Uncomfortable Past

From the DW:
"Former comfort woman tells her uncomforting story"

Lee Ok-Seon spent three years in a Japanese military brothel in China against her will during WW II. Nearly 70 years after the surrender of Japan, she visited Germany to make her story known.  Bravely, she talks about that tragic day when she was abducted off the street in the southeastern city of Busan by a group of men. It was late afternoon - sometime between 5 and 6 pm, and Lee Ok-Seon was 14 years old when she was thrown into a car and trafficked to a brothel, a so-called "comfort station," in China for the Japanese military where she was raped every day until the end of the war. At that moment, she had no idea that she would never see her family again nor step foot in her home country for nearly six decades. She had no idea what torture awaited her. The 86-year-old woman does not give specific details as to what she experienced there. She summarizes it in one sentence: "It was not a place for human beings. It was a slaughter house." After she says that, her voice sounds harder. Those three years shaped the rest of her life. "When the war was over, others were set free, but not me."  Lee Ok-Seon's is not an isolated case, although it is not known exactly how many other women shared the same fate. "According to estimates, there must have been around 200,000 such women. But this has never been confirmed," explains Bernd Stöver, a historian at Potsdam University. He finds it unnerving that the women are referred to as "comfort women," a "euphemism for what they really were: sex slaves." It was not only women from the Korean Peninsula, which was under Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945, who were forced into prostitution; there were also women from China, Malaysia and the Philippines, to name a few. The brothels, which were set up throughout the entire area under Japanese occupation, were meant to keep up morale among Japanese soldiers and avoid the rape of local women. For the mostly underage women forced to work there, on the other hand, it was a daily sacrifice. Many of them did not survive the torment; an estimated two thirds of them died before the end of the war. We were often beaten, threatened and attacked with knives," Lee Ok-Seon remembers. "We were 11, 12, 13 or 14 years old and we didn't believe anyone would save us from that hell." During her time there, she explains, she was completely isolated from the outside world and trusted no one. It was a state of constant despair. "Many girls committed suicide. They drowned or hung themselves." At one point she also thought this was her only alternative. But she couldn't do it. "It is easy to say, 'I'd rather be dead.' It is so much more difficult to actually do it. That is a big step."  Lee Ok-Seon decided to live and ended up surviving the war. After the Japanese capitulation in late summer of 1945, the owner of the brothel disappeared. The women were suddenly free again, but also confused and disoriented. "I didn't know where I should go. I had no money. I was homeless and had to sleep on the streets." She didn't know how to get back to Korea or if she really wanted to go back - the shame she felt was overwhelming. "I decided I would rather spend the rest of my days in China. How could I have gone home? It was written on my face that I was a comfort woman. I could have never looked my mother in the eyes again." It wasn't until the year 1991 that the first former "comfort woman" went public with her story. She encouraged and inspired 250 other women to finally talk about their experiences as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war and demand recognition and an apology from the Japanese government. Since then, the women and their supporters meet every Wednesday outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul. They hold placards and shout slogans. But they have yet to receive what they demand.  Japan has trouble dealing with its dark past, according to historian Stöver. The government in 1993 did commission and publish a study officially recognizing the existence of "comfort women" and the role of Japanese soldiers. "After that, the government did apologize on multiple occasions. But it never really drew any consequences." Stöver explained the apologies were isolated occurrences; there was never a full admission of guilt nor was there any official financial compensation program. Aside from payments made to a few hundred people by a fund set up by the government, the women have received no money. And it is not likely they will in the future: "In 2007, the Japanese Supreme Court decided they have no claim to damages." A bitter pill for the victims. And even today, on occasion, Japanese politicians simply deny the existence of the comfort women. Or they play it down. During his time in office in early 2007, incumbent Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for example, said there was "no proof that the women were forced" to work in the brothels. He later apologized for the statement. Earlier this year, Toru Hashimoto, governor of Osaka, told journalists that in times of war, sex slavery was "necessary" to keep the discipline among the troops. Lee Ok-Seon thinks the statement is crass and outrageous: "I cannot grasp how anyone can say such a thing. Whoever refuses to accept what the Japanese did back then is not a human being."

^ Japan needs to not only admit to itself, the world and its' victims their past mistakes, but stop others from trying to "wash" away their horrible deeds and rewrite history. Most countries have laws making it illegal to deny the Holocaust happened and yet there is nothing about denying the massacres, rapes, etc that the Japanese did. Today is the day the Japanese formally surrendered to the US and so it seems appropriate to post this story today. ^


http://www.dw.de/former-comfort-woman-tells-her-uncomforting-story/a-17060384