Man Sei! The Making of a Korean American (review)

BOOK REVIEWS85 those interviewed take the reader through the early period of defeat for American forces, as they and their South Korean allies are pushed back under the onslaught of numerically superior North Korean forces, on through the fierce battles in which the U.S. Army troops struggle to hold the Pusan perimeter. Thereafter the fortunes of U.S. Army and Marine units ebb and flow as there are victories at Inch'on and defeats when the Chinese enter the war. Although this is a book about ground forces in the Korean War and the privations they suffered, navy personnel are not slighted. In the chapter about the amphibious invasion of Inch'on, there are oral history reports from Admiral Arleigh Burke, then Deputy Chief of Staff to Commander Naval Forces, Far East; Captain (later Admiral) U.S. Grant Sharp, then Fleet Planning Officer, Staff, Commander Seventh Fleet; and Commander George H. Miller, Plans Officer to Commander, Joint Task Force. They tell an important story about some of the detailed planning that went into this extremely complex operation. Narratives about the conduct of the operation itself are provided by excerpts from the ships' logs of the USS Henrico (APA 45), USS Mansfield (DD 728), USS Collett (DD 730), USS Rochester (CA 124), USS DeHaven (DD 727), and USS Boxer (CV). Individual interviews from a yeoman second class aboard the Rochester, three junior officers in charge of beach offloading operations, and the commanding officer of a small minesweeper provide further insights into the action. One of the great strengths of this book is the material provided by the author himself. At appropriate places in the narrative he brings the reader up to date about the progress of the battles and the stage of strategic planning. These comments, printed in italic type, are direct and clear, as are the maps illustrating the eleven principal battles with which the book is concerned. For those, like me, who remember the Korean War, this is a book well worth reading. Joseph R. Morgan University of Hawaii Man Sei! The Making ofa Korean American, by Peter Hyun. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1986. 192 pp. $17.50 This is a book of memories. The author, Peter Hyun, looks back on the first seventeen years of his life in Korea and China, linking experiences of trauma and reprieve with skill and humor. As a child, he was shunted from place to place, because his father was a political leader during the chaotic time when the Japanese were consolidating their takeover of the country. Man Sei! is thus valuable as a record of what happens to the families of political exiles. It is more interpretive poetry than documentary fact, but has enough of both to hold the reader's attention throughout. The members of Peter's family emerge vividly in the narrative: his greatgrandmother as a consumate storyteller—from whom no doubt Peter acquired his skill (p. 42)—and his grandfather as the formal head of the family, from whom Peter received information about family history to which he did not listen 86BOOK REVIEWS attentively, (p. 38) Peter was eight when his grandmother died. He attended her funeral and burial. When he saw the meal placed on a lacquer tray before her grave, he drew his mother aside and whispered, "They put the soup on the left side of the rice. You told me that the soup must always be placed on the right side." She patted him gently and whispered, "Ah, but Great Grandmother is now lying in the ground, looking up. Your left is her right." (p. 52). Peter's parents also emerge as giants in his memories. His father was a fiery Methodist minister, one of the first outstanding Korean pastors, who, when asked why he became a Christian replied, "Because I believed Jesus was more militant than Buddha." The father's militancy climaxed in 1919, in the nonviolent Korean uprising aimed at Japanese overlords which has become known as the Mansei Movement. It was during this uprising that the minister had to flee from Korea, leaving his family behind. He settled in Shanghai, and involved himself in helping to organize a government in...