The Young Will Remember

1

Touchdown

August 12, 2019

Seoul is unrecognizable.

I press my forehead against the plane's window, my breath fogging the view of this flamboyant metropolis. It is silver, with bridges that leap over rivers and roads that whip into mountains, claiming a horizon that was once viridescent. A few years ago, NASA shared an image of the Korean peninsula from space, its southern half flaring with light while the north lay engulfed in darkness. Though I have seen that iconic photo, I am still unprepared to be here.

My son's fingers graze my hand. "Are you okay, Mom?"

A deluge of emotions converge within me, and I cannot tell what I feel, only that it is overwhelming.

"Do you want some water?" he asks, raising his voice and enunciating each word. "Wah-ter?"

This is our first plane ride together, and he believes that he is my chaperone. Though he has his own years mapped in the wrinkles across his face, I don't want to speak until I am steady. Children get upset when they see their parents cry, no matter how old they are.

I wait for the ache in my throat to go away, but the immensity of everything that I've never told him hardens that knot. While I've known my son for his whole life, he has known me for only part of mine. He tells people that I am terrified of flying, but seventy years ago I was traipsing around airfields with my typewriter tucked under my arm, begging pilots to take me to the front lines. Back then, I was a correspondent for the Global Tribune.

I have seen Seoul from the sky at least a hundred times.

I don't talk much about the war, but since then, I have tried my best to live well. The fear of disappointing her has held me hostage.

A tone dings as the fasten seat belt sign comes on.

"Mom?" My son shakes my arm with urgency.

We are about to touch down.

2

Home by Christmas

"Recently catastrophic events in the Far East suggest strongly that . . . we are on the brink of, if not already involved in, World War III . . ."

-Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer,
San Francisco, November 16, 1950

December 5, 1950

General MacArthur promised our troops that they would be home for Christmas. If any of them were going back to America, though, it was going to be on a stretcher or in a coffin. The six a.m. sun, already weary from winter, cast lukewarm rays over Tachikawa Airfield, where technicians towed a C-47 onto the runway. Mount Fuji arched in the background, a snow-cloaked spirit serene beneath its crown of clouds. On the tarmac, half a dozen flight nurses gathered, their arms crossed in their thick air force-issued coats. Though they had the day off, they had arrived early, and were stewing as they waited for the next pilot.

Nothing excited me more than angry women who had gotten organized.

In my own corner, I squatted with my back against the wall, balancing my typewriter on my knees. With a biscuit between my teeth and red bean mochi in my pocket, I began typing:

In North Korea's Chosin Reservoir, our haggard survivors are stripping their dead comrades of their clothing and stacking up corpses to block the gales. Though the Soviets aren't formally fighting in Korea, the blizzard blowing down from Siberia is its own horrifying army. At minus 40 degrees, soldiers' blackened toes are breaking off in their boots and carbines are jamming.

Chairman Mao had warned us not to cross into North Korea, but General MacArthur was arrogant.

My fingers slowed to a halt. Was that last sentence too abrasive?

Letting my biscuit fall from my lips, I uncapped my pen and slashed a line through "arrogant," perusing a mental list of synonyms. "Confident," maybe? I started writing in "confident," but I'd barely crossed the "t" before Barbara, one of the flight nurses, yanked the paper from my feed roller.

"We have boys in Korea who still have no winter uniforms!" she exclaimed, flipping her bangs up from her forehead. "It's December. If that's not arrogant, I don't know what is!"

Her chestnut hair, usually back-combed and bombastically curled, hung limp over her freckled cheeks. She pulled out her own pen and scribbled furiously over "confident," her lines as jagged as a lightning bolt. In all capitals, she wrote ARROGANT with so much force that she punctured the paper.

"Give that back!" I cried, surging to my feet. My ankles tingled from squatting. "The Global Tribune already got a warning from MacArthur's office. If I get us another, we might get blocked from the embassy briefings!"

