Chapter 18: On a Slow Boat to America

잘자거라  나의조국  강산아

창면저편에  사라지도다

밤바람  한숨지며  파도에포여

갈매기  구슲은  부짖음이여

바다넘어  저가는  해를 따라

내방랑에  길이  있나니

태양아  고국아  잠시떠나자

잘자거라  그리운  나의강산아

Sleep well, dear mountains and rivers of my motherland,

I see you fading sway from my cabin port,

I hear evening storms whistling and waves groaning, and

Sea gulls shrieking their melancholy.

My wanderer's journey follows the setting sun over the horizon,

I must leave you for now, my beloved sun and fatherland,

Sleep in peace, my dear mountains and rivers

Until I return to you some day.

A ballad popular among Student Volunteers Army members from Hamhung in1950

The Ship Dong-hae and Rhee Syngman

My ship, Dong-hae, meaning the East Sea, had her own story to tell. Rhee Syngman’s Austrian wife, Francisca Donner, owned her. Some historians believe that it was she who ran South Korea. She was particularly keen on espionage, selecting Korean female agents herself. She picked the best looking girls from Korean colleges and entertainment groups. Due to her years of poverty in America and Austria, Francisca was insanely keen on getting rich and missed no chance to amass a fortune in South Korea.

Figure donghae.gif: Modern Korea's first ocean-going cargo-passenger ship, Donghae-ho, The East Sea, originally owned by Francisca, Rhee Syngman's Austrian wife, in 1955. 

In the 1930s, Rhee supported himself by teaching Sunday school classes in America and his financial problems worsened by day. He turned to the Soviets for help, a strange thing to do for a devout anti-Communist Christian he claimed to be. On his tip to Moscow, Rhee met his future wife, Francisca Donner. Rhee was refused entry to the Soviet Union, and bitterly disappointed, he returned to Hawaii. Rhee Syngman married Francisca on October 8, 1934 in New York City. He supported his family using contributions from other Koreans in the US on the pretense of doing Korean independence works. In 1943, the Korean National Association in the US openly accused Rhee of taking money earmarked for independence activities for his personal use. According to a Princeton University document, Rhee and his wife eked out a living at 1766 Hobart Street, NW, Washington, DC., in 1940. Rhee would not allow his wife to get a job and help out with their unpaid bills.

Upon becoming the dictator of South Korea in 1948,  Rhee began to take possession of the properties that belonged to his political enemies. His "bahn-gong-bup", the Anti-Communist Law, made it legal to take over properties owned by “communists”, and in Rhee’s mind, anyone opposed to him was a communist. Rumors had it that the illicit fortunes amassed by the Marcos of the Philippines paled in comparison to those of Rhee Syngman and his Austrian wife.  The Marcos stole money, but the Rhees killed people for their money.

On April 28, 1960, a DC-4 belonging to the Civil Air Transport, CAT was operated by the US CIA, spirited Rhee out of Korea barely one step ahead of a lynch mob. Kim Yong Kap, Rhee's Deputy Minister of Finance, revealed that Rhee took $20 million of the government fund. Rhee, his wife and an adopted son lived at 2033 Makiki St., Honolulu, Hawaii. Rhee died on July 19, 1965 at the age of 90 of a stroke. His 65-year-old wife Francisca and an adopted son, Rhee In Soo, were at his bedside. A US Air Force plane carried his body to Seoul for a family funeral. Park Jung Hee, who had plotted to topple Rhee, planned a state funeral, but decided against it in face of mounting opposition. Rhee's body was interned at Dougjak-dong National Cemetery near Seoul. Francisca Rhee returned to her native country and lived out her tragic life with a relative, Miss B Donner, at Laurenzgasse 4/6, 1050 Vienna, Austria.

Donghae’s Korean captain had served years in the Japanese Merchant Marine, and most of his all-Korean crewmembers had also served in the Japanese Navy and were no greenhorns on the open seas. Donghae was about the smallest ocean-going ship there was and had to hug the costal lines of Korea, Japan, the Aleutians, Alaska and finally the US. The ship used to be an American freighter and saw some action during World War II in the Pacific. It is likely that an American businessman, who had business plans for Korea, donated the ship to  Rhee. Naturally, the ship was registered under Francisca and was given the monopoly on ferrying Korea-US trade goods.

