“Now reflecting of my days at that time is just as painful as death. Nevertheless, I am still speaking. As for what happened there back then…”
It was when I was in the fourth grade in elementary school. My mother told me that I had better stay at home since these were uncertain times, so I stopped schooling and was just staying at home. Scared of being drafted by the Japanese, my sisters were married off early and had left away from home.
I remember it was one day in the spring of 1941 when I was fifteen. A Japanese man in yellow clothes visited my house with a village-head and told my mother to send me to “daishin tai?for the empire, since she had no son. Otherwise, he added, my family would be traitors and unable to live here. He also said that “daishin tai” meant to go to work at a workshop producing army uniforms. He forced my mother to sign on the document. Despite my mother’s resistance, I ended up being drafted in this way.
I arrived in Guangdong via Taiwan. Until then I still believed I was going to a workshop. However, an army surgeon gave all of the girls an examination for venereal diseases and assigned to the comfort station where I began my nightmarish days. The first night there the army surgeon who examined us came to my room. I was so scared of his coming that I ran away to the backyard and hid myself into the bushes. He chased me and then hit my face badly. After being beaten for a while, I felt numb on my whole face. In this way my life was ruined. Each room had its own number and we were not allowed to go out. If it was necessary, we could go out only after the soldier’s examination. During weekdays I received about 15 soldiers a day, but it seemed more than 50 during weekends.
We moved from Guangdong to Hong Kong, and then to Singapore after about three months. In Singapore sometimes we went on official trips to army bases located in deep valleys. There were so many soldiers rushing in that I could not even stretch my legs at night. After staying in Singapore for several months, we were on the move constantly to Sumatra, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Java to receive soldiers there. Suddenly, the soldiers stopped coming. The war was over. However, we didn’t learn of our liberation.
One day the Japanese soldiers took us to the 10th Army Hospital in Singapore and trained us in nursing to disguise us as nurses. After a while, we stayed in a US POW camp and then took a ship for Korea to come back home. I left home at 15 and came back at 20; it had been five years.
Shocked when I told her that I could not get married because I was a “comfort woman”, my mother died of sorrow. She died wishing for me to get married and have children and a happy life. So I followed her wish and got married, but ended up failing in marriage as I could not have a child. I opened my own small store and have had my living.
One day on TV I came to learn of an activity to resolve the “comfort woman” issue and then made my report on January 17th, 1992. Afterward I worked hard telling of the crimes committed by the Japanese army. In June 1993 I went with the Korean Council to the World Human Rights Conference held in Vienna to make a testimony about what I had been through and to demand acknowledgement and compensation from the Japanese government. Reflections and testimonies of my horrible experiences were just as hard and painful as if I were repeating the same experience again right now. However, I wanted to tell of who ruined my life like this. I also wanted to speak out about the comfort women issue that is neither over yet, nor resolved for all the victims who have survived and suffered like this.
It was probably in 1995 that the Japanese government said that it would not compensate, instead, it could give us “Asia Peace Fund for Women.” I really felt humiliated. I wondered if my testimony to the world to disclose the Japanese army’s crimes was simply regarded as a gesture for some money. When I began to give my testimony and work for the comfort women issue, Japan first dishonored us saying that there was no coercion and we did it out of our own will to make money. Then now they attempt to solve the issue with money while we have demanded they accept legal responsibilities. Therefore, I was opposed to the civil fund.
My body is still covered all over with wounds. I cannot even properly digest a spoonful of rice, so that I have to depend on digestive medicines to eat. I feel sore all over my body as if I am pricked with pins. While other seniors have happy lives full of love from their children and grandchildren, I have had such a lonely life without children. Who made my life such a miserable one?
I don’t know when I’ll die. Going to bed at night, I wonder if I can really achieve my wish and smile as I say goodbye to this world. The Japanese government seems to be waiting for us to die. However, it is really an absurd attitude. Shouldn’t it resolve this issue and its wrong past quickly and start a new future with its Asian neighbor countries?
From the official website of the Korean Council for the Women drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan
http://www.womenandwar.net/bbs_eng/index.php?tbl=M04028&cat=&mode=V&id=8&SN=0&SK=&SW=