Censorship was supposed to be patriotic, but Barbara wasn't with the press. Unrepentantly, she underlined ARROGANT before returning my article, her thumbprint smudged into the ink. I shooed her away, smoothing the crinkled paper before inserting it back into my typewriter.

Barbara and I had arrived in Japan on the same flight in July 1950, shortly after the North Korean People's Army-KPA for short-invaded South Korea, and the US initiated a "police action" under the United Nations. I'd been covering the Korean War for the past five months, but while every other correspondent was chasing MacArthur's top officers, I had been hanging around with Barbara and the other flight nurses of the Medical Air Evacuation Squadron. Being a female war correspondent was hard enough. It was even harder when you looked like the enemy.

Though I was born and raised in San Francisco, I was ethnically Chinese, with straight black hair and eyes that folded at the corners. My nose was small but broad like my father's, and my lips were plump like my mother's. Despite my perfect English and my Californian slang, American officers often balked when I tried to talk to them, let alone press them for information.

It was annoying, but at twenty-eight I had spent most of my life prying open side doors when the entrance was blocked. Many correspondents can attack a front-page story head-on, shark-style, but some of us can advance only if we get really good at picking the glitter from the dust. I began my career by writing about the Women Air Force Service Pilots, which few other outlets covered in detail. Through that series, I shone enough to get an assignment abroad. Though my bosses were initially reluctant to send a woman to a war zone, no one else at the Global Tribune was fluent in Japanese and Mandarin, as I was. My language skills-and my promise to use them to get scoops like no other-finally tipped the scales in my favor.

Over the past months, I'd made friends. The flight nurses helped me arrange interviews with patients, and the pilots let me hitch rides to Korea. Because of them, I was churning out stories on every major battle. Today, however, was going to be different.

"There he is!" Barbara shrieked when the office door squeaked open. "There's George!"

I snapped my head up so quickly that a joint in my neck popped.

George Miyashita slumped into the hangar, so exhausted that he wobbled, his sparse mustache a stain on his upper lip. Among the pilots, he was my favorite. He spent most of his free time at the pool on base and had the broad shoulders of a swimmer-and washboard abs if you caught him at the right angle.

The technicians who had been loading fuel barrels into the cargo hold slowed to stare. When George saw us, he recoiled. "No!" he yelled. "I told you all no!"

George and the other pilots had been flying nonstop for five days, because our leaders had underestimated a Communist "bandit" and his "peasant army." "We're going all the way to the Yalu," one of the generals had said. "Don't let a bunch of Chinese laundrymen stop you!" Though the police action was supposed to end at the 38th parallel-the line separating the two Koreas-MacArthur had sent our boys surging into the North so quickly that they had had to spread themselves thin along narrow mountain roads. Pilots had airdropped turkeys and potatoes near the Chinese border so that troops could celebrate Thanksgiving.

No one had noticed that the trees were moving.

No one had believed that a "peasant army" would tiptoe through the forests, under white sheets to camouflage with the snow, until they surrounded every single road; until their bugles sounded in the middle of the night and entire platoons disappeared as if swallowed, a bloodbath that verged on annihilation. Air force escorts had had to blast napalm on the path to help the survivors eke out a retreat, over five days, to our base at Hagaru-ri. Thousands of critically wounded soldiers now needed evacuation, but the mission was so hazardous that nurses were forbidden from flying.

Most of the women understood, but the "abrasive" ones were livid.

"We're air force too!" Barbara cried, leading the charge. She pointed to the logo on her jacket as the women encircled George. "Patients need us. You need us. You're going to lose men in flight otherwise!"

George huffed in exasperation. "It's not up to me, okay? I have my orders. The Chosin is too dangerous for you all."

"That's bullshit, and you know it!" said Barbara. "To hell with orders. Just take one of us. Stand up for what you know is right!"

I shoved my typewriter into its case, snapping it shut before gobbling down the rest of my biscuit. "Who's going to care for the patients, George?" I demanded, brushing crumbs off my chin. "On top of being wounded, those boys haven't slept or eaten in five days!"

"Some of us have brothers and boyfriends over there," exclaimed another nurse.

