“Tell her my name is Gus,” he told the interpreter, “and ask for her name.”
“Kim Soo-ah,” came the answer.
The interpreter explained to Gus that in Korea the last name comes first, then the given name, so one would call her Soo-ah.
“Why is she in this building?”
The interpreter repeated the woman’s words in English. “I am from a village way up north near the sea. The Japanese came to our farm and killed my mother and father and took my sisters away. I was in the woods, picking mushrooms, or they would have taken me, too. There were five of them. My father tried to stop them. They forced him onto his knees and shot him in the back of his head. My mother hid in the woodshed, and when they shot my father, she ran out and buried an axe in the shooter’s neck. The others shot her, and she fe
