By Ellen Thun
Copyright 2001

Editor? note This column by Korean American writer Ellen Thun is about her experience of growing up in Los Angeles before World War II. The story sheds light on a life of first-wave Korean immigrants in the early part of 1900s. Writer Thun was born in Riverside and went to grammar school in Riverside and high school and college in Los Angeles, and worked as a proofreader at the Times-Mirror Press, Los Angeles.

Mrs. Lim was not concerned with mainstream, USA. She narrowed her concern wanting to be with her husband Cheun Kee Lim. He left in 1903 to join Ahn Chang Ho in San Francisco, who advised his friends to come alone. Wives and children would burden them down so they would be unable to devote themselves studying American political, economic and scientific thought. Nor would they learn the English language quickly enough to pursue their goals, thus delaying their early return to their homeland.

However, he himself married and took his new bride to the new world. Their leader? action was in Mrs. Lim? mind as she made up hers. At the time her husband went away, she had not paid heed to his leaving without her. She was busy with daughter Marjorie, born in 1901, who was followed by the birth of their son before Mr. Lim decided to go to America alone. His reasoning being sound: his wife and children would be under his mother? roof and care. Where could they be safer?

When the baby was old enough to have smallpox inoculation, her mother-in-law, the boy? grandmother, refused permission for this Western preventive. The boy caught the disease and did not survive the illness. What she first considered eccentric in the old woman by the refusal, the death of her baby changed her thinking. She made up her mind: She would go to America. There certainly were no greater dangers there than the old woman? ignorance here.

Mrs. Lim went to work. She wove cotton cloth, sold it and earned the fare money. When she reached her husband, Ahn sent him and his family to Pachapa camp in Riverside, where Mr. Lim was to pick oranges with other Korean men. Mrs. Ahn already was there. About her, Marjorie said she was like a second mother to her, and Philip who was younger than she was like a brother. It was a good beginning. Only Mr. Lim was unlucky. He fell from the ladder until he learned to balance himself while picking the oranges that were meant to fall into the long sack that hung from his shoulders.

Mrs. Lim reminded Marjorie the Lims were "jinzza"(genuine) and prominent in their hometown and therefore were not laboring people. Marjorie told the other children her father was "chinsa" (scholar) and too grand to be picking fruit. She added another story during the interview about her experiences. (I interviewed her on the telephone in March 1976. It was a two-hour talk, much too hasty for an in-depth report. But as she said she was too busy and could only give me this phone-time, this material was obtained.)


The story related was of her grandmother, whom she did not remember, except the old lady was domineering and caused her mother distress. This account her mother repeated often to her when they came to California. Marjorie liked the incident described about the deaf-and-dumb servant who was hired to do simple chores in exchange for a place to sleep and what was described as a "servant? meal". The meal was a dish of millet, oat and other grains.

The deaf-mute let the mistress know immediately he did not like what was in the dish. First he showed her the dish with the mix, then used his fingers pointing out what he did want. Next he led her to the animal yard, pointed to the chickens, pigs, ducks, etc., and poured the contents of the dish into the feed trough. He looked at his mistress as if asking, did she understand? She understood, but he continued eating the servant? meal, except when she felt disposed to be generous and served him leftovers.

After telling the story, Marjorie said the grandmother wasn? ignorant, perhaps strong-minded. As for remembering Korean things, she recalled the children slept on the floor in one room and were happy.


From Pachapa camp the Lims moved to Upland to manage their own labor camp. It was about 1912. John, Jason and Peter were born at Pachapa, sisters Hazel and Helen in Upland, with the youngest boy Richard. Marjorie was designated caretaker of the children. She said one time Philip Ahn complained he could not satisfy his mother, helping care for his brothers and sisters. She told him she had never been able to please her mother try as she might: "That? how mothers are," she assured Philip. She also attended school, helped in the kitchen, and was paid 25 cents a week.

The camp was financially a success. It was located in the Pomona-Claremont-Upland area that had agricultural work the year round, including oranges, walnuts, and field work. Their camp served about 40 workers.

At the end of a season, the workers were generous with the children, giving them money gifts that their mother banked, and over the years the sum added up. They were not told how much had been given them. Only that when the Lims joined in the rice growing project with other Korean National Association members, their money was invested and lost when the rice crop was ruined by an early September rain. Unlike herself, Mrs. Lim moved the family into Upland and into a fine house on Washington Street, a white neighborhood. Marjorie liked the change, but Hazel telling about her feelings at the time said she lost the freedom she enjoyed in the countryside. In town her mother kept track of the children, what they did, where they went when they were not in school. Also, she said the reason the move came about was when Marjorie began to "bloom" and the workers ogled her openly as she served meals in the dining room. After that her mother kept Marjorie in the kitchen, even having her eat meals there with her. The joys of a mother with pretty daughters! How do they manage? Well, Mrs. Lim did very well after the rice venture ended disastrously, and the one asset Mr. Lim had was the 7-passenger Chandler sedan he bought to move the family to Willows. The automobile again served them, it took them from the northern part of California down to Los Angeles, eventually.

