Traveling out of Love
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Club at the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company (OCMC) in north of Pyongyang circa 1910-1930 / Courtesy of Robert Neff collection
By Robert Neff
In February 1903, Charles H. Crawford arrived in Korea to begin work at the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company (OCMC), an American-owned gold mining company, located north of Pyongyang.
It wasn’t until late autumn 1904 that he was able to send for his wife, Bertha, and their small son, Rowland, to come to Korea to live with him. It is through Bertha’s letters that we gain some knowledge of what it was like to travel to and live in Korea during the Russo-Japanese War.
Bertha and Rowland departed the United States in November 1904 and sailed to Japan and then from there sailed to Korea on a small Japanese steamship. Because of the war, they traveled at nights and anchored in ports during the daytime, although the Russian navy was not operating on the west coast of Korea.
They saw many transports going up and down the coast and at Jemulpo (modern Incheon) they found the harbor full of warships and the two sunken Russian warships (Variag and Koreetz) in the process of being salvaged. Whenever they stopped, Bertha took the opportunity to speak with the foreign employees of the Korean Customs Service and was surprised to learn that many of them were convinced the Japanese success in its war with Russia was short-lived and that eventually the Russians would succeed.
From Jemulpo they sailed to Jinnampo the OCMC’s port facility where they stayed for a few days awaiting Charles and the bullion team to arrive from the mines. The Crawfords proceeded to the mine with the returning bullion team.
First they traveled up the Cheongcheon River to the walled city of Anju but Bertha recalled their passage was not easy.
“We spent one afternoon on the launch high and dry on the sand where the tide left us, with five miles of sand between us and shore and the boat lying on its side. The coast of Korea is very treacherous, being one mass of small islands with swift currents and many sandbars, and a little deviation from our course left us on the sand bar as the tide receded its usual 25 or 30 feet. The great rise and fall in the river makes it almost as bad and as we went the last five miles up the river in a large sampan, the eight boatmen were obliged to lift and carry the boat many times.”
From Anju they traveled some 90 kilometers overland to the mines, Bertha and Rowland in a sedan-chair borne by two four-man coolie teams, and Charles on a pony. Their baggage was carried on other ponies led my mapoo (horse handlers).
The road they traveled was still patrolled by the Japanese and checkpoints were established at various points along their way. Communication between these points was maintained by an emergency telegraph line “insulated for miles by beer bottles.”
Whenever they passed through villages they were quickly swarmed by crowds of curious Koreans who struggled to feel the Westerners’ clothing and bodies. According to Bertha: “They call us “the white devils” and think the reason we are so white skinned is because we drink milk. The Koreans never milk their cows merely keep them for beasts of burden.”
During the war, life at the mines was rather uncertain and hectic but once the war ended, things changed for the better. More Western women and their children moved to the mining community and Rowland soon had three little American boys (two-four years old) as playmates and Bertha lavished them with attention. In a letter to her family she described how they celebrated Christmas (1905) with a ten foot tall pine tree decorated with lit candles and fancy trimming that she had brought from the United States.
“‘Santa Claus’ came with it and no one had a thought that it was not the genuine ‘Saint Nicholas,’ even Rowland didn’t suspect it was his father. I made rag dolls, dressed Korean style, balls and stockings filled with sweets and besides we had toys sent from Kobe, Japan, and wheelbarrows and shovels the Japanese carpenters here made for the children. Surely, you would not have believed it could have been done with our surroundings. The Korean boys here at the house seemed to think it was a huge joke and enjoyed it as much as the children.”
They were also well-fed. There was venison, beef, pork, chicken, bear, vegetables grown in their gardens and even plum pudding and fruit cakes that the women made. Alcohol, however, was scorned upon not because of religious beliefs (most of the miners were Christians) but because of safety concerns.
There was also music. The OCMC had a Victor Talking Machine (record player) with several hundred records that “helped to pass the day.” Considering the noise made by the stamps in the mills, this record player must have been a God-send.
Occasionally there were other forms of entertainment:
“Yesterday a band of Chinese jugglers passed through here and we watched them perform for two hours. Through their methods were crude, yet they did the same things that an American juggler would have done. There were nine of them from the two small boys, who did the handspringing and cart wheels, to the tall six foot men who juggled with spears, cards with knives attached, and held the pole for the fancy vaulting, down by the ‘star,’ a young man, perhaps twenty-two years old. For music, they had a drum, cymbals and a large brass pan upon which they beat and its tones were very appropriate to the acting.”
Bertha was especially impressed with the sword-swallower who “really swallowed the sword and then had another sword laid across his body (blade pointing down) while another person hit it with a brick.
Three 15-year-old boys, two dressed as women and one dressed as a man, sang and performed a little comedy skit but Bertha wasn’t too interested in their act, especially when she discovered the reason for the show.
“The world is not so different on this side, for at the least we found they had what do you guess?- medicine, to sell. One of them bared his leg and taking an old rusty knife cut a gash above his knee even pounded the knife in then used this medicine and the blood stopped and the six inch cut closed up. He had numerous healed cuts on his thigh which he exhibited before he began.”
The Chinese not only performed and sold medicine, they also offered hope against the Japanese occupation.
“The Chinamen here tell us that in two months the Chinese soldiers, 20,000 strong, will sweep through here, driving out the Japanese and resuming the protectorate of Korea. I think the Korean sentiment would be, ‘Let them come.’”
But the rumors proved to be false. Korea’s future under the Japanese had grown dark and the Crawfords no longer felt they could live in Korea. In April 1906 they left for the United States and four years later Korea ceased to be an independent nation.
Robert Neff is a historian and columnist for The Korea
Times.