Gang Duk-gyung was born in 1929 in Jinju, South Gyungsang province, and lived with her grandparents after her father died and her mother remarried. Her grandparents were well off, and she was sent to elementary school. In 1944, when she was 16 (in Korean age) and in the first year of high school, she was sent to Japan with the first group of the Women’s Volunteer Corps to an airplane plant in Hujiko in Japan.
The Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps
I was born in February 1929 in Sujung ward, Jinju, South Gyungsang province. My father died when I was young, and my mother remarried, so I was brought up mostly by her parents. My grand parents were comfortably off. Bongnae Elementary School was not far from where I lived, but I was sent to Yoshino Elementary School, now known as the Jungang Elementary School. I am one of those who graduated in the thirty-first year of the school’s existence. After six years of education, I stayed at home and did nothing. My mother didn’t think this was gook, and sent me to a new secondary school. The school was founded the same year I began to attend, and it had only a single class of about 60 pupils.
In June 1944, when I was still in the first year of classes, I joined the first Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps and was packed off to Japan. My teacher was Japanese, and he came to me and told me to join the Corps, saying I would be able to continue my study and earn money at the same time. My mother was strongly against it, and wept and pleaded with me not to go, but I had made up my mind. Two girls from my class, the head girl and I, went. The head girl was the brightest of all of us, and came from a wealthy family. Fifty girls from Jinju were gathered to join the Corps. Fifty more boarded our train at Masan, and there were 50 more waiting when we arrived at the port of Busan, making 150 in total. Before we left, we all trooped to the county office. A farewell ceremony was held in the yard which the county head attended. My friend read the Corps statement of allegiance. We didn’t have any ceremony when we left Jinju. We left by ferry the following morning. As we boarded the ship we began to weep. Two army ships and a number of planes formed our escort. Our ship had three decks, and we were stationed in the very bowels.
We arrived at Shimonoseki, boarded a train and were taken to an airplane plant in Fujiko City, Toyama prefecture. We were greeted by a middle-aged couple as we arrived. They showed us round the plant, and demonstrated how to work a lathe. The place was huge: it looked larger than the whole town of Jinju at that time. And there were many, many workers there. It was surrounded by walls, and guards were posted on the gates. We reached the plant by walking from our dormitory. We were given brownish uniforms and caps. The jackets had Women’s volunteer Corps sewn on them. We wore clothes we had brought with us in the dormitory, but we had to wear uniforms in the plant. We also had to don caps whenever we worked. One girl who did not wear her cap caught her hair in the machine, and she was dragged in and killed.
Our dormitory was near the main gate. The supervisor was a man, but we had a few female supervisors who helped instruct us. Before we started work, they took us on and outing to the coast near the border of Shinminato and Fusiki where many Koreans lived. We went to a village to get water, and were welcomed by Koreans, who asked if we had come from the homeland. We were delighted to meet them and there were hugs all round. The food in the plant was too bland for us, with no seasoning, so we asked the Koreas for salt. We also noted where the village was in case we ever got the chance to return.
We worked twelve-hour shifts, switching from days to nights every week. Our job was to cut components on the lathes. We had to do this with great care. Sometimes the material was so hard that the bit burned, and we would have to wait around for the machine to be repaired. All of us from Jinju used lathes, while the girls from Julla cut steel. Once, I found some of the steel so attractive that I took it back with me to the dormitory. But a supervisor took it from me, saying I could be arrested as a spy. I remember hearing that our wages would be saved, but we never saw any savings books. The work was hard and we couldn’t tolerate the hunger. We were given cooked rice, soya bean soup and pickled radish, but in tiny quantities. We would sometimes count each grain of rice so that we could savour it, or we sometimes gobbled the whole lot in just three spoonfuls. Some girls saved some of the rice to eat later. For lunch we would get three small slices of soya bean cake, tabu, which we often ate before lunch because of our ever-present hunger. When we were on night shifts we got breakfast after work then nothing until the evening. We were on night shifts we got breakfast after work then nothing until the evening. We were so hungry we sometimes stole food meant for different rooms. We little thought that the girls in other rooms might starve because of us. I was so hungry I sent my grandparents a postcard asking for food. They sent salt and beans, which temporarily appeased the hunger. I regretted the fact that in childhood I had often worried my grandmother by refusing to eat properly.
