Naval nativity: As their mothers fled North Korean forces 75 years ago, five Christmas babies were born at sea

Picture a cargo hold on a ship, maybe as wide as a basketball court, as long as three placed end-to-end. With a lower, middle and upper floor.

Now cram 14,000 people in this space. It’s dark. The edges of the hold are steel walls. There’s no source of heat in the winter cold except what’s emitted by the mass of people. The place reeks of human waste, piling up at the feet of everyone around.

And your pregnant mother is standing shoulder-to-shoulder on one of those floors, with contractions signaling your impending arrival on this earth.

But you’re not the only one coming into this world in the mass of humanity, floating in a cargo ship in the frigid East Sea. You’ve got four siblings – by circumstance, not bloodline. Your birthdays are in late December 1950, six months into a war that has engulfed the Korean Peninsula.

You get the names Kimchi 1, Kimchi 2, 3, 4 and 5. And you’ll be known in history as the Christmas Miracle, five fragile lives tossed on the treacherous, uncaring currents of history, and the sea.