The parents worked their way south. First in Hayward where they set up a small labor camp. It was here that one of the boys had tonsilitis and the doctor in town suggested, for one price, he would operate on the three boys. And he would come out to the camp so the boys would not be disturbed after the removal. John and Peter had no difficulty from the removal, but Jason began to bleed and hemorrhaged. The bleeding could not be stopped and Jason died. This was the second son Mrs. Lim lost. She was to lose another son, her oldest, but not because of physical reasons. John was a brilliant student in high school, editor of the school paper, class president at graduation. And he wanted to be a doctor. The Lims had come to Los Angeles and owned a papa-mama store and paying for their son? medical training was a certainty.

The summer following graduation John was free to relax and have a summertime of fun with his friends. He met a young girl he introduced to his parents, they were engaged to be married. Mrs. Lim usually made decisions for the children? welfare, this time it was Mr. Lim speaking authoritatively: No marriage, or commitment to one, before medical school, laying down the law, otherwise there would be no money for his education. John broke with the young girl and went to medical college and then settled in a small Pennsylvania town to practice in. The rift between his father was never fully healed. John married an American woman there, and had a thriving practice in an area that had been considered rural and grew into a thriving urban sprawl. He was honored in his senior years for his part in the development of the region and received an award from the state for his long community service. Hazel having to write a senior paper for her graduation at Wisconsin School of Journalism chose to use his hometown as her subject. She did an excellent piece of work. She graduated magna cum laude, a Phi Beta Kappa key, and other scholastic honors. Children of immigrants, both gracefully entered Mainstream, USA.


However, Marjorie was the first to be a Mainstream, USA winner among the Lims and she was born in Korea and was not eligible for citizenship until the mid 1960s. Also, she was not an academic person. But sailed ahead into the mainstream, never doubting her right to do so. When I called her for an interview she brushed me off with "I am very busy going out with American friends. I have a Cadillac now and on the go and never stay home."

Home for Marjorie was the Richard Neutra designed house overlooking Silver Lake, a city reservoir, but a choice real estate site. She lived alone, her husband Arthur Park having died and a daughter with Downs syndrome passed away at age 20. Only her son, a doctor in the San Francisco Bay Area, was living. She married Arthur Park, a designer for a major linoleum manufactuer whose logo was a household fixture. Their floor covering lay in kitchens over America, also bathrooms and playrooms. His mother was Hannah Park of Kyungcho, and missionaries like Horace Underwood and Henry Appenzeller visited her family who were Christians.

Hannah Park came to the United States with her son and saw him through art schools, to become the successful designer he was. Marjorie and Arthur met when she attended prestigious Juilliards in New York. She related how she begged her father for a piano when she was in school. After much pleading, he gave in and said she must promise to practice everyday. A piano was not a small furniture investment. If she failed, he would sell the piano. That she was accepted by Juilliards made her feel she kept her promise. She liked music but she preferred to be Mrs. Arthur Park. But Mr. Lim? investment in the piano was not lost. The piano was used by the younger Lims, who added the saxophone to their musical repertoire, and provided the "orchestra" for Korean programs, especially at parties and dances.

Marjorie was given a big wedding by her parents, and the newly weds moved away. In mid-1930 Marjorie came home for visit, bringing her two children. Arthur remained at work. Then he and his mother came to Los Angeles. He had taken the art directorship of Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery. He and his crew of artists turned Forest Lawn into a Los Angeles showpiece: a museum of old masterpieces in replica. One of the artists who worked with him was Chooh Ilyup, a Korean known for his copying Old Masters. He was married to an American named Patricia Downing, one of the "lost generations" of Americans in Paris after World War I. When World War II erupted, she came home and married Chooh. The two were in Marjorie? circle of American friends where seances were held, table-rapping parties were engaged in (a few of the guests were Caltech scientists too), all in search of the New Age. What Marjorie made of these meetings she did not say. She was an imperturable soul and probably dismissed the shows, but not the guests who impressed her by their salaries. Rumor was Arthur Park was paid the princely sum of $50,000 a year! Korean society was in awe of Marjorie. Her mother was one of the oldtime leaders, dating back to the Pachapa camp era. But Marjorie led a group referred to as the Korean coalition and had their pictures snapped together for some Korean occasion that made the Los Angeles papers. It was about this time that Marjorie and Mrs. Ahn (Philip? mother) showed up in mink stoles sure symbols of Mainstream, USA. Also, this same group invited California governor-candidate Ronald Reagan and his wife to speak at a meeting. They came, spoke and Ronald Reagan became the next governor.


What interested me about Marjorie was that she never worked like the rest of the Koreans. Yes, she worked in the sense of cooperating with her parents and her siblings. But she was never in need, and the rest of us were always in need lacking decent housing, meals at times, shoes or clothing so attendance at school was difficult. Such things are considered basic to growing up or a rounded personality; not neurotic for instance, with obsessions, compulsive actions, and other minor maladjustments to living the good life with which Mainstream, USA beckoned alluringly. No, Marjorie had good parents and it was about them I started to write, then Marjorie? appearance among the notes sprung at me, and this is the story that got typed. Nothing spectacular to report. A good life, a happy life, a long life. Does a person want more?