There were three older Japanese women who worked in the plant. They commuted from their homes and brought packed lunches. Sometimes I sent a postcard asking my grandmother to send washing soap, and exchanged this with the Japanese women for rice or salt. Because of hunger and overwork, one of the girls from Julla went crazy and was sent back home. Later, another girl pretended to by mad, rolling about on the road, but we are only soya bean cake rations meant for our tea. We would cry ourselves to sleep, crouched around the stove.
The dormitory rooms were the size of twelve tatami mats, and a dozen or so girls slept in each. We each had three sets of bedding including mats and quilts. The dormitory was so huge we never saw all of it nor knew who slept where. There were no Japanese women, and we Korean were grouped according to our home towns, Jinju, Mans, Chulla province, and so on.
Amongst those of us from Jinju, my friend was named captain and I her deputy. I don’t remember who gave us these nicknames. I don’t remember that we did anything special, except that we wrote the words to a song, which I can still remember. The words were in Japanese and accompanied a military song we had learned earlier in our school.
Ah, across mountains and seas,
We, the Women’s Volunteer corps, have come thousands of miles.
The Korean peninsula, seen far away on the horizon,
Our mothers’ faces shine from there.
As the snow fell, we Jinju girls would walk around singing.
Once, the girls in our room staged a strike. We agreed to stay in bed and to refuse to get up one morning. When the supervisor came to wake us, we remained with our eyes closed, pretending to be sleeping. The set hour when we were meant to start work passed and we didn’t go. But we received no food and were heavily reprimanded. About two months after we arrived, we had become so hungry that we tried to run away early one morning. My friend and I ran to a Korean in Shinminato, whom we had met before. However, the supervisors somehow found out where we were and came for us. We were taken back and slapped on the face many times. We were scolded severely, and told we should set a good example not try to run away. Fifty more girls came from Jinju later. Among them, Kang Youngsuk was one year younger than me. I scolded her and told her she should never have volunteered, saying how hard life was. We looked for an opportunity to run away, and after a while my friend and I seized our chance again.
A Comfort Woman
It was night. We sneaked under the barbed wire, and ran in the opposite direction from the one we had taken during our previous escape attempt. We wandered around not far from the plant but were seized by a military policeman. We had promised to stay together whatever befell us and held hands tightly, but I found myself alone when I was thrown into a truck. I was left alone with the policeman and a driver.
My captor had three stars on his red lapel. I didn’t know his name or rank at first, but later found out his name was Coporal Kobayasi Tadeo. He sat with the driver through the journey, but half-way through stopped the vehicle and told me to get off. It was very dark; nothing was visible. He raped me. I had no experience of sex. So I was too scared even to try resisting. If such a thing happened now, I would kill myself by biting my tongue off. But at that time I was scared and helpless.
We got back on the truck and rode further until we arrived at an army unit. Two guards stood outside, and behind the buildings was a tent. My captor took me there and told me to stay put. There were already five or so women there, who looked at me in a daze and said nothing. Soon, day dawned. The tent was partitioned into five or six cubicles. Mine was the size of one and a half tatami, but had no actual mat. I slept on a simple military bed. Most of the women were older than me, and at first I was scared and not sufficiently composed to talk with them, so I didn’t realize what we were there for.
Some three days later, Kobayasi came and had sex with me again. Then, other soldiers began to come. I served about ten a day. No one came during the day, although they would visit on Saturday afternoon.¡¡No one stayed overnight except for Kabayasi. He came often. We women generally slept in one place. Our number was less that the number of soldiers, so we couldn’t have any days off. I remained scared, and my abdomen hurt a lot, so I didn’t get a chance to think about anything else. The soldiers form other units would sometimes take us out. I was called Harue, and if a soldier called one of our names, that particular woman had to follow him, carrying a blanket. We had to serve countless soldiers on the wild mountainside. My abdomen, my womb, throbbed with pain. I had to serve so many men. Afterwards, I would be unable to walk back to the tent, and the soldier would have to drag me off the mountainside. I can’t describe in words the misery I endured.
