Shattered by the Wars

My childhood was filled with happy memories. We lived in a seminary compound where my father, a Christian minister, taught and preached. I had an understanding mother who let me, a curious child, explore the compound filled with persimmon trees and forsythia bushes. Under the bushes lived a lot of crawling things like snakes, frogs and rabbits, and I looked for them to catch with a stick in my hand. Also there were butter flies and dragon flies flying around the bushes, and I tried to catch them with a small net that Mother made for me on her sewing machine. When I caught a dragon fly, I rushed to Mother to show her, and she smiled approvingly at my catch. I also had an older brother, Hi-Seung, who loved me. Whenever he came home from school, he played with me. He taught me how to kick a tennis ball with my foot. He lifted me up to a branch of a persimmon tree so that I could hold on to it like on a chinning bar. He also showed me how to make a snake angry while cautioning me not to try it by myself. Sometimes he took me to a swimming pool to teach me to swim. So I looked forward to every tomorrow to explore the world around me and to play with my dear brother.

Then in December, 1939, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and its reign on my homeland, Korea, annexed in 1910, tightened. Like a vise. The church doors were closed for worship. The missionaries from the U.S. and Europe were either expelled or imprisoned. The Japanese police came to my home and took my father away to prison because he refused to walk up to the Shinto temple and bow down to the picture of their emperor. To Father, the God of Jesus Christ came first. All others – his family, his life, his earthly comfort – came second. Since he had experienced God’s grace early in the 1900s and became a Christian minister, he spent most of his days travelling to villages with missionaries to preach the gospel. He wanted as many Koreans in the country of Buddhists and Confucianists to experience the peace and freedom that he had found when he surrendered to Christ. “Go to Shito temple and bow down to the Japanese emperor just to save my life? Are you kidding?” Father would chuckle. “No way.”

While Father was in prison, Hi-Seung, who turned fifteen, volunteered to join the Japanese military. He hoped that his action would melt the hearts of the Japanese police and have his father released. After Hi-Seung was gone, Father had a stroke in prison, and he was brought home under house arrest. The police came to our house, banged on the door in their leather boots at anytime of their choosing, scaring me to death. I used to cover myself with a blanket over my head shaking when they banged on the door in the dark of the night when the house was filled with silence.

When the police found out that we lived in a two story brick house with many rooms – the house left to us by an American missionary – they kicked us out so that they could use the house as their police headquarters. Do you have a place for us to move? I imagined asking the police. That’s your problem to take care of would have been their answer. Fortunately, our neighbor offered his house because his family had been planning to move to a village to take care of his sick father.

With the dropping of two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki, Japan surrendered in 1945. The Japanese left Korea. We returned to our house. My brother, Hi-Seung, came home from Japan. I was looking forward to the happy days of my childhood playing soccer, going swimming, and hunting for snakes with him. But it did not turn out that way because Brother came home as an eighteen year old injured man and died a year later from his injury.

With the end of WWII, the church doors were open for worship. Father could preach and teach. There was peace, but the peace lasted only five years. In June, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea and took control of Seoul, where we lived. For ninety days, we lived under the control of the North Korean military. They closed all the church doors. One day two North Korean officers came to my house and took my father away because he was a Christian minister. He never returned.

When Seoul was freed from the Northern army in Fall, 1950, I and my mother fled Seoul and settled in Cheiju Island. Without Father, Mother struggled to feed and clothe me for two long years. Then in 1953 during the Korean War, Mother put me – her 16 year old son – on a boat headed for America so that I would be safe, get a good education and be a force for good in the world.

Shattered by the Wars is a story of suffering, faith, sacrifice, and love – all wrapped in one package. The heroine in the story is my mother as seen by her youngest son. Mother prayed without ceasing, day and night; when she was happy and when she was sad. Through her unceasing prayers, she was able to walk through the dark tunnel of trials and tribulations, and to lead us onward with love and grace and absolute faith in God.

I wrote the story in the hope that the readers would seek harmony at home and peace in the world. I picture a scene where people from diverse cultures hold hands across the vast continents and over the deep oceans, form a circle around the tiny planet called Earth, look at each other with broad smiles, and sing a mighty song of brotherhood. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that day comes in our lifetime?