Thomas Gregory Song was born in Tokyo as one of the 25th generation of the Song Family of the Eujin Clan in 1929 (Showa 4). In 1934, his father was assigned to work in Dairen City in Manchuria (then Japanese-occupied Manchukuo). During Song’s adolescence in Dairen, he received education under the Imperial Japanese system. Song attended Komeidai Primary School, Dairen Junior High School, and Lvshun High School, where ethnically Japanese students were the majority. The Song was ethnically Korean and kept his Korean name Song Jae-Dong (宋在東/송재동) until the implementation of the Soshi-Kaimai Policy in 1939 which demanded all people of the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, and other people of the Japanese Empire to adopt Japanese family names as well as family names. In 1939, Song was renamed Hiroshi Kohara (小原 博). According to Song’s biographical essays published in the Tosho Shinbun (a Japanese newspaper focused on literary review), during primary school Song felt to some extent shielded from ethic bullying by the class teacher Mr. Ando, who took a special interest in him and sought to smooth Song’s path through the early school years. This aegis did not extend to Song’s years in Junior High School, as he openly expressed opinions challenging the orthodoxy of Imperial Japan. This resulted in intense bullying of Song by his Japanese classmates, including the loss of his teeth when beaten after denying the divinity of the Japanese emperor. While his Japanese classmates believed without question that ‘Imperial Japan would eventually win the war against the West’, Song maintained reservations.
Yet despite these complicated interactions, Song was already in fact culturally Japanese. When the Soshi-Kaimai Policy was to be implemented, he was in fact thrilled that he would be adopting a formal Japanese name. U-Heon and So, on the other hand, were likely conflicted on seeing their sons lose their Korean names and becoming yet further Japanized.
The year 1945 saw the collapse of the Japanese Empire and the portending of a new world order. As Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces, Dairen was, de facto, stranded and about to be re-occupied by the Soviet Red Army – a fate direly dreaded. Anticipating the chaos that would befall Dairen, the Song family fled back to Seoul on a smuggling ship. In Seoul, under the control of the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK), Song found himself unable to integrate into Korean society, as he spoke no Korean and was in fact fully culturally Japanese.
It was therefore his very good fortune to befriend an American GI named John Shay who was stationed in Korea. This friendship ultimately culminated in the Shay family ‘adopting’ Song; John’s parents arranged for Song to immigrate to their home in Boston. Thomas Song left Korea in 1948 embarking on the start of his new American identity.
