FLASH-LIGHTS OF FREEDOM
"SELF-DETERMINATION!" That phrase has set the whole world on fire!
"Independence!" That word somehow has awakened the Oriental world;
awakened that mass of humanity as it has never been awakened before.
Korea perhaps has thrilled to this awakening as no other section of the
Orient or the Near and Far East. India's millions are restless; the
Filipino is hungry for Independence although he is loyal to the United
States; but Korea has the matter set in its heart like adamant. This
determination will never be broken; Korea will never be conquered by
Japan!
This dream of complete and full independence is buried in the souls of
the children, as well as in the souls of the brave women, and of the old
men of Korea.
"It is one of the most thrilling things I have ever seen in the Orient!"
said a man on the Editorial staff of _Millard's Weekly_. "It is the most
significant outcome of the war; Korea's passion for independence, and
the Student Movement in China!"
I said to a business man of California who had traveled all over the
Orient and who had been sent as part of the Commission that prepared the
way for the abandonment of the Picture Bride custom, "What is the most
significant thing you have seen in the Orient?"
"The determination of the Koreans for Self-determination!" was his quick
reply.
"Will they get it?"
"It is inevitable in time!" he responded, and then he added: "Why the
little rascals; the children, I mean; paint the Korean flags on their
brown bellies, because the Japanese gendarmes will not allow them to
display the Korean flag in public!" and he laughed aloud at the memory.
"Have you seen Korean kiddies with flags painted on their stomachs?"
"Dozens of them. They like to show them to Americans," he said.
A week later I was walking with a Korean missionary and asked him if
what the business man from California had told me about the children was
true and he said, "Wait until we find a group of them."
We waited for only a few minutes when we ran into a crowd coming home
from school. A friendly smile and a low-voiced "Mansei" got attention.
Then we pointed to our own stomachs.
In a flash they caught on to what we wanted and, looking around
cautiously, each little rascal untied his robe and there, sure enough
was the flag of his country painted on his stomach.
"That is one of the most thrilling sights I have seen in the Orient!" I
said with tears in my eyes. "If the children of the land feel that way,
Korea will never be conquered!"
"The American understands! The American understands!" one of the little
bright-eyed boys said to the missionary in Korean.
* * * * *
A missionary was teaching a class of Koreans about Heaven.
A little hand shot up.
The missionary nodded that the child could speak.
"Will there be any Japs in Heaven?"
This was a baffling question; for diplomatic destinies were at stake.
But missionaries are usually honest, so she said, "Yes, if they are good
Japs!"
"Then I don't want to go!" said the little eight-year-old Korean with
emphasis.
Another teacher was telling a class in Geography to draw a map of the
Orient.
One Korean child said, "Do we have to put in that little group of
islands east of the coast of China?"
I met one Korean whom I had known in America. He was educated in the
American universities. He was in every sense of the word a gentleman and
an intellectual.
He told me that the older children of his family had taught the
nine-months-old baby to raise its hands in the air above its head
whenever the word "Mansei" was spoken.
I got an electrical shock of patriotism the day I saw that tiny child
lift its little arms above its head when that sacred word was spoken. It
was like a benediction of freedom!
"This posture of the child is more significant," said Mr. ----, "when
you know that the most cruel method of torture that the Japanese use is
that of stretching a man, woman or child up by the thumbs to the ceiling
with his toes just touching the floor."
In that same posture of torture Koreans rise to their toes when they
give their national cry of "Mansei" for all the world like an American
student giving his college yell.
"It means life and death to give that cry as you know," said this
intelligent Korean.
"Then what will your children do when they grow a bit older and go out
on the streets and yell this cry?" I asked this intelligent father.
"Be killed, no doubt, by some ignorant, ruthless Japanese gendarme!" he
said with finality.
"Then you should not allow them to teach its tiny lips that word!" I
said.
"I would rather my child were dead than to have it forget that cry!"
In this same family one Sunday afternoon a two-year-old child was
sleeping on a mat. The father and mother were reading some American
papers sent them by their old college friends in the United States.
Suddenly that little two-year-old sat straight up in its mat bed, lifted
its arms in the air and shouted "Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!" three times
and then dropped back to sleep as if nothing had happened.
"How did you feel?" I asked my Korean friend.
"It made me cry. I said to my wife 'As long as Korea has babies with
that in their little souls before they are two years of age, Korea will
never be assimilated by Japan!'"
The children of Korea look up at the ceiling when a Japanese teacher
enters a room. They are compelled to have Japanese teachers; even in the
mission schools. The children refuse to do anything for a Japanese
teacher.
One day a Japanese teacher thought that he would break that mood by
telling a funny story. He told it with skill.
But not a child laughed, although one of them said to her father that
night, "It was hard not to laugh for it was a very funny story!"
