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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, January 12, 2003

Koreans mark 100 years in Hawai'i

 •  Cultural center to be unveiled
 •  Centennial events

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

The gangplank of the SS Gaelic descended and 102 people disembarked, stepping into what was, for them, uncharted territory.

Korean picture brides came to Hawai'i in greatest numbers from 1913 to 1919.
Tomorrow marks one century since the day when the migration of Koreans to Hawai'i began, the day when, unaware of the social and political firestorms that awaited, they quietly slipped into Honolulu.

Perhaps it happened too quietly.

"Not even one American history book mentions Koreans coming 100 years ago," said Duk Hee Lee Murabayashi, one of the organizers of a centennial celebration that begins with a parade today and a bulging calendar of events this week and throughout the year. "They say the Chinese came to work in the gold-mining operations and built the railroads. But there's no mention of the Koreans. Not one line."

Murabayashi has worked as second-in-command under Donald Kim, who heads the international Centennial Committee of Korean Immigration to the United States and whose own father's name was on that first ship's manifest. Yu Ho Kim died when Donald Kim was young, leaving him to grow up with an incomplete picture of his father's experience.

Resources

The Web site for the Korean Centennial includes the following lists aimed at helping other Korean Americans to explore their own roots:

• Korean Passengers Arriving at Honolulu, 1903-1905 — A list of 6,740 names transcribed from steamship passenger manifests.

• Passports Issued to Koreans in Hawai'i, 1910-1924 — An alphabetical list of passport applicants, transcribed from records in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

• Korean Ministerial Appointments to Hawai'i Methodist Churches, 1906-2000 — A chronologically arranged list of Koreans appointed to ministerial positions.

• Early Membership of Korean Methodist Churches in Hawai'i — A compilation transcribed from lists kept in the superintendent's files at the Hawai'i District Office of the United Methodist Church.

That changed 12 years ago when Kim began planning for the 90th anniversary celebration, a dry run for the centennial.

"When we were working for the 90th, that's when I got to learn more about our Korean roots and history, about my parents coming," he said. "It was enlightening for me."

Now he and others active in the preparations want to enlighten everyone, not the least of whom are the Korean Americans themselves.

The Korean population in the United States has hit the 1 million mark, and most of them arrived in the second wave of immigration that began in the 1970s.

Most are disconnected from the story of their ancestors, said Esther Arinaga, a writer whose essay on the Korean-American pioneers is among those appearing in a book just published by the centennial committee. "Century of the Tiger: One Hundred Years of Korean Culture in America, 1903-2003," tracks the Korean immigrants' story through art and literature.

Many of the descendants of the first immigrants placed their focus on becoming Americanized, Arinaga said, losing touch with much of their culture. The newer immigrants have had their own distinct experience, she said, so the book is aimed at bridging the two groups.

"There are many historians as well as community people who say the new immigrants have no idea that these very brave people came and established the footholds in America," she added.

There are stories of bravery, of living in austere conditions, of family members left behind. Some of training in a Korean army brigade formed in Hawai'i with the hope of liberating the homeland from Japan, which took control of Korea in the mid-1890s and ruled it until its defeat in World War II.

Filmmaker Tom Coffman has produced a centennial documentary, "Arirang," that will air tomorrow on KHET. Researching the film opened his eyes to the depth of the struggle for liberation and the indelible marks it left on the community in Hawai'i. Syngman Rhee, president of South Korea from 1948 to 1960, was one of the Korean leaders who honed their political skills while based here, he said.

Rhee based his fight for Korean independence in Hawai'i from 1913 to 1940 and was Korean president in exile from 1919 to 1925.

"In Hawai'i there was tremendous conflict between the supporters of Rhee and those who opposed him," Coffman said. "Hawai'i was the crucible of selecting leadership for Korea. It was the place that nurtured leaders in exile. The wounds went real deep."

The Korean community placed a high priority on educating girls as well as boys.
A review of the past century also yields stories about the universal experiences of simple family life, everyday tales of schemes for romance, stories of the tiny rebellions as well as the large ones.

