Honolulu by Alan Brennert Read Free Book Online Page B

spoke up, quoting an old proverb: “An empty cart rattles loudly,” she said, meaning, One who lacks substance boasts loudest. Sunny and I laughed, which seemed to annoy Jade Moon more than the jibe itself.
    I asked Wise Pearl why she chose to become a picture bride. She admitted that her parents were poor, that there wasn’t always enough to eat, and the promise of abundant food as well as money to send home was what first attracted her. “But it also promises to be a great adventure,” she added enthusiastically.
    With no prompting from me, jade Moon volunteered the information that while there had been much interest from many yangban families in having their sons marry her, she found them all too “common” and was much more taken with the idea of marrying a successful and socially prominent man in America.
    “You’d best hope,” Wise Pearl said impishly, “that such a man does not find you too common.”
    With a look of great forbearance, jade Moon excused herself and retired for the evening.
    Two days later, Sunny and I tested negative for parasites and were cleared to leave on the next ship bound for Honolulu: the Nippon Maru, a 6,000-ton steamship that at 440 feet was longer than Pojogae’s entire main street. The first of Japan’s great ocean liners, it had two big smokestacks like a steamer, but also three tall masts and an elaborately carved bowsprit like a sailing ship. As we walked up the gangway I was pleased to spy Wise Pearl among the crowd, as well as Beauty, who looked excited enough to levitate to Hawai’i.
    The Nippon Maru was well past its glory days-its once-glamorous luster dulled by years of service as a military troop ship in the Russo-Japanese War-but it was still a queenly and impressive sight to a pair of young girls from the provinces. Our quarters, however, were considerably less impressive. We were situated belowdecks in third-class steerage, so called due to its proximity to the ship’s steering system. It was a huge, cavernous compartment-I had never seen an enclosed space so large-broken up into tiers of wooden bunks covered with straw mats, or “silkworm shelves” as they were sometimes called. Passengers were segregated by sex, except for families traveling together, and by race-Chinese, Japanese, and “Other.” Koreans fell into the latter category, along with a smattering of Okinawans, Filipinos, Indians, and Siamese-lumped together in what often was referred to as “Asiatic steerage.”
    When the Nippon Maru finally set sail, we did not do so alone. This was February of 1915, the earliest days of the First World War, and just weeks earlier two Japanese passenger liners-Tokomaru and Ikaria-had been torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats. So the Nippon Maru was to be escorted across the now-perilous waters of the Pacific by two Japanese warships that were always visible off our bow. At night we also had to observe a blackout, which made for plenty of stubbed toes and short tempers in the overcrowded steerage compartment.
    Thankfully, we never encountered any U-boats in our journey across the ocean, but that is not to say the voyage was a pleasant one. The first few hours we enjoyed calm seas, and then for nearly the remainder of the trip the ship rocked up and down like a seesaw. It was bad enough on deck, but down in steamy, poorly ventilated steerage the motion seemed even more violent, and it moved many a traveler, myself included, to nausea. Soon the hold smelled not merely of sweat and urine (from the too-few lavatories) but of vomit as well. If that wasn’t sufficient to kill one’s appetite, the dinner menu was: stewards brought in big pots of rice, vegetables, and overcooked meat, shoveling the food willy-nilly into bowls. We ate on our bunks, and afterward had to rinse our dishes under the lukewarm tap water in the lavatories.
    The atmosphere in the hold became suffocating and drove most of us above decks (not strictly allowed for us bottom-dwellers) in search of