TO YOU

ELLIS ISLAND IMMIGRANT PORTRAITS

PUBLIC DOMAIN REVIEW - ELLIS ISLAND IMMIGRANTS


EXCERPT: These images of people wearing their folk costumes were taken by amateur photographer Augustus Sherman who worked as the Chief Registry Clerk on Ellis Island from 1892 until 1925. The people in the photographs were most likely detainees who were waiting for money, travel tickets or someone to come and collect them from the island.

INSPIRATION for A FAMILY TREE

NANSOOK HONG'S UNIFICATION CHURCH EXPOSE HAS A LOT TO SAY ABOUT CHURCH and KOREAN VALUES

 Published in 1998, this survivor of the controversial Unification Church cult, was married underage and immigrated illegally to the United States.  She was married to the oldest son and then heir apparent of Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who established his church as well as an international business empire, with the help of devotees called "Moonie," die to their smiling but sometimes vacant look.  I picked up this book because I wanted to understand how Nansook Hong escaped.  She depicts a life full of violence, personally and within the church.  Because Moon declared himself and his wife and their 13 children the True Family on earth, despite the fact that adultery was considered the worst sin one could commit, and that thousands of church members who'se marriages were also arranged were expected to be celibate before marriage and faithful after, it turns out the True Family wasn't held to the same standards.  Her husband was out of control, a drug and sex addict who beat her.  The Church was involved in cash businesses. Finally and systematically Hong one day left, sure that she would be killed by her husband. 

In this book there is a lot to learn and think about when it comes to Korean culture and the ideas about loyalty in family and community.

Page 36 - That church members left their children to be raised by other members so that they could prioritize traveling to preach/ witness and conduct business.  Couples were abandoning their babies to the care of others.  This was no model for a perfect family.

Page 53-54 -  The Church appealed to "alienated youth" who were out of step with both their parents and their peers."

Page 65 - "To become engaged in the Unification Church, one must have been a member for three years, one must have recruited three new members, and one must have made the required financial contribution to the Indemnity Fund.  This payment symbolizes Unification teaching that all of humanity shares in the debt owed for the betrayal of Jesus and that we must all pay for this collective sin."  (The marriages were arranged.)  Also three years are supposed to lapse between the Initial Matching Ceremony and actual consummation of the marriage.  (But in her case all this was skipped.  She was 15.  And it was assumed that she and her husband would one day rule the church.)

Pages 14- 15 - that Buddhism and other native believes such as Shamanism  and Confucianism are incorporated as well as Christianity.  "In addition to ancient beliefs in ancestor worship and the spirit world, there is a strong messianic strain in my culture.  The notion that the Messiah or herald of the Righteous Way would appear in Korea predates the introduction of Christianity into Korea a hundred years ago.  It has its roots in the Buddhists notion of Maitreya and the Confucian idea of Jin-In, or the True Man, and in Korean books of prophecy, such as the Chung Gam Nok."

Page 17 - "Even in the aristocracy in the ancient Korean kingdom of Silla was classified according to what was known as the bone-rank system...  The elite were divided into three classes.. the holy bone class, from which the sacred kings sprang, the true-bone class or the upper aristocracy, and the head classes, which included all other members of the aristocracy.  This would influence Sun Myung Moon's organization of his own religion.

Page 31 - He married in 1960 at a time when many had left the church as they did not believe Sun Myung Moon was the Messiah or like that he personally selected marital partners for members.  (His wife, Hak Ja Han is considered to be the True Mother, and he the True Father, and they are not to be disobeyed. She gave birth to 13 children called True Children.  However there is rumored children outside of this marriage for Moon.)

Page 139 - Marriage is not considered a romantic liaison.  Her marriage "was a "Providential Union, ordained by God, but one that the secular world would not understand."

Page 140 - after one of the True Children died..."Reverend Moon frequently joined the living with the dead in matrimony." This is because no one was supposed to be able to enter into the heaven who was not married.

*** I found this book shocking and bizarre and yet I do know that it's not just Korean culture or this particular cult/church that is rife with sexism and the devaluation of women to be the bearers of children and who must accept sex any time it is demanded, and so on.
The author was uncommonly brave to tell her story.

MEDICAL GENEALOGY - KEEP THOSE DEATH RECORDS IN PERSPECTIVE

A long time ago I was listening to a radio talk program by the then popular Doctor Laura.  Someone who was adopted called in and wanted to locate their birth parent.  Among the reasons why was medical information.  Doctor Laura said that medical science was so on top of things (in so many words) that this was a dumb reason to find a birth parent.  And this was before DNA and an understanding about hereditary diseases!  Needless to say I could not disagree with Doctor Laura more.

Recently I was researching for someone who has a once in a life time opportunity to tour a European country with a church group.  He and his wife plan to depart from the group and spend about a week touring through ancestor homelands.  He lost a young son to colon cancer a few years ago and then was diagnosed with it himself and is surviving.  I'm thrilled that he will be well enough to go on this trip.  So I went ahead and, beginning with his father, verified which of several candidates with a fairly common surname in a small region of a particular state was his, found his father on census records, and discovered that his grandfather, who had died before he was born, had gone through an evolution of given names, which is making finding him coming in on a steamship or naturalization records that will tell me the name of the town his grandfather left over a hundred years ago a little bit tricky. Currently I have a declaration of intent that might be his, but no completion of citizen ship documented. 

I went ahead and got the death certificate for his grandfather and from the information printed on it by the attending doctor, there was a description of lesions on the colon.  (The word cancer was not used.) Tears sprung from my eyes at the realization that there is a familial aspect to this cancer.

The reasons why someone dies...
I recently listened to an audiobook by a popular author who does some hypnosis to help people heal from trauma, including the trauma of their previous deaths and violent experiences, such as rape, loosing limbs, car accidents, death in childbirth.  Hearing a long list of reasons why, I was reminded of all the death certificates I've seen.  Some of them come with oral histories from the family, for instance a carpenter who burned up in a fire.  The doctor noted his whole body was burned.  The family says he was the victim of arson by the mob.  Reading the death certificate I would not know that, and I may check some newspaper databases to see if there is any mention of the fire - or the mob.

One adoptee I know has made medical decisions based on the fact that breast cancer is rampant in her birth mother's line, which she would not know without having found her and done the genealogy.


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