Even though Donghae was designed and built to carry freights only, Francisca had part of the crew quarters converted into passenger cabins. There were six cabins and each cabin had two tiny bunk beds, stacked one on top of the other. There was hardly any room to sit around or store luggage in a cabin. The passengers shared toilets and shower facilities with the crew. For this reason, no female passengers were taken in. We had our meals with the captain and his officers in the officers’ mess hall, and the lowly deckhands, mechanics and chefs ate elsewhere.

My cabin-mate was a South Korean of my age, called Song Suk, whose father was an army general. Song was headed to Chicago on a scholarship. Rhee Syngman had many satanic shortcomings, such as killing people and taking dead people’s properties, but he was keen on educating the elite of Korea. College students were off limit to army recruiters. As long as one retained his active student status, he was safe from getting drafted into the dreaded army. Colleges sprang up all over South Korea and there was no shortage of college students. The rich and powerful sent their military age sons to America, far away from the army draft enforcers. Getting educated in America to build up Korea was a patriotic thing to do, if you had the money and the right connections.

First Port Call, Japan

After a tearful parting with my brother, he was the only one seeing me off, I boarded the ship and met the crew and my fellow passengers. On the back of my mind was the evacuation ship that got stuck in mud at Hungnam in 1950, and I feared that something like that might happen to Donghae, that might cancel my trip to America. It seemed that no one else aboard was in any hurry to leave Pusan, and they took their time loading cargos and supplies. They were joking and mixing with the dockside prostitutes, while I fretted worried to death about not making it to the open sea.

After a long while, that seemed like an eon to me, the captain gave the order to start up the engines and shove off the dock, and to my immense relief, the ship began to move away, far away from Korea. I kept on waving to my brother who stood alone where I left him, watching his only brother leaving him for a distant land. After some 40 minutes of steaming, I could see the land of Korea over the horizon and my brother was gone. I was sad to leave him behind, but I was happy to leave Korea, my motherland that had caused me so much pain and tragedy since my birth.

Although I attended a Japanese school for five years and lived under Japanese rule for ten years, I had not set foot on the land of the Rising Sun, until Donghae made a stop at a small Japanese port. South Korea in those days had little to offer to the American consumers and Rhee Syngman, an ardent Japan-hater, had to swallow his pride and accept Japanese cargos on his ship. Donghae needed two days to load her Japanese cargo bound to America, and the good captain allowed us to land and mix with the Japanese.

I had met several Japanese in Korea, but being in a Japanese town amongst so many Japanese gave me creeps. The first impression I got was the huge crowd of Japanese men, women and kids, an anthill of so many little persons crowded into tiny narrow streets. The second impression was the noise coming from ge-da, the wooden footwear worn by every Japanese, and bba-chin-go, the Japanese slot machines. It seemed that every inhabitant of the port city was out in the streets, in a great hurry to go somewhere and making so much noise with their wooden shoes hitting the stone pavements.

Another notable impression I remember today was the neon signs that lit up the sky. It reminded me of the port city of Hungnam in flames from exploding naval shells and bombs dropped by US planes on Christmas Eve of 1950, my last day in North Korea. Seoul in 1955 was a dark city and had few neon signs. Even in America, few cities had so many neon signs, with the exception of Las Vegas.

The captain told us to stay together for our safety, but once on the Japanese soil, we had different points of interest and split up in spite of the captain’s stern instructions. Some kids wanted to go shopping, some wanted to see Japanese movies, which were forbidden in Korea, some wanted to try their luck on slot machines and so on. My cabin-mate and I agreed to stick together. He carried about one thousands dollars in his deep pocket and was keen on spending it on Japanese goods and services. He said his father would send him money every month and that the money he had was for emergency use, and he figured he had some emergencies there and then.

He said that his parents were rather strict and he was not allowed to commit carnal sins in Korea, but now that he was a free man, he wanted to break his cherry with Japanese geishas in a big way. Since I had promised him that I would stick by him, I went along and found a Japanese house of ill repute, or rather it found us. Japanese pimps roamed the docks looking for horny sailors and they found us looking horny. A middle age Japanese woman in kimono approached us and grabbed my left hand, bowing repeatedly and muttering some gibberish in Japanese. I pushed her away and gestured to her that she should deal with my friend, which she did. My friend indicated to her his desire to bed down some Japanese ladies, which made her happy and her ship-worn face broke out in all smiles, and her  bows became more frequent, her head dipping down lower. I figured she got paid on dumb Johnnies she hooked for her girls.

The woman led us to a Japanese house, where an elderly woman knelt in front of us and began bowing and repeating “welcome”. My friend was impatient and wanted to know how much. That switched the woman, the madam of the house, into a serious business negotiation mode. Seeing that we were Koreans, she loftily proclaimed that she did not accept Korean currency, upon which my friend proudly showed her his wad of American C notes. She assured us that American greenbacks were very welcome.

