They reached Honolulu believing it was America, only it wasn’t. It was the Hawaiian Islands, a territory. So they asked the family scholar had he known about the Islands; that it wasn’t Mekuk (America). Before he could answer they were hustled aboard another ship, this time for Kauai, the island where the sugar growers awaited the Korean families to arrive and get to work. And work it was, clearing land where previously sheepherders and their flocks roamed. Haraboji and the women were put to hoeing and weeding. His sons, strong and healthy, were sent to the fields to toil, 7-days a week, until the ground was ready for planting. The growers did not increase their wages; they saw no reason to reward workers who did the job they were hired to do. The women had their own way of rewarding themselves. They increased the size of their families. Simoon was first to bear an American-born child. It was in 1905. He was named John and was Haraboji’s pet. Ruth, Nak Chung’s wife who had been childless the seven years of her marriage, had her firstborn the next year. His name was Obed. His birth signaled Nak Chung it was time to move on to California where the schools were first class. He departed for San Francisco in 1907, with his family and the young students who were to study and return to Korea to lead the people into a democracy like America. Simoon had three more children. Two daughters, Rose in 1908, and Mary in 1910; son Jack was born in 1913. In 1915, Nak Joon moved the family to Oahu, and James, the youngest, was born in 1918.

It was the firstborn American, John, who talked about Kauai. He was retired, going on 70 years, sitting in his Los Angeles home with his wife, Minnie You, beside him. She was the mother of his four children: Kenneth, Charlotte, Lorna (after Lorna Doone, John’s favorite heroine) and Elaine. They were grown now, with families of their own. Kauai, he said, happened long ago and he had come a distance from the place of his birth. He would tell what he recalled, but it was not much. He wasn’t one to embellish, he left that to women. Giving Minnie and me the eye. He began, “I remember how it was for the men of the family, especially grandfather. They were always served first. Each had his own set of dishes, spoons and chopsticks, and were served on little tables. Later when there were dining table and chairs they still were served first, and women and children after.” John was a small boy then. Was he thinking, “One day when I am a man, I’ll be served first.” But Korean traditions were to give way to American ways, which were usually more convenient for the women! But Haraboji continued to be honored as head of the family, and John admired him immensely. He described him as “tall, nice looking, with silvery hair, and he always wore Korean clothes on the plantations.” It wasn’t until the family moved to Oahu that the old man adopted American trousers, wore a homburg hat and carried a cane. John’s father was small, in contrast, standing by Haraboji, about 5 feet, 6 inches. He was a quiet man, was educated in the Old Country and did not learn English. His mother did not learn either. They were upset, as were the other parents, when the kids spoke to them in English. It was terrible, they scolded, not to understand your own children. The parents solved that problem at once, they started Korean language classes: One hour before public school attendance, one hour after school, making for a long day. The subjects were everything Korean: Korean geography, Korean history, Korean language (ka, na, da. . .), Korean arithmetic (hana, dool, set. . .), except the Chinese 1000 characters. Saturday was no different, they studied. Who were their teachers? John had no recollection. Yet he recited the names of his public school teachers and principals and was enthusiastic about Mr. Smith, 4th grade principal who put in a telephone system to the classrooms to keep in touch with instructors and pupils. “That was progressive,” he said. “You liked school,” I said, “you should have gone on to college.” He said, no, college was for his brothers; that he was not smart like them, referring to his brothers Jacob and Jack. Well, John did not need a diploma for business excellence. He’d started with a vegetable stand in Los Angeles, worked at it for years, bought into a market stall downtown, and it was wartime when the city mushroomed. He said he could not help but make money. The produce business was big business. When he retired his son took over and made it into a multimillion dollar enterprise, and he had no degree after his name.
About plantation life: he said his parents moved from plantation to plantation. With each move he changed schools. Going to school meant walking and he walked rain or shine. The schools were not often near the plantations and it really meant walking. The longest distance was to Lihue, the island capital, which he said was eight miles. Dan went with him, so he did not mind the distance. About plantations themselves? He said the owners were “slave drivers”. He was 10 years old but he recognized the dark side of people. His father decided to move to Oahu, where the Dole company offered subcontracting pineapple fields. Haraboji reached his 75th birthday and no longer a wage earner, younger workers replaced him. It was time to leave, the two men agreed, and the family left Kauai.

