Monthly Archives: October 2005
Yodok Burial Detail and Human Fertilizer
In the spring of 1981, I was assigned to help bury the bodies of prisoners who had perished during the previous winter, when the frost-hardened earth had made timely interment difficult. As with any detail, the work was carried out … Continue reading
Filed under Korea
Hidden Family Heritages Unearthed in the New World
Regions of Mind directs attention to a very interesting post by Ann Althouse. Here’s Geitner’s summary. One of the most affecting aspects of the Jewish experience in Inquisition-era Spain was how many Jews professed to have adopted Christianity but in … Continue reading
Filed under Spain
Diary of a Tokyo Christian, 9 August 1945
August 9, 1945, Thursday This morning Nobukazu went off to Gôra and returned in the evening. When he finished dinner, he had to leave again–this time to board a nine o’clock train to Karuizawa, his school’s evacuation site. And so … Continue reading
Perils of Privilege in Prison Camp
My uncle was the [Yodok camp] distillery’s technical chief for seven years. No one had ever held the position for that long, and only the handful of detainees who worked in the guards’ office or in the bachelors’ kitchen ever … Continue reading
Filed under Korea
Getting to Know Your Snitches
Yodok and the hard-labor camps did have several points in common, the first of these being the snitches. During the first days and weeks of our detention, my father and uncle felt most oppressed by the physical demands of forced … Continue reading
Filed under Romania
Next, Lotte Marines vs. Chicago White Sox?
Bobby Valentine, manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines (and nicely profiled by Japundit), sounds just a bit pumped up after seeing his team take the Japan Series in 4 straight games, outscoring the Hanshin Tigers by 33 to 4. The … Continue reading
Filed under baseball
Well, So Much for the Rakuten Eagles
Jack Gallagher reports in the Japan Times on the quick demise of the once-brash upstart Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. (I prefer to call them the Igloos, which sounds much the same in Japanese.) Last fall, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles … Continue reading
Filed under baseball
A Kiwi Officer in Borneo, 1965
The website of the Royal New Zealand Artillery Old Comrades Association contains a lot of military memoirs from the days when New Zealand had more of a military than it does now. Here’s a tale recorded in April 2001 by … Continue reading
Filed under Indonesia
Fraser Weir on Islam’s Arrival in Coastal Southeast Asia
Fraser Weir’s A Centennial History of Philippine Independence, 1898-1998 gives an account of Islam’s arrival in coastal Southeast Asia in the 14th and 15th century, closely followed by the arrival of the first Portuguese and Spanish Christians. Regular coastal trade … Continue reading
Filed under Spain
A New Homeland Lost to Each New Generation
Growing up, I was never aware of my uncles’ disaffection with Kim Il-sung: I was too young to imagine such a thing was possible. Looking back now, their transformation seems telling: the silence of one, the alcoholism of the other, … Continue reading
Filed under Korea