My friend knew that my financial resources were somewhat limited and generously offered to pay for me, which offer I turned down. The old woman took my friend to a back room and returned to work on me. She figured correctly that I was short of cash and suggested a barter deal: a Japanese comfort woman for my wristwatch. For one thing, I was the least interested in bedding down a Japanese woman and for another; the watch was a gift from Rev. Lee, the Korean Albert Schweitzer, my mentor. I told her that I would wait for my friend outside and walked out. I could feel her contemptuous sneer at yet another “senjin”, the Japanese equivalent of  “nigger” for Koreans, and I was sure that she sensed that I was one of those Koreans who deeply hated Japanese.

I did not have to wait long for my friend. Soon after I left the house, he walked out dazed and wearing a silly smile on his face. It was obvious that the Japanese took care of him and that he was in heavens with satisfaction. He offered to buy me a gift, anything I wanted, he said. Well, there was something I wanted but could not afford, a Japanese-English dictionary. I had several Korean-English dictionaries but they were full of typos, the reason why the rich kids in Korea used Japanese-English dictionaries, that were several times more expensive. My friend bought me a dictionary in appreciation of my help in getting him laid for the first time in his life. I still have that dictionary and actually use it now and then. My friend was exhausted by his pleasure trip and wanted to go back to our cabin and rest. I was glad to leave the land of Japan and stayed on board for the rest of our sojourn at the port. I learned later that he contracted gonorrhea from his Japanese geisha and had to suffer from it for several years, a just punishment for his sins of copulating with a Japanese woman, yikes!.

While my roommate rested and dreamed of his Japanese girl, I stayed on the deck and worked on my diary. It dawned on me that this was my second journey away from home. I left my home in North Korea on a ship in December 1950 and now I was leaving Korea for a foreign country. Going from Hamhung to Seoul was one thing, but going from Pusan to Portland, Oregon, was several orders of magnitude more serious.

Crossing the Pacific

At last the ship was loaded and we left the Japanese waters, entering the rough waters of the vast Pacific Ocean. Pacific means ‘calm’, but it was nothing but calm. Wave after wave of huge dimensions battered out little ship, causing her to shake and roll in all directions. I could not sleep for days and kept on vomiting into the Pacific Ocean. The suffocating diesel oil fume engulfed our ship and there was no escaping from it. As the ship rolled and pitched, her land-based passengers were tossed around like so many rag dolls.

The ship had no medical staff or any medicine for us, and we were on own to make it through or drop dead. The ship barely moved for days in a row and after some 10 days on the rough seas, the worst possible disaster struck the ship, her engines broke down. Without the engines, the ship was helpless and the rolling and pitching intensified, and the ship lost electricity and heating. The kitchen lost power and there were no meals, not that I could eat or hold down anything.

Figure pacific.gif: My journey to America (approximate) in 1955 on Donghae-ho.

The captain sent out SOS signals non-stop, but no help was in sight. After two days of this, we began to worry about our fate in all seriousness. We could see that our captain was desperate; he screamed at us and cursed his crewmembers. One of the passengers bought a pair of Japanese ge-da as a souvenir and went on deck wearing them. The captain went berserk and ordered the startled kid to take off the damned thing right away or he would have him thrown aboard. I was to learn later that the Japanese seamen believed that wearing ge-da on a ship brought bad lucks to the ship, and so no Japanese sailor would hop around on ge-da aboard a ship, a long-standing Japanese tradition inherited by my captain.

Strong gusts of freezing winds whipped our disabled ship non-stop and she was tossed around like a toy in a whirlpool. The poor old ship groaned and shrieked in pain. I was afraid that at any moment, she would spring a leak and sink like a stone, and we would all drown in the icy waters of the Pacific. For the umpteenth time, I faced death and went through the pre-death checklist: how long would it take me to die, would I feel much pain, would I go down like a man?; how would my brother take my death?  Superimposed on these unpleasant thoughts, a panorama of the happy moments of life played on my mind’s window, all while my body was aching from non-stop vomiting, of some clear body liquid, for I had not eaten for days.

Donghae photo courtesy of http://www.sogwipo.cheju.kr/t01/t01_02_02_05.asp Photo history of modern Korea.

The map is courtesy of http://lorenz.mur.csu.edu.au/cgi-bin/gis/Map Charles Stuart University map-maker.