"Who tells you to do these things; you students? Who teaches you to
treat your Japanese teachers in that manner?" my Korean friend asked his
six-year-old child.
"Nobody tells us; we just do it ourselves! All the children hate the
Japanese!" he replied with the wisdom of a grown man.
All over Korea we saw Korean flags cut in walls, carved on stones, and
against excavations where the sand was impressionable to little fingers
and sticks. I took many photographs of these unconventional flags.
There is one instance where Korean children went on a strike just at
Commencement time. It meant that they would not get their diplomas but
that was just the reason they did it: to show their contempt for
Japanese diplomas.
Japanese authorities begged them to return to school.
Finally on Commencement Day they decided to return.
Something had happened.
It was a day of rejoicing among the Japanese so they invited a lot of
Japanese officers to the Commencement exercises.
The diplomas were given, to each boy; the Japanese teachers bowing, and
smiling in their peculiar way.
Then a thirteen-year-old Korean boy stepped to the front to make the
address of thanks. He made a beautiful speech of thanks. The Japanese
teachers were bowing with delight.
But the boy's speech was not finished. He paused toward the end, threw
back his blouse, lifted his proud head and said, "I have only this one
thing further to add."
He knew the seriousness of what he was about to do. He knew that it
would possibly mean death to him and his relatives.
"We want but one thing of you Japanese. You have given us education, and
you have given us these diplomas. The teachers have been good to us."
Then he reached in his blouse and pulled out a Korean flag. To have one
in one's possession is a crime in Korea in the judgment of the Japanese.
Waving it above his little head he cried, "Give us back our country! May
Korea live a thousand years! Mansei! Mansei! Mansei!"
At that signal every boy in that school jumped to his feet, whipped out
a Korean flag and frantically waved it in the air, weeping and yelling
in wild abandonment to the faith and courage of freedom in their
hearts!
Then they tore their diplomas up before the horrified and angered
Japanese teachers.
The result was a great student demonstration for freedom; which was
broken up by a force of Japanese gendarmes with drawn swords; but not
before the shooting of many boys and girls; and not before over four
hundred girls and boys were thrown into prison; some of them never to
emerge.
In the chapter on "Flash-lights of Faith" I told the story of the
seventy-five-year-old Korean who unflinchingly faced the Japanese
gendarmes and admitted that he knew the source from which the
Independence Movement had come; and knew the signers of the Declaration
personally; every one of them. This spirit burns in the heart of, not
only the babies of Korea but also in the souls of the white haired
stately patriarchs.
One old man who was dumb had his own way of expressing his patriotism
when "Mansei" was yelled. He always lifted his arms above his head. He
could not speak but he could yell with his arms!
This placed the Japanese authorities in the ridiculous position of
arresting a dumb man for yelling "Mansei!"
They tortured him for months. He was told that he would be released if
he would promise never to lift his hands above his head again.
He could not speak in answer to their demands. They waited.
Suddenly he caught their meaning. They were trying to frighten him from
giving vent to his only method of showing his patriotism.
His eyes flashed fire. He leapt to his feet with a contemptuous look at
his Japanese captors.
Then like flashing piston rods of steel his arms shot into the air above
his head three times, shouting in their mute patriotism, "Mansei!
Mansei! Mansei!"
Nor are the women void of this determination for freedom. It beats in
their brave hearts. It is a great flame in their souls as well as in the
hearts of the children and men of the peninsula.
"The soul's armor is never set well to heart unless a woman's hand has
braced it, and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of
manhood fails!" says Robert McKenna in "The Adventure of Life."
If that is a true definition of the strength of honor and the desire for
freedom then the armor of the Korean men is well set.
Sauci, a young Korean girl was under arrest. She was just a school girl
and very beautiful; with dark brown eyes; skin the color of a walnut;
and a form, bred of the grace of her much walking race. She had walked
the innumerable trails of her native land from babyhood and the rhythmic
swing of her supple body would have made any race, save that of her
conquerors, reverent with admiration.
Sauci was too much for her Japanese captors.
The Japanese guard struck her across the mouth with a whip.
"That doesn't hurt me. That is the grace of God. I don't hate you for
that blow!" said Sauci.
This angered the Jap and he struck her again. This stroke left a streak
of blood across her face.
Sauci said again, "That doesn't hurt me. That is the grace of God. I do
not hate you for striking me!"
The gendarme was furious. His anger was like that of a beast. He flew at
her blindly, and struck, struck, struck her woman's body until he was
exhausted.
A few days later when she was recovering from that brutal beating, a
high official of the Japanese gendarme force came to see her.
"Sauci," said he to her, recognizing her for an intelligent Korean girl,
"why do not the Koreans like us?"
