I'm assuming this is the first of the letters my grandmother received. Chronologically organizing everything became a challenge when halfway through the translations, I realized the years just weren't adding up.
This letter is marked with the year 1918. My grandfather, the author of the letters, was born ten years later, in 1928.
What was I missing here?
I turned to the postmarked stamp on the envelope, since they, too, have many stories to tell. Postal markings on all of the letters provided endless fascination for me, since they unfolded the untold details of a letter's journey and its final custody. But surviving a century also eroded many of those details, which made putting them in order near impossible.
Turns out, telling time depends on who's telling it.
Korea, under Japanese rule at the time, categorized dates based on eras that represented the reign of an emperor. So "Showa 1918" which marked Emperor Hirohito's enthronement was really 1943 to the rest of the world.
In 1943, my grandfather was 15 years old. Some of these letters are teenage love letters!
That's where we'll start for now.