"'No' means 'no,'" said George, pushing past them. "Sorry."

The technicians scattered as George stomped to the ladder that led to the cockpit of the C-47. I dashed after him, whipping out my bag of mochi, still warm from being tucked in my pocket.

"The orders were 'no flight nurses,' right?" I said, flashing my most persuasive grin. If I strained, I could get a dimple to dot my left cheek. "Not 'no women,' or 'no correspondents,' right, George? In any case, I'm a civilian, so military orders don't apply to me. Right?"

His stride was longer than mine, and I had to pump my arms to keep up with him. "No, Ellie, you can't come either," he said. "And I'm not a dog. You can't bribe me with food."

"But I waited in line for these all morning!" I had been betting that George would succumb to these snacks. Like me, he was from the Bay Area and loved the chewy combination of red bean and sticky rice flour. "They're fresh, from our favorite stand-the one by the bathhouse. Come on, George. California solidarity. No one else from the Global Tribune made it to the Chosin. If I can get there, my boss will go wild. The entire team back home will. Please, George. I need this!"

"Go away, Ellie!" George snapped, swatting at the mochi that I dangled by his nose. "I know you think you have to prove yourself, but this is ridiculous, even for you."

Barbara had caught up to us, her boots thudding as the plane's cargo door clanged shut. The other nurses pattered angrily behind her.

"Oh, good Lord," said Barbara. "If you won't take us, at least take Ellie. Let her get her story!"

George whirled around to face us, the bags beneath his bloodshot eyes pronounced. "What is wrong with you all?" he demanded. "Do you have any idea what's happening at Hagaru-ri? The Chinese have the airstrip surrounded. When I fly in, it's going to be with an escort of fighter jets. When I fly out, it's going to be through fire. You should just be grateful that you have the day off. Get some rest. Curl your hair and take a bath."

Barbara flushed so deeply that her freckles faded into her ruddy skin. "Damn you, George. We can help. We want to help!"

I leaped between George and the ladder and stretched my arms out. At five feet two, I barely reached his chin, but I clenched the mochi in my fist and let my typewriter dangle from its shoulder strap. "I thought we were friends, George. I always tell you when there's beef jerky at the commissary. I always get you extra mochi at the market, because I know you're too scared of the mochi obasan to buy them yourself."

George snatched the mochi bag from me, ripping the top. "I'm not scared of the mochi granny," he said. "And we are friends-good friends. That's why I want you to stay here. You, of all people, should not be at the Chosin right now. You know what I mean, don't you?"

The nurses' outrage dwindled to a hush, and Barbara cocked her head, uncertain. They might have been confused, but I knew exactly what he meant. Of course I did.

If anyone else had referenced my ethnicity, I might have gone ballistic, but George was Japanese American. During World War II, our government had sent his family to an internment camp even though George's father was fighting for us in France. The Miyashitas didn't get released until the last camps closed-just four years ago.

"They're really bloody mad at China over there," George continued. "If I were you, I'd lie low for now. MacArthur's foaming at the mouth. Rumor has it, he's pushing to bomb Manchuria. If it were up to him, we'd go nuclear."

A chill shivered down my spine.

As a woman in this field, I always had to be brave, to work harder and smarter for every scrap and bone-never complain, and above all, never cry. I kept my fear in a box and labeled it opportunity, but it was still a slippery beast. Courage and madness were different shades of the same color, and I couldn't tell which I had painted myself with when I said, "I'm willing to take the risk, George. I won't put my life on hold because some jerks can't tell the difference between me and a Red."

I stood my ground, holding my head so high that I had to tilt it back. That was the only way I could look down at someone taller than me.

George rolled his eyes and threw his hand up. "Fine, Ellie. But only because I'm starving, and I need you to feed these to me while I keep my hands on the controls. I swear to God, if you cause any trouble-"

"I won't cause trouble," I cried, bouncing with adrenaline while Barbara and the other nurses cheered. "I'll feed you like you're my firstborn child. Let's go!"