This part of your thread caught my eye and reminded me of an old neighbor:
From 1998-00 I had just graduated from the U and rented a house with two of my college buddies. Our nextdoor neighbor was a jolly old Korean fellow who had a permanent party tent in his front yard with a picnic table beneath it where he was almost always sitting drinking cheap beer (Keystone Light to be exact). His name was Mr. Kim and he immediately became our favorite senior citizen drinking buddy, and his party tent and picnic table became a favorite hangout on weekend afternoons where we'd play cards and drink beer. Mr. Kim was the son of Korean immigrants who worked as agricultural workers sometime in the 1920's.
So during one of our beer-drinking sessions under his party tent, he was talking about being a young man working as a plantation town police officer and telling us all kinds of stories when he mentioned, "then the war came." And this was my chance for a story! I used to love talking with people of that generation--still do, to the extent that I can find any nowadays. I always find it fascinating that everyone at that time was somehow involved in the war effort in any way possible. When meeting old folks, I would always anxiously await the story about what they did during that time period especially if they were in the military. It was also fascinating to find that, contrary to Hollywood films, not every guy with military service was a dogface GI machine-gunning soldier, or glamorous pilot ace, or hardcore sailor. Some people at that time did really mundane military tasks like delivering mail, or driving cargo trucks, or typing letters, etc.
I had to ask, "So, Mr. Kim, what you did during the War?" He said he was a Korean interpreter in the Army. "Huh?" "Korean interpreter??" What did they need Korean interpreters for??? Well according to Mr. Kim, when the allies overran a Japanese base of operation, or captured a vessel, or the like, there was often a contingency of Koreans in the ranks. Koreans, he said, were used as slave labor to do things like build walls, or dig latrines, and other menial tasks. He said there were also Korean soldiers in the Japanese Army that were conscripted into service by the Imperial Japanese. The use of Korean interpreters, he said, was used by the Army as a way to gather intelligence from those Koreans who were enslaved by the Japanese. And he said that most of the Korean POWs were very willing to provide information about the enemy. Because of his specialty, Mr. Kim traveled all over the Pacific Theater but was mostly stationed in Hawaii.
Talk about an untold story of WWII! Mr. Kim has long since passed away. And I wish I could have unraveled a lot more about his time doing what he did. But I was young and easily distracted by beer and his "dirty birdie" stories about various women in his life. What an awesome time that was.
Thanks for your discussion thread.
