TERRITORY

It was not easy to figure out what was happening in the war.

Maggie had bought a new notebook, thinking that she would write down things about the war. She had been reading war stories in the newspaper for almost a month now. There were usually at least two articles on the front page: one about the fighting and another about the talking. The soldiers were doing the fighting, and the government people were doing the talking—endless meetings, where they tried to make a deal to end the war.

The articles about the fighting were hard enough. "U.N. troops withdraw ... foe in possession of strategic hill ... consolidation of position..." Maggie read and reread the stories, but she still couldn't "see" what was happening.

And the articles about the talking—they were downright impossible! "Repatriation of prisoners"? "Stalemate on non-aggression clause"? "Regional economic impact"? No wonder those government men couldn't agree on anything—they were too busy looking up all the words in the dictionary!

She put the paper down and picked up her notebook again. On the first spread, she had written S.K. / U.S. / U.N. at the top of one page, and N.K. / COMM. on the opposite page.

South Korea, the United States, and the United Nations against North Korea and the Communists. Those were the two teams. Well, not teams, but sides.

She looked at the two headings, then made all the letters into block letters, fatter and darker than before.

There. That was better.

But there was nothing else written on either page. No matter how much she read, she couldn't figure out what to write down.

The almost-empty pages reminded her of the times she had come running home from school in time for the last inning of a game. For those games, there were only a few plays recorded.

Maggie took a breath and sat very still for a moment.

It's because I've come in at the end of the game—I mean, the war. Well, maybe not the end, but at least in the middle. I don't have any idea what happened before, so nothing makes sense.

She nodded slowly. Even though she still didn't have the solution, at least she knew what part of the problem was: How did the war start, and what had happened between then and now?

***

"Library," Dad said. "They keep newspapers from a ways back. Why do you wanna know?"

"I need to learn about how the war got started," Maggie said. She had asked him how she could see newspapers from 1950, when the war began. "I thought maybe then I could sort of figure out what might be happening to Jim."

"Oh" Dad was quiet for a moment, started to speak, stopped. He pulled at one side of his mustache, which he often did when he was thinking.

"You'll probably need Mom's help," he said at last. "I don't think it's as easy as checking out a book."

Mom was always the one who took Maggie to the library. But it was a busy time of year: school, Treecie's birthday, Thanksgiving, Maggie's birthday, Christmas. Maggie kept asking, and finally, one day during Christmas break, Mom found the time to go with her.

The library at Grand Army Plaza was one of Maggie's favorite places. Mom had taken her there ever since she was a baby; the library had opened the same year Maggie was born. One of their regular outings, with Maggie in the baby carriage and Joey-Mick toddling alongside, had been a walk through Prospect Park to the enormous building at the north end, its entry flanked by huge columns and framed with gilded ironwork. They would walk through the big doors and pick out books and read and have a nice rest until it was time to go home again.

When Maggie was older, Mom explained to her that the library had been built to resemble a book. The entry area was the spine, and the two big wings of the building fanned out to either side, like a book that was partly open. For Maggie, that was the clincher: It was surely the most wonderful building in the world.

Even now she loved walking through those big doors, from the traffic and clamor of the busy plaza into the sudden peace of the lobby.

"Through here," Mom said and led the way to the periodicals room.

Finding the articles turned out to be a lot of work. The desk clerk helped them. First they had to look up "Korean conflict" in a big thick book that listed articles by subject. Then on little slips of paper they wrote down the dates and page numbers given in the book. They gave the slips to the clerk, who went off somewhere and brought back cardboard boxes labeled with the matching dates.

The boxes contained reels of microfilm. The clerk led them to the area where the large microfilm viewers were kept. He showed them how to wind one end of the film through the viewer's lens and onto an empty takeup reel.

Finally, Maggie pressed a switch to turn on the viewer's lamp, and there on the screen was the front page of an old newspaper. Magnified, so the almost invisible print on the film was blown up enough to read easily. It was like magic.

To get to another page, you turned a handle that moved the film along. Maggie had to keep looking back and forth from the slips of paper to the screen, reeling past pages and pages of articles that had nothing to do with the war.

The first articles she looked at were from the summer of 1950, almost three years earlier. The war had begun when she was only eight years old!

At first Maggie found it interesting to look at articles from so far back, but as she reeled through the yards and yards of microfilm, her disappointment grew. It felt like more of what she had already been doing—reading stuff about the war that she couldn't really understand.

And it certainly wasn't helping her one bit with figuring out what might be happening to Jim.

On another viewer, Mom was reeling through other articles. For a while it was quiet, the two of them reeling and reading.... Maggie began to get dizzy from the words sliding by in front of her eyes.

Then Mom made a little clicking noise with her tongue. "Come here and have a look now," she said.

Maggie scooted her chair over so she could look at the screen of Mom's viewer.

"Land," Mom said. "War is about land, territory. One side trying to control more than the other. Before World War II, Germany was taking over Europe a wee bit at a time, and the fighting was all about trying to get it back from them."

On the viewer was a map of Korea. Part of it was shaded with diagonal lines.

"See those lines?" Mom said. "That's showing you how much territory one side has. Now then. You'll be needing maps like this right from the beginning of the war. Here, give us a piece of paper."