Historian Roberta Chang loves the story of her father, Keum Whang Chang, who approached a picture bride in Koloa, Kaua'i. She was spoken for, Chang said, but he asked if she had a sister back home.

"In the villages, it was traditional that the older girl got married first," she said. "But my auntie liked my father so much and she wanted him to marry her sister, instead of her older cousin."

Chang's father bought passage to Korea to fetch his bride, but the older sister knew if he went to the village, the cousin would have priority. So she rushed her sister to Kaua'i before he could leave.

Chang floats in a sea of such stories, as the author of "The Koreans in Hawai'i: A Pictorial History, 1903-2003."

The book is due for publication by University of Hawai'i Press in April and it arose from Chang's collection of about 1,000 archival photos and documents, materials she has gleaned from members of her own large family and from hundreds of people she has met through her life as a second-generation Korean American.

One is Mary Hong Park, a 93-year-old first-generation immigrant who came to Honolulu in 1912 when she was 3.

A Korean father and his children.
Hawai'i became the only home she knew, and she knew it well. As the daughter of a Methodist Episcopal minister, she moved with her family every few years, living at plantation church missions in Honoka'a, Lihue and Spreckelsville. One home was the Korean Methodist Episcopal Church that stood near where the municipal parking lot and green is today.

After graduating from McKinley High School and the University of Hawai'i, she became a medical social worker at Palama Settlement and Leahi Hospital.

The hardest part about life in the days before World War II, she said, was the humiliation of being treated as an alien and being barred from some professions.

"That's why I never took up education," she said. "I wouldn't be able to teach in public school. I knew my job opportunities were very scarce."

While Korea was part of Japan, immigrants were forced to get Japanese passports for travel. Park remembered one trip to California for a YWCA meeting and using the passport.

"I just didn't like the idea," she said. "We went on a ship and when it landed I was the last one to disembark. All these things made me very self-conscious."

Koreans came to Hawai'i as plantation workers.
Murabayashi knows there are many people with similar stories and, although nobody will ever hear them all, she has recorded elements from the experiences of thousands of immigrants. . The early immigrants represented only 2 percent of the population, which made it possible for her to painstakingly create databases, Murabayashi said.

"Because our number is small compared to the Japanese or Chinese, stubborn me, I had to do it," she said with a laugh.

The population increased in the years following the Korean War. Immigration laws changed in the mid-1960s, resulting in the Korean migration boom of the 1970s.

The influx of Koreans to the United States continues to this day, and Kim hopes that the events of the centennial will educate Koreans and non-Koreans alike about the cultures of the United States and Korea. Visitors from overseas are planning trips to Hawai'i during the centennial year, he said; 19 events are planned for January alone.

"The idea was to get this story out to the people, to tell the world about Koreans," he said. "Many of us don't know it, either. We wanted to assimilate closer to U.S. culture — not forgetting our own culture, but we really pushed that aside and this became first priority."

Arinaga and others have been itching to share the story with whoever will listen.

The Japanese occupation meant of their homeland meant that Koreans here had to carry Japanese passports.
"We're overshadowed, and people think we're Chinese and Japanese," she said. "There have been some negative images of Koreans. It's been things like the Watts situation (tensions between Koreans and other ethnic groups in Los Angeles) ... or depictions in (the TV program and movie) 'M*A*S*H', and it's the Korean War and people look poor and ignorant. Quaint, but that's it."

Arinaga has worked closely with the creators of several centennial artistic projects, including the "Century of the Tiger" book and the "Arirang" documentary.

And the experience has been uplifting. "We wanted to create this bridge of the first (immigrant) group to the second. If you read these stories (in the book), you realize these were wonderful, vibrant, artistic people," she said.

"I think they had spirit. You go into any Korean church and hear them sing. They sing like no one else."

Coming tomorrow: A special centennial section profiling five Korean families in Hawai'i.