She replied, "I had a dream last night here in the cell. That will tell
you why. In my dream a visitor came to our home and stayed for dinner.
Then instead of going home, the visitor stayed all night. Then the
visitor stayed two or three days. Then two or three months. Then two or
three years. We were surprised but were too polite to say anything.
"But finally the visitor got to telling us how to run our house."
"How?" asked the Japanese official, "Did the visitor tell you how to run
your house?"
"The visitor," replied Sauci, "told us that he didn't like our wall
paper. 'I think you had better get new paper!' he said. 'I do not like
your clothes and your schools. Wear clothes like mine, and have schools
like mine. I do not like your way of talking. Learn my language!'
"So finally we got tired of our visitor and said, 'Please go home! WE do
not like you! We do not want you! Please go home!'"
"But what has that to do with us?" said the Japanese official.
"Why in a few days the visitor in my dream went home!" said Sauci
simply. "And in a few years the Japanese will go back home also!" Such
is the courageous spirit of the Korean women.
* * * * *
One day an American friend of mine had gone to the Police Station with a
young Korean girl who had been summoned to appear on what was called a
"rearrest charge."
For the Japanese feel perfectly free to rearrest a person even after
that person has been proven innocent of a charge. A Korean may be
rearrested any time. He can never feel free.
This young, educated girl had been subjected to such indignities on her
previous arrest as I would not be able to describe in this book; so she
begged the woman friend to go with her.
As she entered the station a rough, ignorant Japanese officer snarled at
her as she passed, "Hello! Are you here again? I thought you were still
in prison!"
When he had gone from the room the Korean girl said to the American
woman, "That man beat me for ten hours one day the last time I was in
prison!"
"Why did he beat you?" asked the missionary.
"He was trying to compel me to give him the names of those girls who
belonged to the 'Woman's League'."
"And you would not tell him their names?"
"I would rather have been beaten to death than give him their names!"
"Thank God for your courage!" said the missionary, for she had seen the
girl's body when she had gotten out of prison; the burns of cigarette
stumps all over her beautiful skin; the scars, the whip marks; the
desecrations.
When I was told this story, amid the tears of the narrator, an American
college woman, she concluded with fire in her soul: "I have never seen
such courage on the part of women in all my life! Even mere girls and
children have it. Most of those who are arrested come out of our
American Missionary schools. There isn't a one of them who doesn't have
in her soul the spirit of Joan of Arc. If France had one Joan of Arc,
Korea has ten thousand!"
One young girl of whom I heard was kept in prison under constant torture
for six months. And a cruel imprisonment it is. I visited this prison
myself one winter day when I was in Korea. The thermometer was at zero;
the snow covered the ground, and there wasn't a fire in a single room in
that prison save where the Japanese guards were staying, and they were
huddled around a roaring coal stove.
And this is the show prison of the whole Peninsula. The Japanese take
visitors through it. But to an American even it is fit only for the
darkness of the Middle Ages.
In its limited quarters I saw ten and fifteen young girls, sweet faced,
cultured, educated school girls, huddled together in narrow rooms,
without a single chair, so closely packed that they were seated on the
floor like bees in a hive.
After six months of this awful life the girl of whom I speak was about
to be released.
The guard questioned her. "Now what are you going to do?"
Her answer came, quick as a shot, although she knew that it would send
her back to the hell from which she was about to be released.
"It is either liberty for Korea or we die!" she said.
And in three minutes, beaten, and dragged on the ground by the hair she
was thrown into the cell from which she had been taken; to rot and die
as far as the Japanese were concerned.
Another girl who had been kept in jail 135 days without even a charge
having been preferred against her was released. Her old mother came to
meet her and while in Seoul the mother attended an Independence Meeting
for women. The whole crowd of women then went to the Police Station and
shouted "Mansei"!
The mother was arrested and cruelly beaten in spite of her seventy-five
years of age.
When they were through beating her they said, "Now will you refrain from
yelling, 'Mansei!'"
"Never!" said this old woman.
Then they took a bar of iron and beat her over the legs until she
dropped.
"Now will you refrain from yelling 'Mansei?'"
The old woman was weak, but in a low, painful whisper said, "The next
time the women come to yell, if I am able to walk I will be with them!"
Another old woman was brought to prison for yelling "Mansei!" When they
asked her why she yelled "Mansei" she answered in a sentence that sums
up the entire spirit that is in the woman-heart of Korea.
"I have only one word in my head and that is 'Mansei!'"
I personally, one day in Korea, saw the Japanese gendarmes come for a
Korean girl. She was one of the most popular girls in the American
Methodist Missionary School.
It was the common custom for Japanese officials to come and take Korean
girls out of these schools, without warning, without warrants, without
words, and carry them off to prison.