Mom held the sheet of paper right up to the screen. Very lightly, she traced the outline of Korea and then the diagonal lines.

"April 1951," she said. "You'll be going back further and then forward again."

Instead of spooling randomly for articles about the war, Maggie was now looking for something specific. It made the search go much more quickly.

I'm on a treasure hunt, she thought. And the treasure is maps.

By the time they left the library three long hours later, Maggie had torn out the first two pages of her notebook and started over. On the way home she made plans: She would need to draw over the light tracings to make them darker, add captions, make more copies of the maps....

As soon as they got home, Maggie went right to the dining table and started working.

Joey-Mick plopped himself down next to her, glove on one hand, ball in the other. Thunk—thunk— "Whatcha doin'?"—thunk—thunk.

"What's it look like I'm doing?"

He watched her for a few moments, then frowned. "We didn't have no project like that in fifth grade."

"It's not for school."

The thunking stopped. "It's not? What's it for, then?"

"It's not for anything. I mean, it's just for me. I'm trying to learn more about the war."

"We're learning about World War II right now. I'd like to have been one of them parachute-jumpers. They got dropped behind the enemy lines, and then they had to do some special mission and get back to the other side. Without getting caught by the Nazis."

Maggie angled the sheet of paper in front of her toward him, so he could see it better. "See those diagonal lines there? That's the enemy. The Communists. The plain space, that's South Korea and the U.S."

Joey-Mick looked at the map. "It's almost exactly half and half."

"On that one, yeah. But"—she sorted through the pile of maps she had traced at the library—"look at this one. And this one here."

"Wow," he said. "That musta been a lot of fighting."

Maggie began working again. She needed to make copies of the outline of Korea. Her plan was to make a new map at least once a month, or whenever there was a change in territory.

Joey-Mick plunked the ball one last time. Then he took off the glove, the ball safe in its pocket, and put it on the table. "Want some help?" he asked. He picked up another pencil and started tracing, too.

The maps took a whole week of work, but it was worth it in the end. Maggie paged through her notebook several times after she finished, admiring the result. Not only had she redrawn the traced maps, but she had also added captions using what she had learned from reading all those articles.

MAPS OF THE KOREAN WAR

by Margaret Olivia Fortini

Map 1

1910–1945: Korea is all one country, but it's been taken over by Japan.

Map 2

1945: Japan loses World War II and has to leave Korea. Both Russia and the U.S. want Korea to be on their side. So they make a deal: The U.S. gets to help the government in the south of the country, and Russia gets to help the north. They make a line across the middle of the country.

Map 3

June–Sept. 1950: The Communists in the north part of Korea want to control the south part, too, so they send soldiers to try to take over.

The south is caught by surprise—nobody there expected the invasion. By August, the Commies take over most of the country, including Seoul, the capital. They push all the way through until the only part they haven't taken over is a tiny corner in the south.

Map 4

Sept.–Nov. 1950: President Truman asks the United Nations to send troops to Korea to help the southern side. U.S. and U.N. soldiers land in Korea and start fighting back.

By November, the south is winning! They get control of Seoul again, and they push the enemy almost all the way back—almost to the border with China!

Map 5

Nov. 1950–Jan. 1951: China sends troops to help the north side. With all those Chinese Commies to help, the north starts taking back the territory they lost. They get control of Seoul again and keep pushing south.

Map 6

Jan.–June 1951: The U.S. and other countries send more soldiers to help. They stop the attack and push north again, but not as far this time—only to the middle of the country. But at least they get Seoul back, hurrah!

Map 7

June–Sept. 1951: Battles along the line in the middle.

Maggie couldn't get over the difference between maps 3 and 4. In just three months, too. That was what had impressed Joey-Mick when she showed it to him.

A lot of fighting, he had said.

Maps 8, 9, and 10 covered the rest of 1951 and all of 1952. They looked just like map 7. According to the articles, there had been many battles along the dividing line during that time. But neither side had made any real gains in territory.

Maggie sat there, thinking hard. Then she rose and took the book of maps into her bedroom.

She looked at the photo of Jim and Jay-Hey on her wall.

Jim was working with the ambulance guys. So he's near the fighting. Maybe even in the fighting sometimes. Because that's what the ambulance guys would do— they'd go to where the fighting was and pick up the soldiers who've been shot by the Commies and take them somewhere else. Where doctors could help them.

And if Jim's camp was near the front lines, then that was where Jay lived.

Maggie traced the line between the two areas of territory on the last map. It was, as Joey-Mick had pointed out, almost exactly in the middle of the country.

Jay lives somewhere near this line. Where there's been more fighting than anywhere else.

She tried to imagine it. Bursts of gunfire. Grenades exploding. Airplanes dropping bombs.

Right around your house.

Maggie got a picture in her head. Jay sitting quietly, studying the baseball cards she had sent him. And then a huge BOOM! and the house shaking like crazy and Jay diving to the floor and lying there curled up in a little ball, the cards scattered around him....

Was that what it was like? Being really scared almost every minute all day long?

Now she had two reasons for wanting the war to end: So Jim could come home, and so Jay wouldn't have to be scared all the time.