Kobayasi brought me clothes, and I also had the clothes I had been wearing when I ran away from the plant. Our food came from the army, and I remember balls of cooked rice. We ate on a low table on the ground. Kobayasi sometimes secretly brought me extra balls of rice and dried biscuits. I was scared at first, but later I stopped being afraid of him. I didn’t get any medical examination. After some time, the army unit moved. The soldiers boarded a long, khaki vehicle which looked like a posh taxi and three trucks. We women got on one of the trucks with other soldiers. We moved in the dark.
It probably took less than a day to arrive at the next site. As we drove along, I could see a river on one side and mountains on the other. The new site was near water, perhaps a lake or a broad river, and was surrounded by fields and trees. A lot of snow had fallen. The army compound was huge with flat-roofed low buildings built haphazardly. Unlike where we had been before, there were quite a number of private residences. We were taken to a house which also had a flat roof. The entrance led to a corridor off which there were many rooms. Each had a window facing the back yard. Each had tatami mats. There were about 20 of us housed there, in quite crowded conditions. Those who had been there when we arrived often went out, on some days leaving just five or six of us. The unit was large, but not many soldiers came. We served maybe five of six a day. Some stayed overnight. There was no exchange of money or tickets.
To the left of the entrance was a large room, and to the right was a row of small rooms. We would usually sit in the large room while the soldiers queued up outside the door then walked in. Each soldier would call out for the woman he wanted, and go whth her into one of the small rooms. Each room was big enough for two people to lie in, leaving just a small space. Each had a mattress, blanket and hot water tin. We were told to place the tin under our feet or to cuddle it when it was cold, but I don’t remember a very cold winter when I was there. I had regained my bearings somewhat since the move, and now began to ask questions of one of the women, Boksun, or of Kobayasi. Boksun and I lived in the same building. She said she had been there the longest of all of us, and she certainly looked over 30. I asked her how far we were from Toyama and where exactly we were. She replied that she didn’t know Toyama and told me the name of the place where we were, although I can’t remember it now. She also said that the civilian bastards who controlled the station kept all the money involved although they were meant to give it to us. She said “Poor you, you were seized by a soldier, yet you don’t get paid?
I tried to befriend Kobayasi, believing that I might be able to run away if I coaxed him sufficiently. I smiled at him for the first time, and asked if it was far to Toyama. At first, he refused to tell me anything, saying our location was a military secret. But later he told me this was a place prepared for the Emperor to escape to. He said the Emperor would be coming. On some occasions he refused to say anything, claiming the answer to my question was a military secret, but at the same time he promised to let me go home soon. Once he asked if I had worked at the plant. I think he knew my past. I didn’t speak to any soldiers except Kobayasi. I fell ill and, in my misery, wrote a song with a borrowed pencil.
Ah, crossing from one mountain to another,
I came to the Women’s Volunteer Corps a thousand miles away from home ;
But I was captured by a sergeant
And my body torn asunder.
I set these words to a military tune I had learnt at the plant. One day, I sang it to Kobayasi, but he quickly stopped me. From then on, he didn’t visit me as frequently as before. I don’t think I spoke to anybody except for Kobayasi and Boksun. Whenever I bumped into any of the other women, we would exchange glances and nod. I remember hearing their names, Meiko, Akiko, and so on, when soldiers called for them. I lived in my own world.
I remember several men who wore khaki but no rank badges and who visited the comfort station often. They brought our meals, but we women didn’t eat together. The rice was always short, although we also had soya bean soup and pickled radish. Once in a while they would give us fried plants culled from the mountains. Once. Kobayasi, in a somewhat drunken stupor, brought me sushi. Boksun sometimes went out in the evening, to where I don‘t know, and came back having had a gook supper. When asked by the others where she had been, she would simply say ‘the house over there? Sometimes she brought some garden vegetables back. Kobayasi continued to bring me clothes. I didn’t wear a Japanese kimono, but rather blouses and skirts. I was always ill and wanted to stay in bed, so I hardly ventured outside. I found it difficult to walk straight because of the pains in my abdomen. Boksun sometimes told me that many soldiers would soon come from the south, and I became scared of Saturdays, when most of the men came, more than death. I stopped thinking about anything except running away.