Nak Joon and Simoon were not the stuff immigrants are made of. They were not aggressive, quick to adapt, quick-witted. They were ordinary people and they did not find the fields greener on Oahu. It was their 14-year-old son, Dan, almost 15, who met up with his future in Honolulu. It was the automobile. He had an instinct about cars and the owner of the taxi cab knew it at once, seeing this big country youth who eyed the silver Packard, strolled around it, looked as if he might get into it but did not touch, and moved away. The owner spoke. Dan listened. Yes, he liked the car. Someday he’d have a Packard convertible like this one. The owner said to get in and take a ride, “No charge.” Dan took his first ride in his dream car. He learned to drive it, and was offered a job. He’d be paid. His parents were surprised anyone would pay their son to drive a car. More so, when he became actively a wage earner. They had not been successful with the pineapple fields, and came into Honolulu to run a dry cleaning business, which had no customers. Nak Joon had many jobs, one as stevedore. Dan was in an accident, the car damaged, but he walked away with no physical harm to himself other than bruises and a shake up. However, he was weak for almost a year, unable to drive. Because he moved about, no one thought he should see a doctor. Doctors were for sick people. When he was well enough, the taxi owner offered him his old job, adding a bonus: Dan was made part-owner. He was in the taxi cab business for the rest of his life, although he was into many ventures. He had this feeling: to hang on to his dream car.

When John left school he told his parents he was getting married. He would get a job and he and Minnie would have a place of their own and be a family. He thought his words were manly, revealing what was uppermost in his mind: his love for his sweetheart through high school. Simoon, his mother, reacted, and in Korean too. “Aigo! Aigo!” was her cry of alarm. If only she had beat her breast and stopped there, her point would have been made. But she went on in a long Korean monologue. John must wait. Dan was the older. He must marry first, it was his right. It was Korean custom. John argued. “What about Frank and Jacob in California, they’re older than Dan.” And wished he had not mentioned their names. Since he could remember, mentioning their names would bring out her lament how they had been taken from her and that Nak Chung the uncle failed to teach them respect for their true parents in Hawaii. Adding, “They never send money home.” Although Simoon well knew the California relatives were no better off than they were in the Islands. There was that time that I cannot forget, when cousins Rose and Mary, hearing of the plight of the children in the orphanage, were quick to write, sending photographs, packages of Hawaiian trinkets, shell beads, postcards, paper leis, even a small ukulele that was mistaken for a toy, yet made a plinky-plinky sound sweet to hear. To thank them, we were allowed to reply twice, penciled notes written on scratch paper, the cost two 2 cents postage stamps. Then in 1924, the year sister and I were placed in American homes as “mother’s helper”, a photograph of Dan and his Picture Bride came. In the shuffle of moving the Honolulu address was lost and no reply was sent. The wedding picture was kept.

John and Minnie married. John found a well-paying job, painting auto bodies with a spray gun, a newfangled invention that did away with paint brushes. He learned a skill that one day would help him in Los Angeles. But at the moment his mother was still disgruntled he had married ahead of Dan, and was not concerned about his future employment. She went about finding a wife for Dan, before anymore traditions were broken. she started her search and it was for a picture bride. A Korean born wife, who would be an immigrant like herself, Nak Joon and Dan.
Between 1912 and 1924, there were 950 Korean picture brides who entered the country, usually through Honolulu. Marriage brokers or go-betweens handled the transaction. It was a business with them. Their fees were 500 dollars for the bride money and another like sum for the brokers or go-between. The Korea Maru was the last ship to bring picture brides from the Orient. Dan’s picture bride was on the ship. She was Phyllis Bok Dung Chu, born September 1906, in Kyongsang-namdo. Her home was Tongnai, near Pusan. Tongnai looked a Japanese-ruled settlement. Neglected. The houses were small, with thatched roofs turned brown, matching the clay walls, the streets only footpaths and treeless, with no flowers to give color to the drabness. Yet Phyllis was to speak of leaving Tongnai with sadness. She said the town was her childhood haven. Her father died when she was six, leaving mother and child without support. Her mother asked for help from her husband’s brother, a landowner in the district. He was wealthy and purse-proud. When mother and child arrived, they were not greeted and shown a hut some distant away on the land. It was winter. The hut was bare and cold. The ancient stove had not been fired for sometime and took time to heat. Her mother was capable of meeting any emergency. There was no door on the hinges; she took one of her huge comforters and draped it to keep out the cold. The stove that took up one wall space heated the single room, at the same time boiled water for the rice and to fill a wash basin to clean themselves of travel stains. Phyllis recounted that day as if it happened last week. Her mother was expected to help in the uncle’s house. Otherwise, she and her child were no part of the family. Her mother did not take life’s blows passively. She learned where the church was nearby and attended, meeting other Koreans. Her mother was a lively person and was welcomed and soon courted by an older man who was a widower. He had a home in Tongnai and worked in Pusan. Before the year had gone by, her mother married and Phyllis had a home with a caring and kind father. When she was 17, the father died. Her mother contributed to the family income after she married so she was not entirely destitute by his death. However, selling silk goods to Koreans living on the offshore islands was not enough to keep mother and daughter. The church they attended was Episcopal and the members obeyed the Bible teaching to do good works. One of the good works was finding brides for the men in the Hawaiian Islands. Phyllis decided she would be one of the picture brides and talked it over with her mother. Or rather, she told her mother what she planned to do. Her mother did not try to dissuade her. Instead, studied the photograph of the young man that had been sent and said, “If the picture is a true one” — often pictures were substituted by both women and men — “he will make a good husband.” Phyllis’s thought was “How handsome Dan looks.”