along the cart’s walls, squares of sunlight peeped around the blankets covering the windows. Soon the girls broke out with more weeping, with more calls to their mothers. “I don’t want to go to Shimonoseki,” someone yelled in panic. “I’m not ready … I just wanted information …”
There was an abrupt jolt beneath their feet as the train began to move. The girls closest to the door began pulling at it uselessly, whimpering “No! No!” as they realized there was no way to get it open. The shift and steer of the moving train squeezed them all to the right, crushing Meiko where stood against the blanketed window. The crying grew louder, but Meiko found she could not summon the breath to join in. She moved her fingers to the edge of the blanket at her shoulder and pulled it back to reveal the moving landscape outside the window. She watched as the structures of the train station and then the city itself thinned out and faded away, replaced by a spare and rural landscape. She looked up to see the sun hover in the cold January sky. Its position above them filled Meiko with a sudden, frightening wisdom. As the train picked up speed, Meiko beseeched the sun to shift its place in the sky. When it didn’t, her realization rose up like vomit and suddenly she could find the breath to speak, the breath to scream.
“We’re moving north!” she yelled out. “Do you hear me? We’re moving north! They’re not taking us to Pusan. They’re not taking us to Shimonoseki. Do you hear me? They’re taking us north!”
But her knowledge seemed lost in the cacophony of weeping. And Meiko realized too late that this had been her mother’s worst fear all along — this, a train packed with ignorant, terrified girls, and heading in the wrong direction.
Chapter 4
I stand at my whiteboard, glossy Basic 5 storybook in one hand, green marker in the other, uncapped and ready for business. This is me, pretending to know what I’m doing. My tiny classroom is packed — fifteen Korean students aged eight to eleven. Fourteen of them sit at their miniature desks, each one littered with storybook, homework book, grammar book, and pencil case. The fifteenth student, a troublemaker named “David,” stands facing the corner of the room, his back to the class, head arched downward in shame. This is his punishment from ten minutes ago when I caught him speaking, for the third time tonight, a quick burst of Korean to one of his buddies. The Canadian flag I’ve taped to my wall hangs just above his head.
“Get the ball,” I read to the class.
“Get the ball,” the class echoes.
“Now Billy has the ball,” I chant.
“Now Billy has the ball.”
“MichaelTeeee-chore!” David weeps from the corner, as if I’ve forgotten he’s there. I look over at his slouched frame and hesitate before speaking, allowing him to stew a moment longer in my feigned authority. “Okay, David, you can sit down.” He skulks shamefaced back to his desk.
We begin working through the storybook as if it’s Henry James. I get the kids to read lines aloud, correcting their pronunciation as they go, then begin to ask leading questions about what is happening in this soccer game, and they recite back exactly what I want to hear, exactly what the storybook says. I’m obligated to stay standing and write these insights on my whiteboard, lest the school’s director (Ms. Kim — confirmed Asian spinster, a hostile little touch-me-not) looks through my classroom-door window, fixes me in her angry little crosshairs, and confronts me at the end of the night for Not Following the Curriculum. Time is winding down, so I get the kids to close their books so I can hand out their nightly quiz. For the next five minutes, they will hunch over the test with great purpose, filling in blanks with nouns and verbs left out of the exact sentences we’ve just read. I take a slow walk up the aisle to inspect the kids’ progress, hoping my presence will hurry them along. Soon I have all the tests in my hand and with a few seconds to spare — which doesn’t feel right. I’m forgetting something.
“MichaelTeacher, homework?” asks “Jenny,” one of the older girls. They always seem to be named Jenny.
“Oh shit,” I mutter aloud, and the kids all gasp in horror. I hustle to my whiteboard and begin frantically jotting down workbook page numbers and grammar exercises, reciting them aloud for the kids as I do. Meanwhile, the class bombards Jenny with a Korean phrase, which I’m sure if I could translate would say, You stupid bitch, he nearly forgot!
“No Korean, please!” I shout with my back to them, still scribbling furiously. Then the bell does chime, an annoying rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and the kids burst from their chairs and pile