Connected to this young man
The Broken Map Home: Escaping Korea, 1945
by Konosuke Masuda (translated by Keiko Honda)
Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025
$22 / 9781773861760
Reviewed by Trish Bowering
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Can one individual’s quiet and unassuming historical memoir resonate loudly in our current times? Vancouver-based writer and artist Keiko Honda answers this question with a resounding “Yes,” as she offers a thoughtful translation of her grandfather Konosuke Masuda’s journal from the end of the Second World War. As a part of the defeated Japanese army on the Korean peninsula, this is his story, accompanied by Honda’s engaging commentary.
The Broken Map Home: Escaping Korea, 1945 is essentially a book within a book. Masuda is Honda’s maternal grandfather, and he documented his memories in a journal as he wandered the Korean peninsula north of the 38th parallel after the Japanese surrender in 1945. He later collected these in a privately published memoir called Thirty-Eighth Parallel Story: A Narrow Escape from Death, when he was 75 years old, intended for his descendants. Honda translates his writing, adding personal notes of her experience and providing historical context.
Masuda was born in 1916, at which time “the entire Korean peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule, a situation that would profoundly impact my grandfather’s life.” In 1929, the Masuda family moved to Kōnan, Korea because of her great-grandfather’s work. It was a time of global instability, and “totalitarian regimes gained traction in Europe and Asia, promising order and solutions through aggressive nationalism and state control. In Japan, which then controlled Korea, a militaristic and expansionist government was consolidating power, driven by ambitions to establish dominance in East Asia. This political climate in Japan would eventually lead to further expansionist policies and, ultimately, to World War II.”
In 1945, at the age of 29 and while working for the Chōsen Savings Bank in Korea, Masuda was conscripted into the Japanese Imperial Army. The war would be over in three months, and with Japan’s surrender, Japanese soldiers, families and settlers north of the 38th parallel were in Korean territory administered by the USSR. Many Japanese people faced enormous danger and obstacles in their imperative to repatriate to Japan.
This is the chaotic setting that situates Masuda’s first-person memoir of his four months traversing the Korean peninsula, basically abandoned by the Japanese military, and without much help from the Japanese government. It is a stark and dramatic example of how social status can change, from occupier to refugee, in a heartbeat, and how the individual–at the whim of international and regional politics–must learn to survive and adapt. As she introduces his narrative, Honda writes: “In reading this memoir, with its vivid and raw memories, we must carefully consider what is being conveyed and transform it into a force that will not permit the wars that are happening now and those of the future.”
Masuda’s memoir itself takes up most of the space in this slim volume, and reading it transported me to 1945, journeying with this young, displaced soldier whose goal is to either be reunited with his family, living to the north in Sŏngjin, or to cross southward at the 38th parallel to territory controlled by the Americans. What made this a unique reading experience was the personal nature of this piece, written for family and not for publication. It was heartfelt and refreshingly unpolished. This is not a criticism; in fact, it’s a reason to read this book, a feature that made me feel more connected across decades to this young man left on his own and just trying to survive.
So much of Masuda’s survival story hinged on chance. The decision to go left or right, to have a cup of sake or to leave immediately; these are the small decisions that changed the course of his life. While preparing to escape with an officer soon after the surrender, Masuda wrote: “After changing into civilian clothes, we had a toast with the sake they gave us, but I couldn’t drink much and ended up lying down for a nap. Because of that one cup of sake, I ended up wandering south and north until December, unable to go home and reunite with my family living north. I would have caught the last train north if I had gone straight to the station.” Chance is a feature of our lives that happens all the time, but Masuda’s memoir puts this perspective in fast-forward, showcasing the consequences.
The sense of chaos and disorder was stark. Masuda had a goal–to reunite with his family–but the overarching feeling was of a person living moment to moment. He contracted malaria and was treated in a refugee camp of sorts by a Japanese doctor. Typhus was an ever-present scourge, and many died.
He depended on the kindness of strangers, and those who had every right to bear a grudge. One Korean man, Kim-kun, had been in his employ at the bank in the before times, and had been vocal about institutionalised anti-Korean sentiment. The change was apparent. “Even though the times had changed with the end of the war,” Masuda wrote of his former employee, “he did not have a domineering or arrogant attitude, and he continued to help me both materially and emotionally as before.” There are many examples of the kindness of Koreans to the fleeing Japanese soldiers. Though Masuda recounts harrowing encounters with the Soviet soldiers, particularly towards women and girls, he also notes the time when one soldier showed great empathy.
Honda brings the book together beautifully in the last pages. She comes to this project as both a translator and a granddaughter, and her sense of the preciousness of this undertaking shines through. I find Honda such a careful and thoughtful writer, having read and appreciated one of her own memoirs, Hidden Flowers. Here, she tells how reading her grandfather’s memoir as an adult spurred her to learn more about the history of the Japanese colonisation of Korea and the atrocities committed by the Japanese army there during the Second World War, but also the “recurring cycle of human hardship,” and recognizing, “Japan’s complex role as both victim and perpetrator.”
Konosuke Masuda’s memoir feels like a testimony, a quiet voice as witness to the past. This book made me contemplate how much individual stories matter. Personal stories on a small scale help to promote empathy and fight polarisation. I’ll give Honda the last word, as she affirms her belief in the power of story:
While individual action may seem insignificant against the tide of history, I believe that art and storytelling can play a vital role in fostering empathy and understanding. What can art do to bridge divides? What is the power of stories to connect us to our shared humanity? These questions have driven me to undertake this translation, investing it with profound emotional significance. It’s through these stories that we can confront the past, understand the present, and work toward a more peaceful future.
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Trish Bowering lives in Vancouver, where she is immersed in reading, writing, and vegetable gardening. She has an undergraduate degree from UVic, and obtained her MD from UBC. Now retired from her practice, she focuses on her love of all things literary. She blogs at TrishTalksBooks.com and reviews on Instagram@trishtalksbooks. [Editor’s note: Trish was interviewed as part of our series. She has reviewed recent books by C.C. Humphreys, Marcus Kliewer, Liz Johnston, Jannell Lo, Ahmad Saber, and Aaron Cully Drake for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster