The market price for that amount of land should have been two thousand dollars but the Suagr Company gave us six hundred and claimed they had given us a high price. My father had absoluteky refused to sell his land even after he had been beaten. The police sent people to our home, telling my mother that if she didn't find his seal, my father would never return home. My mother looked everywhere for his

seal, but she couldn't find it anywhere. Perhaps my father had thrown the seal away, or burned it to emphasize his determination not to sell his land.

     But the police knew what to do. They ordered another seal made, registured it, and stamped the seal themselves, in y father's stead.

     According to Mr. Chen, a former policeman who had been dismissed by the top police authorities, my father was a very respectable man. Of the five people that refused to sell their land, four of them eventually gave in. Only my father resisted until the very end. Mr. Chen told my father that although he had burned his seal, the police had made another one for him, and the process of selling his land was in progress. Upon hearing this, my father shouted, "I am going to sue them. This is illegal." And then he was locked up. After Mr.Chen told my father about the police doings, the police cursed him and dismissed him from his job. But he didn't resent my father for that. He considered him a hero. Unfortuantly, my father was just a lone voice - - the only one who resisted.

XII.
     After finishing elementary school, I looked for a job everywhere, just as all the other villagers did. Finding a job at that time was like trying to "put eye drops into your eye from upstairs." I couldn't possibly support our family. I have liked to read ever since I was young. I would read stories about work-study students who had accomplished great deeds in their lifetime, and I often told my mother that I wanted to do the same. I wanted to go to Tokyo to work. I knew that my mother was lonely after my father died, and she told me that I was to young to leave home. She wouldn't agree to let me go until we had spent all out money and were virtually penniless.

     When I decided to go to Tokyo, we were forced to sell all our farm tools as well as our oxen to earn money for tickets. In the end, my mother agreed relunctantly to let me leave. During her lifetime, she had never even travelled to a neighboring town - - she had never ridden a train. It was almost inconceivable to her that her son would be riding a train and a boat, crossing the ocean to seek eductaion, to find an oportunity to work.