The wedding picture was taken in 1924. The camera captured the bride and groom forever young. Dan is handsome. And all brides are beautiful: Phyllis, the picture bride, is beautiful. She is doll-like, and wears an American style white bridal gown, ankle-length, a veil from the headpiece falls to the waistline. She wears white gloves and carries a bouquet, a watch is on her left wrist. Her feet are in white slippers with single straps. Dan is in a single-breasted dark suit, white bud in the lapel, and white shirt and black bow tie. His shoes are black oxfords. In his right hand he holds white gloves. The two face the camera, their expression timeless — it will always be their wedding day.

So I visualized them. Then Phyllis and Dan came to Los Angeles in 1929 and I met the picture bride. Only she was no longer the picture bride. Nor was she doll-like. She had taken on the shape of housewife and mother and borne a son, now three years old, called Donald. Dan said they had come to stay, it was not a visit. Dan’s brother, John, brought his family two years before in 1927, and found living conditions precarious in Los Angeles. Minnie told how she worked once in a laundry for 10 cents an hour and was promoted to 15 cents ironing men’s shirts. Had Dan hoped to follow John’s lifestyle which was running vegetable stands? And Jacob (JK) who had made a sudden trip to Korea in 1925 and stayed there for six months, returned to Honolulu and "visited" his parents and siblings until 1927. That year John decided to try his fortune in the mainland and Jacob returned with him. Jacob made an announcement on arriving here that he was married; had married a Korean woman before he left for the Korean trip. It seemed the cousins did sudden and surprising things. Before Dan settled his family into a home, his sisters Rose and Mary came to find work. They did better than their brothers; Rose went into sewing for the garment industry and Mary worked for May Company.
My father suggested I spend time with Phyllis, giving her English lessons. It wasn’t a promising idea. I spoke no Korean and she spoke little English. The lessons started and Phyllis gave up first, with us parting friends. My father said Phyllis was "sick like your mama." Anyway, the English lessons did not help her, and luckily Dan opened a vegetable stand and Phyllis helped him selling. Also, Phyllis met picture brides from an earlier generation here, who took her under their wings and offered a social life. While she was here, Phyllis had another baby who was born with allergies and her hands were full caring for him. Dan, then, decided to return to Honolulu. It wasn’t until 1946 I was to see Phyllis again. She was a different person. She told me after she left Los Angeles, she took the babies to Korea and stayed with her mother for two years. She admitted she had come to Los Angeles because of a "breakdown" and had not been helped by the change.
The two years in Korea had worked and without the use of modern-day drugs. She came back to Honolulu and became active. She and the picture brides from the Korea Maru met to form a club which Phyllis pronounced in Korean “kye” or money association. The group was made up of 10 select picture brides. (I recall only the names of Duk Bong Kim, Phyllis’s closest friend, Naomi Low and Mrs. Tough Chin Ho.) They met at the Diamond Head Road house and slept overnight, so it was also a "pajama party," living dormitory fashion. Each member put in 200 dollars a month, and every month a member, in turn, withdrew 2000 dollars to use in her own way or invest in a plan. With Phyllis it was boardinghouses for low income workers. It was hard work she chose to do, having to do with "elbow grease". I should know; once a week I helped when she stripped 20 beds of sheets, and the rooms of the etceteras and tossed them into the washing machine, laundered and hung them out on the lines to dry. Sometime and somewhere in Korea, she must have decided what she would do when she returned to Honolulu and Dan. Whatever it was, she made up her mind to beat the system in Honolulu that had brought her low. And here she was with 10 friends, making money work, and letting down their hair to each other, and having fun, all at the same time. Doing things in quasi-American style, perhaps, but remaining Korean at heart. They remained themselves — strong-willed Korean ladies!

Phyllis in 1940 gave Dan’s parents a holiday to Los Angeles and have a visit with their children, and to meet the brother, Nak Chung, whom Nak Joon had not seen since 1907. How generous and kind, the old people said, happily off to California, with no "taun" in their pockets. In no time the children they visited sent them on to the next brother or sister. Finally, there were no more children to visit and the parents, alarmed, went to daughter Rose. Rose knew her siblings well, and bought the couple a house to live in. Of the children, Rose was the quietest and most unobtrusive but her eyes took in everything. She told her parents this was their home now, and Jimmy, the youngest son, was asked to live with them, just to keep an eye open for their welfare. The visit, after all, turned out one long holiday for the old people. They were fortunate. Their deaths were sad, however. Nak Joon in 1956 took ill, he was 87 years old, and the hospital sent him home after examination, saying, "Hospitals are to cure people, not for dying in." One day Nak Joon, when his wife was out and Jimmy had gone on an errand, took the bottles of chemicals under the sink and made himself a cocktail and drank it. Jimmy came home too late to stop his father and Nak Joon died on the way to the emergency room. Simoon died in 1966, at 91, after falling and breaking her hip and caught pneumonia during the convalescence. Their deaths are noted here to remind that all good things come to an end.

