The Agony is in the Details

I continue to struggle with my mother's past. It seems every other day, she gives me another part of her story that has me having to unravel what I've written in a section and reknitting the time line. Then I have to correct my timeline, stories I've written and the photo album information.

Just yesterday Art actually found a map on line of north Korea in 1945. It had the old Japanese names and the current Korean names. It was magical to suddenly see the mythical places my mother talked about as real locations. However, then we saw that what(we thought)she told us about them walking from Kanko which is now Hamhung to Fuson (now Buson)it didn't make sense. It's just not possible.

That's when she told me, "Of course, we didn't walk the entire way. There was a train that took us part way and then just dropped us someplace and we didn't know how to get to Fuson. We had to find guides to show us. It took us 10 days to walk to the 38th parallel dividing line for north and south Korea while suffering the after effects of typhus and diphtheria."

Granted my aunt says it was more like 20 days.

And on and on it goes... I just know that once I've printed the photos and stories out to everybody, they'll tell me something else that will change a portion of what I thought they told me and what they thought I already understood.

There's another amazing story I'll write later after I've done my work for today. I'm going to see if we can get over to my aunt's house to show her what I've done so far and get some confirmation on those agonizing details.