Out of the Pits
Makeshift outhouses lined the refugee camp in Busan.
My older brother fell into one—
a deep hole beneath two loose panels.
Father dragged him out, carried him to the dock,
washed and washed him in salt water.
My brother told a story—
after school he would sell C-ration cans,
laid out on a cloth.
One day, a U.S. soldier snatched them all.
My brother chased the truck,
climbed on, rode it to the base,
and took his cans back.
When I was five,
I went to the dock to watch the iron ships—
big as schoolhouses.
Soldiers tossed C-rations into the water.
Adults dove after them.
The soldiers laughed,
threw more cans just beyond their reach.
Later, a teacher said,
“We always thank the American soldiers
for their assistance.”
I thought of those men at the dock.
Now, retired in California,
I wonder about them still—
boys—maybe seventeen,
barely out of high school,
reckless, looking for fun.
White devils,
the North Koreans called them.
“Our cold, treeless mountains
will gnaw them away.”
But in the end,
they survived on C-rations.
pulled from their own pits.
I hope they made it back.
Hee-June Choi is the author of three poetry books published in Korea. His work has appeared in Korean poetry magazines and journals since the late 1990s, as well as in JoongAng Daily, one of the country’s leading newspapers. After retiring from the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley, he began writing and publishing poetry in English. His poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Chicago Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, The American Journal of Poetry, The Rising Phoenix Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Red Wheelbarrow.
