Chapter 1 Summary

Sookan is a little girl growing up in Korea during World War II. All her life, the Japanese have occupied her homeland and treated her people as slaves.

Sookan is ten years old in the spring of 1945, living with her family in Kirimni, an area of Pyongyang, which is today the capital of North Korea. Sookan lives with her Mother and Aunt Tiger, Grandfather, and her little brother, Inchun, who is about six years old. Sookan has an older sister, Theresa, who is a Catholic nun at a convent, and Sookan's three older brothers are away at a Japanese labor camp. Sookan's father is in Manchuria, working with the Korean Independence Movement to try to free Korea from Japanese rule. Sookan is old enough for school, but her family does not want her to attend the Japanese school, where she will be taught...