Return
One day, it fell strangely quiet. I walked with one of the women to the unit. There were no guards in sight and inside all the soldiers were weeping, crouched on the ground. We couldn’t understand what had happened, so walked to the street, where we heard people shouting in jubilation. There was a Korean on a truck, holding a flag, and the street was crowded with people from many places. They seemed to be men drafted by the Japanese. I grabbed another Korean and asked what was going on, where he was going, and pleading with him to take me with him. He reeled back in surprise and asked what I was doing there. I didn’t tell him I had been a comfort woman. I just asked him to take me to Toyama, since I thought Koreas lived only in the area around Shinminato. He said he would take me to Osaka, and I rushed back to the station, quickly packed and jumped on his truck. Two or three of the women took the truck together, while the others went their own way. In Osake, the driver gave me some balls of cooked rice and asked someone to take me to Shinminato by truck or train.
I went to Pang, the man who had given me food when I first ran away. He asked me where I’d been and what I’d done, and I told him. He let me stay until I could leave for Korea. I helped cook and launder for four or five months until, in the depths of winter, Pang, his family and I traveled to Osaka. We boarded an unlicensed ship. His wife had died, and he was living with his children. He was dating a Japanese woman in the neighborhood, and she also came with us. It was this woman who noticed I was pregnant, even before I knew it. When I had first been seized by the military police, I had never had a period. I had begun to bleed a little when I was in the second comfort station, and I must have become pregnant almost immediately afterwards. I tried to throw myself off the ship as we crossed the sea to Korea, but this woman sensed what was going on and followed me everywhere, making it impossible for me to take my own life. Pang came from Julla province, and we went to the town of Namwon when we got to Korea. Returnees were put up in the Kuksu guest-house, which had been run by the Japanese during the occupation. The repatriates stayed in one section while the National Defence Corps were billeted in another. I gave birth in January 1946, and Pang’s woman helped with the birth. I stayed on for a few more months. Although the woman loved pang and had willingly come to a foreign country to live with him, she found it difficult to settle down and decided to return to Japan. On her way to Busan to find a ship bound for Japan, she took me to Jinju.
When I got home, my mother told me I couldn’t live at home with my son, She was sorry for me, so asked a distant uncle to take me to Busan. He went with me to a large orphanage managed by the Catholics, and I left my child there. He found me work in Pyunghwa restaurant in Choryang. From there I could visit the orphanage to see my son every Sunday. Bt when I got there one day I noticed another child wearing my son’s clothes, and discovered that he had died of pneumonia. He was only four years old. I never saw my dead child with my own eyes, so I found his death difficult to accept. I have never married.
From then on I did all kinds of work, waiting in restaurants, selling things, helping with housework, keeping a boarding house, and so on. Maybe I am ill-fated, because something would go wrong or I would be taken ill every time I was about to be able to save some money. I don’t even have a proper house that I can rent now. I become ill very easily. When I was young, I used to roll around my room with period pains. I had to have injections to relieve the throbbing. And I bled copiously. I went to herbal doctors and to a gynecological surgery. I would even have danced naked if I could have been relieved from so much suffering. The doctors told me that the lining of my womb and my fallopian tubes were infected. My periods, which had started properly only when I was 18, stopped before I reached 40. Since then, I have had no monthly pain, but I have been hospitalized several times with bladder infections.
The reason I came forward to report to the Council was to pour out my resentment. I have tried to write down my experiences several times, but because I have had to move so often, I kept losing the notes. I am telling my life story so that nobody else will ever have to go through the same things as me. I think we must try to get what we justly deserve from Japan: a proper apology and proper compensation. There are still some who say that what we did is shameful, but they are indeed ignorant people.
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=