So Far from the Bamboo Grove facts for kids
First edition
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| Author | Yoko Kawashima Watkins |
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| Cover artist | Leo & Diane Dillon |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | War novel, Autobiographical novel |
| Publisher | William Morrow |
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Publication date
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April 1986 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 192 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0-688-13115-9 |
| OCLC | 426064992 |
| LC Class | PZ7.W3235 So 1994 |
| Followed by | My Brother, My Sister, and I |
So Far from the Bamboo Grove is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Yoko Kawashima Watkins, a Japanese American writer. It was originally published by Beech Tree in April 1986.
Watkins's book takes place in the last days of 35 years of Korea's annexation by Japan. An eleven-year-old Japanese girl, Yoko Kawashima, whose father works for the Japanese government, must leave her home in Nanam, part of northern Korea, as her family escapes south to Seoul, then to Busan, to return to Japan.
Contents
Plot summary
The story begins with Yoko Kawashima (and her mother, brother and sister) living in Nanam. Yoko is 11 years old and living in North Korea during World War II while their father works as a Japanese government official in Manchuria, China. As the War draws towards a close, Yoko and her family realizes the danger of their situation and attempts to escape back to Japan as Communists troops close in on North Korea.
Her brother, Hideyo, also tries to leave but he is separated from his family because he has to serve at an ammunition factory for six days a week. The women of the family board a train to Seoul using a letter from a family diplomat but their trip is cut short by a bomb 45 miles away from Seoul. Yoko is injured from the bombing and the women are forced to walk the rest of the way. After receiving medical treatment in Seoul, Yoko, her sister, and mother board a train to Busan, and then a ship to Japan.
When Yoko, her sister Ko, and her mother reach Fukuoka, Japan, it is not the beautiful, comforting, welcoming place Yoko dreamed of. Once again, they find themselves living in a train station scrounging in the garbage for food to survive. Eventually, Yoko's mother travels to Kyoto to find her family. She then leaves for Aomori to seek help from their grandparents who she discovers are both dead. Their mother dies on the same day, leaving Yoko and Ko waiting for their brother Hideyo. Their mother's last words were to keep their wrapping cloth where she had hidden money for her children.
Yoko begins to attend a new school where she enters and wins an essay contest with a cash prize. News of her winning the contest is reported in the newspaper. Hideyo and the Korean family who took bid farewell and Hideyo finally reaches Busan where he finds the message left to him by Yoko. After reaching Japan, he sees signs with his name and Yoko and Ko's address. While asking directions from locals, he is spotted by Yoko and they are reunited.
Kawashima also wrote a sequel titled My Brother, My Sister, and I.
Translations
A Korean version of this book titled Yoko iyagi (요코이야기, "Yoko's tale") was published in 2005 and sold 4,000 copies of the first printing. However, it was banned soon after.
A Japanese version of this book, Takebayashi haruka tōku : Nihonjin shōjo Yōko no sensō taikenki (竹林はるか遠く : 日本人少女ヨーコの戦争体験記, "Bamboo grove far distant: Japanese girl Yōko's war experience account") became available in June 2013. As of June 7, 2013, the book was at No. 1 on the Amazon Best Sellers in Books in Japan.
Historical inaccuracies
The Korean media has characterized her book as "autobiographical fiction". It has believed there are several points of historical inaccuracies in her account. Certain "Korean historians" (unspecified) charge that some of her narrated incidents are imagined. However, the author insists she wrote her experience as she remembered it.
U. S. bombers
Watkins gives in her book an account of sighting U. S. B-29 bombers (identified as that type by Mr. Enomoto). This has been characterized as suspect, since according to historians, there were no bombing in the area in July or August 1945. To which, the author retorted that she did not go so far as to say these airplanes bombarded her hometown of Nanam (Rannam).
In fact, U.S. bombers were flying missions to the general area of Korea by this time, according to Yoshio Morita's book on evacuation from Korea: "From July 12 [1945] onward, American B-29's came almost every other day and regularly around 11:AM assaulting Rajin and Ungi in Northeast Korea, dropping many mines into the harbor".
An airplane attack on the train Yoko was aboard occurred, although she has not claimed she was able to identify the aircraft as American. On this point, Korean media cast suspicion on this passage as anachronistic, since "American military did not bomb any part of North Korea during the time frame of the story". The train was stalled by the attack 45 miles before reaching Seoul.
Korean communist presence
Also, when pressed, she admitted she could not identify the armed uniformed militia that her family encountered as definitively "Korean Communists", although that was the label she has given to her posing threat throughout the book., She explained that this had been the assumption she had made after hearing that the areas left behind in her trail had been overrun by communists. The book, in a different context, describes the mother telling Yoko that Koreans had formed what is known as an "Anti-Japanese Communist Army".
Harvard historian Carter Eckert had considered these points, and stated the only organized Korean "Communist Army" around this time would have been the guerrillas led by Soviet-trained Kim Il Sung, who "did not arrive in Korea until early September 1945", but there might have been "local Korean communist groups" present.
Actually however, there was already a report that on August 8, a Korean contingent of 80 strong men was spotted with the Soviet Army, crossing the border into To-ri (土里; Japanese: Dori). It was only a short distance by speedboat across the Tumen River for them to arrive from Russia to this town.
"Korean Communist soldiers" were bereft of their uniforms for Yoko, her sister, and mother to use as disguise in the book. Some media coverage gave a forced reading saying this term can only have applicable meaning as soldiers of the "Korean People's Army", not established until 1948, so that Yoko was describing uniforms nonexistent at the time.
Awards
Watkins was awarded the Literary Lights for Children Award by Associates of the Boston Public Library in 1998. and also the Courage of Conscience Award by the Peace Abbey.
