One day, many years ago, over a glass or two of wine, my wife and I wondered at how improbable that she, a Korean, and I, an American, should ever meet.

Her birthplace, Pusan at the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, lies halfway around the world from mine in Boston. An almost unimaginably vast gap, not only of geography but history, culture, and custom separates our two lands.

Yet, strangely, a generation ago our two cultures met once before. For in 1951, my father, a Marine combat pilot, was ordered to Korea to fight.

As we talked I realized that it was barely a year after his return from the Korea War that I was born; I am a child of the Korean War. That cataclysmic event, so far away, determined my very existence.

And nearly a half-century later, I am married to another child of the same war.

How remarkable, I began to realize, how cosmically unexpected, and wonderful, that my very typically American life should be so intertwined with this strange and ancient land so very far away! How very lucky I am!

Immediately, I wanted to learn more. Coincidentally (do you really believe in coincidences? I have my doubts) my wife and I traveled to Korea for a two-week vacation to visit her relatives in Seoul and Pusan.

A land of great beauty and contrasts, mountainous Korea is populated by still-active thousand-year-old temples and automobile plants, tiny, traditional villages and modern, bustling cities, and everywhere, gracious, hospitable people. I recall one day visiting an ancient Buddhist monastery and being mobbed like a rock star by dozens of giggling elementary school children wanting to practice their English. We later got them to pose for a slightly more formal photo (I'm second from the right):

Bulguksa Temple, Kyongju, Korea, September 1995

And yet everywhere I was reminded of events of fifty years ago, and of my father. What river were we crossing? I asked one day. The Naktong, I was told -- the site of the famous Pusan perimeter where inexperienced South Korean and American forces just barely held against the battle-hardened, numerically superior People's Army.

 

Another day we passed a great monument with the number 38 emblazoned on it: the famous 38th parallel, of course, the original border between North and South Korea (now it's a little more complex). I could not help but imagine a flight of F4U Corsairs from VMF-323 off the jeep carrier USS Sicily flying overhead. Perhaps they were.

The 38th Parallel today

The Korean War is hardly remembered in the United States today. Yet it was a turning point, not only for those who participated, but also for US foreign policy, indeed, East-West relations, for the next fifty years. It determined the very shape of the Cold War thereafter, from Hungary in the West and Taiwan in the East to the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vietnam.

After World War II, US administrations thought of the Soviet Union as an ally. After Korea, they would not think that way again until Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

Korea and the great war, the maelstrom that swirled there fifty years ago, changed everything: for my family, for my wife's family, and for the world. Telling its story: that is why I wrote Land of the Morning Storm.

You dedicated your book to "our parents." Why?

They lived it. All that this book portrays, and more, our parents endured.

I honor my father's memory, even as he honored his service to his country during World War II and the Korean Conflict. As well I honor my mother who, like so many other young brides of the time, waited and worried, day after day. Right: My father's squadron in Korea, VMF-323 aboard the USS Sicily, around August 1951. "Pop" (Capt. W.E. Briggs) is farthest to the left in the back row. An F4U Corsair with the "Death Rattlers" insignia emblazoned on the cowling is in the background.

My in-laws met in the shattered ruins of Seoul after the war. Both had survived by hiding in the countryside, fleeing the bombs and the battles and the countless brutalities and atrocities. The experience forever colored their lives; perhaps the war, and the threat of another, caused them to emigrate to America, where I met their eldest daughter.

I will never forget, however, the day we visited my mother-in-law's sister in the fishing town of Sokcho. What a tasty meal she served us -- her husband's freshly caught squid, vegetables, wonderfully prepared -- but I could not thank her, because an exploding bomb all those years ago had robbed her of her hearing. Whose was it, I asked: ours or theirs?

Did it really matter? was the response.

Do the main characters in the book reflect real people?

Other than the historical figures -- MacArthur, Truman, and so on -- no. It's odd: in the beginning I actually intended to model certain of the characters on people I knew -- relatives, friends, acquaintances.

But then the characters themselves took over -- literally. They took on lives and personalities of their own. They took control of the book away from me, and I found myself merely transcribing their words and actions. They demanded their story be told: I was merely their servant.

 

 

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