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| Julius Helm and his family in Yokohama, circa 1883. Courtesy of Leslie Helm. |
By Robert Neff
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| "Yokohama Yankee," by Leslie Helm |
In 1885, Julius Helm was an imposing Prussian both in stature ― he was over six feet tall ― and personality. Born in Rosow (north of Berlin) in 1840, he lived a rather simple, if not hard, life. His schooling ended when he was 14 and he was sent to the fields to work as a laborer ― work began at three in the morning and often ended at 11 at night.
During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, he served in Prussia's First Army and distinguished himself. But once the war was over, he returned to the life of a laborer. It wasn't the life he desired. According to his great-grandson, Leslie Helm, the family often joked that the reason Helm had left Germany in 1868 was to run away from a marriage but it was much more than that ― it was the desire for adventure and to make his own fortune.
Helm first went to the United States where he worked on farms in Minnesota but things did not work out. Arguments with fellow laborers, an invitation to marry an Irish girl and witnessing a gruesome accident involving a thresher convinced Helm that the United States was not the answer to his dreams. He had to seek his fortune elsewhere. He chose China.
But the fickleness of fate changed his plans. The ship going to China had just left and, with no other choice, he booked passage aboard The Golden Age in 1869 ― a steam and sail-powered ship ― going to Yokohama, the wild west of Japan. The voyage from San Francisco was not easy. Near Japan they encountered a typhoon that nearly took his life. It left the ship badly damaged so that it limped into Yokohama.
For two years he worked as a constable at the American consulate and as a warehouse keeper ― living frugally and saving his meager earnings. But one day, in 1871, his fate changed. Helm found himself in front of Max August Scipio von Brandt, the German consul general to Yokohama. In his book, Leslie Helm wrote:
"A German sergeant named Carl Koppen was in the process of transforming a band of sword-bearing samurai into a modern army. 'Before Koppen came, we were barbarians,' von Brandt had heard one Japanese officer say. 'Now we are like Europeans. We want to become Prussians.'"
For a couple of years, Helm trained the Japanese army in Wakayama but in the summer of 1871, the armies of the Japanese warlords were abolished. Helm returned to Yokohama, fell in love with a Japanese woman named Hiro and eventually married her. He also established his own draying (freight) company.
While he may not have been book-educated, Helm was an intelligent businessman and soon began to buy out his competitors. In 1878, he acquired a dairy farm ― in the name of his Japanese friend because the farm was outside of the boundaries in which foreigners could do business. As in Joseon Korea, milk was not appreciated by the Japanese.
"Since the Japanese did not like the smell of dairy products ― they disparagingly referred to anything Western as batakusai (stinks like butter) ― all the milk was sold to Westerners."
As his businesses grew, so too did his family. By 1883, Helm had three living children ― another child had died at childbirth. He should have been happy but "he remained unsatisfied with life" and sought to go back to his roots ― farming.
In early 1885, Helm sold his company to a group of Japanese businessmen and told his wife that they were moving to the United States as soon as he was able to find suitable land to start a farm. One can only speculate as to what his wife thought of this new plan. She was giving up everything she knew to live in a strange land and yet, considering she married a foreigner in an era when marriages of this type were frowned upon, one can imagine she, too, was thrilled with the prospect of a new adventure.
But what does any of this have to do with Joseon Korea? An unexpected encounter in Tokyo.
(My appreciation to Leslie Helm for providing the picture of his great-grandfather and for part of his great-grandfather's unpublished memoirs. His book, "Yokohama Yankee," is a fantastic read and provides a glimpse into not only his family's past and present but also that of Japan's.)
