1964 was a very good . . . no, interesting year.
• In January President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty in his first State of the Union address.
• In February the Beatles arrived in the United States.
• In March the Ford Motor Company rolled its first Ford Mustang off the assembly line.
• In April the Rolling Stones released their debut album, aptly named, ‘The Rolling Stones” and Shea Stadium opened in New York.
• In May hundreds of students marched in New York and San Francisco, the first major student demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
• In June 10,000 student demonstrators overpowered police in Seoul, Korea, prompting President Park Chung-hee to declare martial law.
• In July President Johnson abolished racial segregation in the United States with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• In August Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins had its world premiere in Los Angeles.
• In September the Warren Commission Report was published, the first official investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy.
And in October, 1964, four-year-old Euna Kwon, her two-year-old brother Osong (who would later be given the American name, Robert), and their mother, Kyungha Park Kwon, landed at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to rejoin family patriarch Young Doo Kwon and begin their new lives in the United States.
I only have vague memories of my years in Korea, most of them so shadowy that sometimes I can’t separate what I actually remember and what are stories retold by relatives or recollections through photographs. My most vivid memories are those of physical experiences: running pell-mell down the big hill in front of our house with my cousin, being chased by a dog; lying on the bedroll on the floor of our common room, surrounded by the murmur of adult voices; the coldness of the water on my face from the outdoor pump; the waft from the outhouse, since many houses, even in the big city, back in those days, did not have indoor plumbing.
After two years of living with my sweet mother and grandmother, I’m told that I chafed at the disciplinarian tendencies of my dad, who scolded us for jumping on the trampoline-like beds in our hotel room, and demanded that I immediately be sent back to my home in Seoul.
I fell in love with Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, but was proud enough of my native food to be thoroughly annoyed with my new American friend who scoffed at our seaweed sheets as burnt paper. My dad drove a big blue 1964 Plymouth, and sometimes he played the radio, so I remember snippets of verses, including, “I can’t get no….” (Rolling Stones), and “My baby does the hanky-panky” (Tommy James and the Shondells).
I played tag with my friends, and when we were trying to decide who was “it,” we put our “potatoes” (fists) out, and chanted, “Eeny meeny miny mo, catch a n—– by the toe.” We didn’t know that the word we were using was thoroughly racist; it was a sign of the times. I wrote a letter to President Johnson asking him to end the war in Vietnam.
I sang in the first grade chorus at Plymouth Elementary School and learned that “just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.” I fell in love with a beautiful voice that crooned the promise of a white Christmas. My brother and I learned about Christmas trees.
That first year, we each got one gift from Santa Claus, but then the next year, we each got two. So we chortled with joy, smug in our conviction that we were especially good children, but then it turned out that our babysitter had dropped off surprises for us, and we learned that gifts could come from different people and we could give them as well. We also learned about bullies who made incomprehensible sounds at us with their mouths while pulling their eyelids back and squishing their noses.
I have written before that I don’t remember the process of learning English; it was no big deal, really, to be able to retain most of my original language, and yet absorb a whole new language painlessly and without any effort. We learned English by watching the Green Hornet and Batman.
It was much different for my mother, who was the Seoul-city native suddenly uprooted and planted in the middle of the American Midwest, with no family, no friends, no familiarity of home. Like a true pioneer of olden times, she weathered her new challenges, but now, as an adult, I think how hard it must have been for her, a stranger in a foreign land.
My father had the refuge and responsibility of work. Every day, he would drive his new American car to Dow Chemical, which employed almost everybody in that company town in Midland, Michigan. We lived at 3806 East St. Andrews, in a house in a row of houses so similar that my brother and I went out to play one day and somehow ended up knocking on the door of the wrong house, crying our eyes out for our mother. There was never a sight so grand as my dad coming up over the lawn to our rescue.
Fifty years ago we came to this country with hopes and dreams not unlike the hopes and dreams that still bring immigrants to this country. But today, immigration is an issue fraught with controversy and challenge. While the United States still shimmers as the land of limitless opportunity, our borders are open to some only through what is often a life-and-death lottery. We came with little more than a few suitcases, and a desire to succeed. Fifty years ago I had no choice in the decision, but if I had to do it all over again, I would. 1964 was, indeed, a very interesting year… and for this family, a good one too.
