Top-level haenyeo led us, but it was the presence of grandmothers, who remembered the time before the Japanese arrived, and girls like Mi-ja and me, who’d lived our entire lives under Japanese rule, that reminded everyone of our purpose. This wasn’t just about the forty percent discount price that the Japanese were imposing on the haenyeo. It was about freedom and our Jeju independent ways. It was about the strength and courage of Jeju women.
Mi-ja’s eyes glittered in a way I’d never seen. She often felt alone, but now she was part of something much larger than she was. And Mother was right. Mi-ja’s presence did seem to make an impression on the women in our group, because several of them came up to walk by her side for a while so they could hear her shout, “Hurray for the independence of Korea!” I was excited too, but for very different reasons. This was the farthest I’d been from home. I had Mi-ja by my side. We held hands, while raising our other arms, fists clenched, to shout the slogans. We’d been growing closer—between all the things I’d taught her and all the imagination, stories, and joy she’d given me—but in this moment, we were one person.
By the time we reached Pyeongdae, thousands of women had come together. Mi-ja and I linked arms; Mother and Do-saeng walked shoulder to shoulder. We entered the district office’s compound. The five organizers climbed the steps of the main building and began addressing the crowd. The speeches were more or less the same as the ones they’d made earlier, but they seemed to generate more energy with so many people listening and reacting, with shouts echoing what had just been said.
“End colonization!” Kang Gu-ja called out.
“Freedom for Jeju!” Kang Gu-sun roared.
But no one could top my mother’s voice. “Independence for Korea!” For everything Mother did in her life, and for all the ways she protected and inspired the women in her diving collective, this was the moment of which I was most proud.
Japanese soldiers came to stand between those making speeches and the front door to the district office. Other soldiers took positions on the edges of the crowd. The situation felt tense, with so many people shoved together. At last, the door opened. A Japanese man stepped out. Out of habit, out of fear, the five Hado women bowed deeply. From her low position, the one standing in the middle extended her hands to present the list of demands. Wordlessly, the man took it, went back inside, and shut the door. We all looked at each other. Now what? Now nothing, because there would be no negotiations that day. We all walked back to our villages.
Before we left, Mi-ja and I had to make a remembrance. I pointed to a Japanese character etched on a door to one of the buildings in the compound. Mother was speaking to her friends, and, now that the excitement was over, the soldiers had lost interest too, so no one paid us any attention as we walked to the door and began our ritual. It may not have been the best idea, though, because two things happened simultaneously: four guards ran over to see what we were doing, and Mother yelled at us. “Get away from there right now!” Mi-ja, with the piece of charcoal securely in her hand, and I, with the completed rubbing tight in mine, dashed through the milling women to Mother’s side. Hyng, but was she angry! But when we looked back at the soldiers, they were bent over, hands on their knees, laughing. It was many years before we learned that the character we’d chosen for our treasure said toilet.
The march was one of the three largest anti-Japanese protests ever to be held in Korea, the largest led by women, and the largest for the year with seventeen thousand supporters. It inspired another four thousand demonstrations in Korea over the following twelve months. The new Japanese governor of Jeju agreed to some demands. The discount ended, and a few crooked dealers were removed from their posts. All that was good, but other things also happened. We began to hear of one arrest, and then another. Thirty-four haenyeo—including the five original leaders from the Hado Night School—were arrested. Dozens of others were detained during a crackdown to stop additional protests. Rumors spread that some of the teachers at the Hado Night School were socialists or communists, and many of them went into hiding or moved away. None of that stopped Mother from attending classes.
“I wish you two girls could learn to read, write, and do basic math, because it will help you if, in the future, one of you becomes chief of a haenyeo collective,” she told us. “If I can save up enough money, I’ll pay for the two of you to come to school with me.”
That sounded far more dangerous than marching in a demonstration, because the women who’d been arrested were being held precisely because of what their education had inspired them to do. But I wanted whatever Mi-ja wanted, and she wanted to go very much. My mother was her only hope.
Eight months after the Hado-led demonstration, Mother, Mi-ja, and I were once again doing farm tasks in our dry field. Weeding is awful—bent over all day, being wet to the bone from rain or sweat or both, the tediousness of the precision required to pull out the intrusive plants without damaging the roots of those we were growing. Mother led us in a call-and-response song to keep us distracted from our discomfort, but with Mi-ja by my side I could never complain too much. She’d become adept at fieldwork after toiling so long with us. Mother paid her in food, which she always asked Mi-ja to eat in our presence. “I don’t want your aunt and uncle consuming the results of your labors,” Mother said.
We weeded and sang, not paying attention to the world outside the stone walls that surrounded our field. Mother’s hearing wasn’t good, but her peripheral vision was sharp, and she was alert for all dangers. I saw her leap up, with her hand hoe held before her. Then she dropped the tool, collapsed to the ground, and rested her forehead on her folded hands. All this I registered in seconds.
Beside me, Mi-ja stopped singing. I started to tremble, petrified, as a group of Japanese soldiers strode into the field.
“Bow down,” Mother whispered.
Mi-ja and I fell to the ground, imitating Mother’s supplicant position. Terror heightened my senses. Wind whistled through cracks in the stone walls. A few plots over, I could hear singing as other women did their farm chores. The soldiers’ boots crunched through the field as they approached. I tilted my head so I could peek at them. The sergeant, recognizable by the polish of his boots and the insignia on his jacket, flicked the stick he was carrying, slapping it into the palm of his other hand. I lowered my eyes back to the dirt.
“You’re one of the troublemakers, aren’t you?” he asked my mother.
My mind scrambled. Maybe they’ve come to arrest her. But if they knew about her involvement with the demonstrations, they would have come for her already. Then my mind spiraled to a darker possibility. Perhaps one of our neighbors turned her in. These things were known to happen. The right piece of information could bring a family a sack of white rice.
“Let the girls go home,” Mother said, which, it seemed to me, was hardly a proclamation of innocence.
It may have been something else, though. I was only ten, but I’d already been cautioned about what soldiers could do to women and girls. I peered up again, needing to get a sense of when I should run.
“What are you growing here?” The sergeant nudged Mother with the toe of his boot. Her body stiffened in what I first took to be anger. She’d proved her strength by becoming a haenyeo chief, so inside she must have been getting ready to fight them one by one. But then I saw the way her clothes vibrated on her body. She was shaking with fear. “Answer me!” He raised the stick above his head and brought it down on her back. She swallowed a scream.