E l l e n   T h u n



             

Excerpt from November 1995 Video Shoot with Ellen Thun.

Pachapa camp was originally a camp for the Union Pacific workers and there were about 20 or 30 red shacks and they were divided into three rooms so that they could expand or become dormitories or family groupings, because many of the men had their wives and children, too, working. So, when they withdrew, an American couple bought the whole works for really very little sum of money.

There was a building there that belonged to the top management of Union Pacific; and it was a nice house that Riverside people usually lived in: 3 or 4 bedrooms upstairs and downstairs kitchen and dining room downstairs. There's a long front room that I remember was called a parlor. It was empty, though, when I peeped looking at it. But in this long room the Baileys who helped the Koreans learn English and to become more Christianized would hold meetings. I think they were called Sunday classes for the children to learn more Christian stories other than what they were learning from Korean text. And there were many others because Dolly mentioned and I don't remember the name at all because I was too young at the time but this was called a mission house, this parlor, and a church group was held for older people and the children had their Sunday School lessons. On weeknights, the Baileys would come there to teach Koreans English and they were so anxious for Koreans to learn to get along in the Riverside world.

I think the thing about Camp Pachapa that stays with most of us is the fact that there were pepper trees all over the grounds. They looked so dreary because Riverside was always hot and dusty and the trees just sort of limped and the red berries were always falling off. It wasn't a beautiful sight, but we remember the pepper tree at Pachapa Camp the best, I think, because all those I interviewed later on they said, "Oh yes, the pepper trees," and my cousin who was writing his story about Pachapa mentioned the pepper trees. Then of course there were eucalyptus trees and California oaks. But aside from that the grounds were very dusty and rocky and not at all pretty as you would think a city should have, you know, grass and stuff. But the families did use the grounds to plant a little bit of lettuce and onions, things like that.

About 1913 when the big freeze took place in Riverside the Korean part of the camp simply collapsed and left just the few families working in town in hotels and doing janitor's work. They stayed on because the rent was very cheap, it couldn't have been more than 5 dollars a month. So I lived out there and walked to work or bicycled to work. From here, too the Korean women worked beside their husbands and then worked in the orange groves. Like Mrs. Ahn, and Mrs. Lim, and Mrs. Kim, Mrs. Lee, there were two Mrs. Lees, worked at Ann Community Hospital and did the housekeeping work and cooking in a kitchen and generally doing the work that is done by workers who aren't really trained to be hospital aides or something and that was where Koreans learned, I think, very fast how Americans ate because these women came home and tried the recipes. One of the favorite recipes was called Johnny cake or corned bread. And Mrs. Ahn would make it for her husband and so for years that was the first thing he would ask her to make when he came from abroad. He'd be gone 2 to 3 months. But he would say, "Honey, I would like Johnny cake" and the children all remember that was their father's favorite food.

After the Koreans broke up to work in fields up north the group around the Ahns did not come back to Riverside. They came to Los Angeles and it broke up the Korean National Association as a big body in Riverside. I remember that. And we became a very small group. It was as if suddenly the earth had disappeared because we didn't have much to do with the Americans.