Grandfather Cho Was a Kindly

Grandfather Cho was a kindly man, a highly intelligent and resourceful man. His face was friendly and his hands were weathered, reflecting years of hard work and effort. All his children, his grandchildren, his nieces and nephews and cousins respected him and loved him. Unlike some other Korean patriarchs of distinction and wealth, Grandfather Cho's family did not fear him because he was not a controlling or violent man. He had his values, his expectations and his rules, but he did not believe in using force or being cruel to make his point or to mete out punishment if a child or grandchild disobeyed. He was a peaceful man, a well-known man in Korea, a man who liked to gather his family around the fireplace on a cold winter's night and read stories aloud.

When Japan was "authorized" to take over Korea, in a treaty called the "Treaty of Portsmouth," it was a terrible time for native Korean people. The United States actually helped to allow Japan to put Korea under its ownership, which made Korea bitter towards America for many years. So Japan occupied Korea beginning around 1906; it was also called the "Japanese Imperial Period." Later, before and during the World War II period, the Japanese rounded up over five million Koreans to fight the war for Japan and to work at hard labor in Japan. Japan had placed so many of their own men in their army that they had a shortage of manpower to work in their factories. So they basically forced about 700,000 Korean men prisoners and stole them off to Japan. Many were beaten and given harsh treatment in terrible working conditions. Many died.

Some called it cultural genocide. The occupying Japanese changed Korean songs so the words became adorations to the Japanese Emperor instead of the Korean Emperor. Street signs were changed to Japanese names. Monuments and statues and churches were given Japanese names. Beautiful buildings like the Sungnyemun were changed by putting horns at the top to make it look like a Japanese Shinto place of worship. The Japanese demolished some famous Korean buildings that had cultural and spiritual significance, and built their own new government buildings right where the Korean building had stood.

My grandfather was smart, and although it broke his heart to do it, he pretended that he was Japanese during the occupation. He went along with the Japanese by changing his name to a Japanese name. Some say the Japanese demanded that Koreans change their names to Japanese names, but others refused and were beaten or killed. Grandfather even learned some Japanese phases so when Japanese authorities in Korea questioned him, he could answer them in their language, to make things easier. He did not want to be taken from his family. He did not want to be a slave to the Japanese after working hard his whole life in Korea to provide for his family and to give his children and grandchildren a better life than he had when he was growing up. He also gave money to certain Japanese authorities to help them build roads and buildings. Sometimes he used his wealth to pay off important Japanese occupiers of Korea so they would not seize him and take him to Japan. He worried that if he ever was taken as a slave or as any kind of worker to help the Japanese in Japan, that he would never come back. It hurt him deep inside to turn his back on his own ethnic Korean people. Many nights he cried because he felt like he was a traitor to his own people in Korea. But he was coy enough and shrewd enough to realize that if he did not renounce his real ethnicity, he could be taken away or treated very badly in Korea, and that would not help his family or his country either.

When World War II ended and the Americans liberated Korea, things for my Grandfather Cho were better for a time, but then the next war came along and the communists from North Korea and China tried to take over the whole country. The Japanese at the end of WWII had raided Korea of much of its resources and that left many Korean people without cattle to raise for food, and without rice and other provisions. Things were bad, but my Grandfather was a resourceful man and he survived. He went along with the communists rather than fight them. People who did not cooperate with the communists were killed, or put into forced labor, or taken prisoner. In fact Grandfather Cho let the communists take over his land, so he would be cooperating with them and would not be harmed. He did not want his wife to be hurt or to be raped or harmed in any way so he was smart enough to pretend to agree with the communist philosophy in order to survive and to help his family survive.