122 Chapter 6
one small boyhood accident that had enormous effects on his life. Iliaron
Em spent his youth on an island on the Soviet side of the Amur River. His
family had inherited a house from kulaks who had been repressed in 1933.
Their village grew wheat, beans, corn, potatoes, and onions. In the summer,
the Chinese workers would cross over from the Chinese side of the Amur
and help Iliaron’s village harvest the crops, particularly the onions. In his
kolkhoz (Novaia Stroika), some Koreans could speak Chinese and vice
versa; in this way, the workers communicated. Iliaron laughed when recall-
ing that Chinese women wore pants just like the men, stating, “This I remem-
ber well!” He explained that Korean women wore long skirts even when
working in the fields. The Koreans and the Chinese would work the summers
together and then divide the harvest or the earnings. Iliaron remembers the
Chinese making Chinese dumplings with meat and bamboo inside and
sharing them with the Koreans. At the end of each summer the Chinese
would return to their side of the Amur.
The case of Iliaron’s father, Chang Jim Em, exemplifies how the
NKVD and Soviet state treated criminals. In 1935, Iliaron and his young
cousins were playing a game called “fire drill” or “fire team” with matches.
They set some bundles of straw on fire and the children could not put it out,
as a result of which some properties were burned. This fire was blamed on
Em’s father, with the accusation that Chang Jim Em was against the kolkhoz
Novaia Stroika, and he was sentenced to three years in prison. Once so
labeled, Chang Jim Em found it very difficult to escape from being seen
as “anti- S oviet” or a “socially harmful” ele ment. In 1938 Iliaron’s father was
released after serving his sentence. He saw his family again for three days,
was rearrested, and sentenced by another troika in 1938 simply for being
“unreliable.” He was sent to Western Siberia to cut trees and died in 1939.
The interviews with Iliaron Em supported the importance of fieldwork
as compared to state archival memoirs. This story was not one that Mr. Em
wanted to tell, except that the opportunity to talk about the Korean depor-
tation presented itself and we were introduced by a mutual acquaintance,
Em’s grand son. At the beginning of the interview, Em hesitated. This was
our second interview, one year after the first. Em gave me a painful look,
stopped, and then deci ded to tell me the story about the “fire brigade,” which
was one of the most painful events of his life. His pain was compounded by
the fact that he felt some complicity in the event that had caused his father
to be arrested. He began with, “playing ‘fire team’ was not my idea, but the
idea of my older cousins.”
As a result of losing his father, Iliaron faced the difficult task of work-
ing longer hours so that his family could maintain their family “production