No sooner had Phyllis sent the parents off, then Dan asked Jacob to come to Honolulu: There were plans afoot for Korean independence public relations work he might fit into. JK brought his daughter, 11-year-old Patricia, with him. The mother had gone off for greener pastures and did not want to be encumbered with a daughter who was no longer a baby or cute. So the two appeared and the less said of their arrival the happier this story will end. Phyllis pondered the pros and cons of the project and decided for the pros. It turned out to be the right move for her and the picture brides to get behind and work for. The Washington United Korean Committee office was conceived and JK selected to the executive chair. World War II was fought and won but Korea was not free or independent. It was carved in half and the American Military Government set up which hired overseas Koreans to "help" in the transition period. JK was one of the workers, and killed in an army transport plane in 1947. There went the family dream about Korea and Jacob. Also Phyllis’ dream which she and the picture brides hoped would bring freedom to their homeland and some recognition of their financial efforts.
But life is an uncertain business. Dan died in 1950 and Phyllis was 45, and having to start her life anew. Dan died bankrupt, the longshoremen’s strike destroyed the local economy, no shipping got to Hawaii, and Dan had just bought into a large service station. Without gasoline to sell, he could not make payments on the lease. He died only weeks before the Korean War broke out. How Phyllis got through the bankruptcy and another start again is the story of the loyalty of the picture brides and a few oldtime Koreans who were staunch friends of Dan’s. In 1953, my brother Jack enroute to Fort Benning, stopped to see Phyllis. He saw her in her new set-up, the start of an apartment house complex that would grow into 20 units, also built for low income persons. It was on King Street near downtown Honolulu, close to the commercial center where workers earned their wages. Arthur, the youngest son, came to Los Angeles to attend City College. It was early 1960. Phyllis followed after a year to make a home for him, he wasn’t happy about City College. Also, Duk Bong Kim with her husband Tay Baek Kim moved permanently here. Their two sons attended USC. Phyllis remained long enough to marry briefly and went back to Honolulu. Once more the picture brides got together, this time to study to become American citizens. Phyllis was naturalized. She told about her examiner who said not to be nervous, taking the test; it concerned herself. His question. What was the 19th Amendment about?" Phyllis was proud of herself, she said, she put 2 and 2 together, and came up with Women’s Suffrage! (Herself=woman). It’s plain, you can’t keep a Korean lady down!

Once Phyllis saw her sons settled, that is married and in their chosen career or work, she relaxed and looked around to do something for herself. It was 1970 and Koreans in the Islands had money to travel and were flying everywhere. Phyllis, again with the picture brides in mind — that is, those who remained in the Islands — suggested to them they join the travelers and see the world. She had contacted charter flight companies and they liked her promoting Koreans to travel to Europe as well as Asia, where they had been going. One of the first trips she found passengers for was Europe that included Moscow. John and Minnie went on this trip. (Of course, Phyllis went free of charge on these excursions.) The most ambitious group she got together, though, were the picture brides visiting Korea and their hometowns. When Mrs. Chung Hee Park, the president’s wife, heard of their plan to visit, she invited them to the Blue House where she greeted them with a reception, and televised them to the nation. Then she sent them off with an escort to ensure their safety and arrival. This was Phyllis’s greatest moment, she said, as it was for the picture brides. When she returned, she became a senior citizen member and used the facilities for extra-curricular activities. Again the picture brides were with her, taking dancing classes and modeling fashion shows. It was all exciting to Phyllis, and in her pictures of this period she looked younger than ever before. She vibrated excitement, I thought. It was during this time she met Mr. Cha, a retired chemist from Chemex, the company that created fiberboards from pineapple plant fibers. These fiberboards were easily, cheaply and quickly made and were shipped over the world to house wartime personnel. Mr. Cha was very proud of his part in the production that helped the war effort. He had come from Korea as a student, attended West Virginia University and took his first position with the Hawaiian company. He married and had a daughter who became a teacher. His wife died sometime before. He lived in Kaimuki, which is a few hundred feet in the hills and has a wonderful ocean breeze flowing through. I mention this location because that was one reason Phyllis began dating him, to spend in his Kaimuki home. From dating, they became partners-in-living. Phyllis said she warned him she would not marry again after her brief marriage in the 1960s. He agreed to the conditions, and they lived together like this until he died in the early 1980s from shingles. Her life was lonely after his death, but she kept lively with trips to Las Vegas and sharing in her children’s marriages and their children. She slowed down and until her death in 1997, at 91 years, she lived in the apartment units she had built. Donald died, and only Basil and Arthur were her "family"; the picture brides had passed on before her. She had a wonderful life. She didn’t come to America for the stereotype dream immigrants were said to arrive with. Hers was simple, to be a picture bride entailing wifehood, motherhood, and economic security for old age. These she accomplished, one of the last Korean picture brides.