The recent ma.s.sacre of Koreans in Manchuria by j.a.panese soldiers ill.u.s.trate the j.a.panese spirit.
This same policy of frightfulness is carried on in Formosa and in Siberia and wherever the j.a.panese army and gendarme system has authority. It is worse than anything that the Germans ever did in France or Belgium. It has its only parallel in the dark ages.
I told Baron Saito, Governor-General of Korea this in an interview. He wanted to know what America thought of j.a.pan"s rule in Korea. I said: "America and the whole civilized world is stirred with indignation at the j.a.panese rule in Korea. There has been nothing like it since the dark ages." Then I read him a quotation from an editorial in _Zion"s Herald_, a church paper published in Boston with virtually those words in it.
My friend, whom I met first in France, when he came back from. France was sent to Siberia as a Captain in the American Army.
I met him in Manila just after he had returned from Siberia. He, in common with all Americans who had seen the j.a.panese methods of frightfulness in Siberia, was filled with hatred.
"One night," he said, "a company of j.a.panese soldiers entered the little village six hundred miles north of Vladivostok where we were located. They announced that they were hunting for Bolsheviks.
"They did not find any in the little village, although they ruthlessly broke down every door of every home in that village. Then they went out to a sawmill about three miles from town and brought in five boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen.
"After torturing these boys in an old box car for two days, hanging them up by the thumbs with their arms behind their backs until they were unconscious; and then forcing salt water, hot water, cold water, and water with pepper in it down their nostrils, alternately; and other added cruelties; they announced to the village that they would release them that night on the public square."
"Did they do it?" I asked anxiously, for I was stirred to my soul"s depths with his narration of cruelties in Siberia.
"Yes, they released them; in this way:
"They called all the friends and families of the prisoners together on the public square. Then they dug five graves. Then five j.a.panese officers came stalking across the public square, whisking at the thistle-tops with swords as they came; and then walked up to these innocent Russian boys, and whacked off their heads.
"Had they been tried?" I asked indignantly.
"They had been given no trial. They were mere boys, who, probably, didn"t even know what the word Bolshevik meant. It was the worst ill.u.s.tration of frightfulness that I ever saw, although it was a common thing for the j.a.panese troops to go through the country upsetting the barrels of honey that the poor peasants were saving up for the long winters; rooting up their young potatoes; cutting the throats of their colts and cattle, and ravishing the land."
"How could you stand it?"
"We couldn"t stand it. I had to fight to keep my company of Americans from sailing into them with fists and bayonets. It would have meant war.
So I sent word back to headquarters that we were out of provisions and we were called back to Vladivostok."
Can this scene be duplicated in Formosa and Korea, where the j.a.panese hold sway?
It can.
During the Independence Movement in Korea this thing happened: All of the Korean Christians had been asked to a.s.semble in a church for a meeting. When they were all in the church, the j.a.panese gendarme set fire to the church and then fired into it, killing every man.
A woman, big with child, came running toward the church having heard the shooting and knowing that her husband was within.
A big, burly j.a.panese pushed her back.
"What do you want?" he cried in Korean.
"I want to go in there. My husband is there," she cried in terror.
"But you will be killed if you go in there!"
"I don"t care! I want to die if he is to die!"
"All right! You shall have your wish!" said the j.a.panese, and pulling out his sword, cut off her head, killing her instantly. She fell at his feet with her unborn child; and he laughed aloud at the spectacle.
This is j.a.panese frightfulness and it can be duplicated by many missionaries in Korea if they dared to speak.
But the minute they speak and tell the truth that minute they are sent home from their life work. They realize that this leaves the Koreans to the utter and awful cruelties of the barbarous j.a.panese, and because of this, in spite of their indignation they hold their tongues for the larger good. But they eagerly give the facts to those of us who are coming back to America so that America in turn may know what is going on in Korea. That is the only hope; that the indignation of a righteous world, without war, may bring pressure to bear on j.a.pan to stop these terrible cruelties and tortures; this unutterable frightfulness. This is the hope of the missionaries; this is the only hope of the Koreans!