Often the girl was not even permitted to say good-by to her American
teachers or to write a word to her parents.
"They are not even permitted to supply themselves with toilet articles,"
said the matron to me that day.
On this day, six big, brutal, ugly faced, animal-like Japanese officers
came for this beautiful girl.
The missionary women wept as the girl was dragged away. The girl waved
good-by.
It was a sight never to be forgotten; one of those Flash-lights of
Freedom, which burned its way into my soul with the hot acid of
indignation. This injustice and indecency in the treatment of a pure
girl made my blood run hot in my veins.
The look on her face I shall never forget. It was such a look as the
martyrs of old must have had when they died for their faith.
"Good-by! Good-by! Give my love to Mary and Elizabeth!" she cried to the
missionary woman standing by, helpless to assist her. These two names
were children of the missionary home; children whom this Korean girl had
learned to love as she lived in this American home.
"And the awful thing about it all, is," said the missionary to me as
they took the girl away, "that, as pure as that girl is, as pure as a
flower, she will be taken to a prison fifty miles from Seoul, kept there
under torture for six months, and she will not be allowed to see her
friends. They will not even allow us to visit her. She may be undressed
and spat upon by men who are lower than animals. She may suffer even
worse than that----"
Then the American missionary woman fainted.
That flash-light may be duplicated a hundred times in Korea.
"The woman of Korea suffers as much as the man. But thank God they do
not flinch!" said an American missionary.
The Japanese Gendarmes have forbidden the singing of several of the
great church hymns in mission churches because they insist that these
are hymns of Freedom; that they foment what the Japanese call "Dangerous
Ideas." Japanese spies have reported certain Seoul Methodist churches
for singing hymns that, to their way of thinking, were directed against
the Japanese Government. This particular illustration of the peculiar
workings of the Japanese mind might have been included in the chapter on
Flash-lights of Fun; were it not for the fact that the Japanese officers
themselves call these old church hymns "Hymns of Freedom."
The Japanese are just as much afraid of these "Dangerous Thoughts" in
Japan as they are in Korea. A good illustration of this fear is the fact
that a certain picture corporation of America called "The Liberty Film
Company" sent several films to Japan. The Government would not allow
these pictures to be shown until that word "Liberty" was cut from the
film.
Certain Japanese spies reported a Mission church in Seoul for singing
"Rock of Ages."
"But why may we not sing 'Rock of Ages'?" asked the American preacher in
charge.
"Because it starts off with 'Mansei!'" replied the officer.
He interpreted the thought of "Rock of Ages" to be a direct imputation
that the Japanese Government was not able to take care of the Koreans
and that they were flying to some other protecting power.
"It would be funny if it were not so serious!" said a missionary to me
one day in Seoul.
Later they stopped the churches from singing "Nearer My God to Thee,"
because there seemed to be an implication in that, that those who sang
that hymn, were swearing allegiance to a higher power than that of
Japan.
"Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!" I said in disgust.
"Yes, ridiculous, but serious," replied the missionary, "when you have
to live with it year in and year out."
"Crown Him Lord of All," insisted the Japanese spies, when they
seriously reported a certain church for singing that old hymn was
"Dangerous Thought." It seemed to this ignorant spy that "Crowning Him"
was putting some other power before that of the Japanese Government.
"All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" has been put under the ban and when
a certain missionary woman was asked to sing at the Korean Y.M.C.A. and
announced that she was going to sing "Oh, Rest in the Lord" she was
advised not to sing it because it was considered by the gendarmes to be
"Dangerous Thought" and to suggest "Liberty," "Freedom" and such
dangerous words and ideas.
When one Protestant preacher prayed about "Casting Out Devils" he was
reported by Japanese spies, who insisted that he was talking about
Japanese in Korea and meant that these should be cast out of the land.
"'It is to laugh!' as the French say!" I responded to this story.
"No! It is to weep!" said the American missionary.
When Dr. Frank W. Schoefield spoke against Prostitution the Japanese
papers declared that he had made a virulent attack on the Government.
One Korean preacher who preached on a theme from Luke 4:18, which reads
"Setting the captives free," was arrested and kept in jail for four
days.
"It is very foolish to yell 'Mansei' when you know you will be killed,"
I said to a Korean preacher. I wanted to see how he would take that
suggestion.
"We Koreans would rather be under the ground than on top of it if we do
not get our liberty!" he said with a thrill in his quiet voice.
One day a Korean preacher was arrested for preaching on the theme, "Seek
ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto
you," because that was, without doubt, disloyal to Japan and meant
rebellion.
Another day a speaker in the Y.M.C.A. said, "Arise and let us build for
the new age!" He was asked to report to Police Headquarters just what he
meant by that kind of "Dangerous" talk about Freedom.