I don"t know whether or not it was because I had been listening for so long to the most brutal stories of j.a.panese treatment of Korean men, women and children; with murder, rapine, burning of homes, especially Christian homes; beating of a mother and her twelve-year-old girl from three in the morning until eight to make them reveal the hiding-place of their preacher daddy, that the crimson, blood-red sunset I witnessed on my last night in Korea seemed to me like a "sunset of crimson wounds."
All I know is that it happened in Korea while I was there, and that my soul had been, for a solid month, stirred to the depths of its righteous wrath over the things that I had heard first-hand from human lips.
But there it was. The sky was blood-red. At first it was black, a somber black. Not a coal-black but a slate black. Then suddenly just at the edge of the horizon a crack began to appear. It was a slit of blood. It looked more like a wound than anything else I ever saw. The slit of blood grew larger and larger in the slate-black clouds.
Then suddenly all over the horizon these wounds began to break through the ma.s.s of black clouds. Some of these slits were horizontal slits, and some of them ran in graceful curves. Some of them looked as if a bayonet had been lunged into the body of that somber cloud and a great crimson gash was made with ragged edges as big as a house. Then it looked as if some ruthless j.a.panese gendarme had taken his sword and slashed a rip in the abdomen of that sky; and from side to side like a crescent moon appeared this great crimson wound.
I had never seen a sunset just like it. But there it was. It seemed that there was back of that great black cloud a blood-red planet, pouring its crimson tides like a great waterfall down back of that slate-black ma.s.s until finally the curtain of black began to tear, and the blood poured through to run along the horizon, and splash against the clouds, and slit its way like wounds through the clouds of night.
And I thought of something else. I thought how a Man once was crucified.
I thought how dark the skies were on that afternoon. I thought how slate-colored and somber all life seemed, especially to that little group of disciples. I thought of the wounds in His hands and feet and side. I thought of the wounds the thorns in His crown made, and of the blood that ran over His face. I could see Him there back of that cloud in Korea. I could see His Christian people being crucified again because of their religion. I could see j.a.panese bayonets thrust into His side and j.a.panese nails through His feet and His hands. I could see a j.a.panese crown of thorns on His head because He said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me." And I could see the blood of his wounds breaking through that nation"s clouds on that wonder evening of the "sunset of wounds" back of the Korean mountains in December.
CHAPTER VI
FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS
"Oriental women are fascinating to Occidental men," said a newspaper reporter in a Shanghai hotel lobby, a year ago.
"All women are fascinating to Occidental men. Take the French girls and the way they captured our American soldiers; of course, these brown-eyed, brown-skinned, graceful, mysterious----"
"It"s just as I said," replied the first speaker interrupting the second speaker, "Oriental girls are more fascinating to Occidental men than white girls."
"Yes--I guess you are right, when we get down to the honest to goodness truth of the thing," said an American oil man. "Take that Javanese girl who knocked at the door of my room; or take that half-breed Malay girl we met on the ship between Singapore and Batavia; or that little red-cheeked j.a.panese girl in Tokyo; or that Spanish brunette in Manila; or--Oh, Boy! Do you remember that Chinese half-breed, with English blood in her veins and an English education in her brain and Paris clothes on her back, and American pep in her eyes, and j.a.panese silk stockings on her----"
"Come on! Come on! We didn"t call on you for a lecture on Oriental girls whom you have met," said the first speaker.
Then a bell boy paged me and I lost the rest of the conversation.
But this dialogue set me to thinking on the various types of fascinating Oriental women; the standing they have in the world; and the status of their living.
There were the j.a.panese women; beautiful, graceful, red-cheeked, small of stature, wistful-eyed, colorfully dressed; always smiling slaves to their men.
The well-trained Geisha girl has, for centuries, because of her superior education, received the confidences of j.a.panese men; while a j.a.panese man would scorn to talk things over with his wife.
There was the banquet we attended at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Mr.
Uchida, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and many of the high officials of j.a.pan were present with their wives. Several members of the House of Parliament were present as well as the Secretary to Mr. Hara, the Prime Minister. Each of these great leaders of j.a.pan had his wife by his side at the banquet table.