Ｋｗａｋ Ｋｕｍｎｙｏ
Born January
8th 1924
Died June 7th
2007
The
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
My hometown is Cheonan of South Chungcheong Province. I had one elder brother, two elder sisters and one younger sister. After my father’s death when I was eight, my mother worked at landowner’s house, cooking and sewing. Needless to say, she could not send us to school.
I worked as a babysitter in a Japanese house in Suncheon of South Jeolla Province until I went to Gwangju when I was sixteen. In Gwangju, I had worked at a silk mill run by a Japanese owner for a year. My work was to spin silk worm cocoons into a thread. I was so starving that I once ate pupae in cocoons.
One day, I was called to an office, and I found a Japanese man who seemed to be a policeman there. The reason why I regarded him a policeman was I saw him carrying a pistol on a train afterwards.
The “policeman” said to me, “go to a food factory which produces bread and candy in Seoul, where you can save money and eat enough.” Name lists of girls working at the silk mill including me was handed to him.
After we arrived at Seoul by train, we spent one night at an inn. On the next day, “let’s go to Mudanjian,” the policeman suddenly said. “Why do I have to go to China? I will never go there.” I protested, but the he forcibly loaded me on a train, saying “you are destined to die anyway under the colonial rule!”
Two days later, we arrived in Mudanjian in the morning. After 20 minutes or so in a waiting room, a military truck with cover hood arrived and a soldier got out of the truck. The “policeman” told him, “Mr. Hasegawa, I brought twenty (women) with me.” We moved to “Manchuria” and Muling, located at the border with the Soviet Union, by truck.
We were locked in a tatami room in a large three-story building where soldiers were stationed. We were all weeping without eating that night.
The next day a doctor and a nurse performed a physical examination on us. With the benefit of hindsight, it was not for us but for soldiers to prevent infectious disease. One woman among us was taken to a cellar as her face looked yellow, and she subsequently died.
There were rooms divided by the board with numbers from 1 to 20 written on it in the building. I was assigned to Room 1, a two-tatami-sized room, which was as large as two people could manage to lie in it. I got my hair cut which I cherished, and I was forced to change out of my (Korean) Chima-Chogori into (Japanese) Yukata. I shed tears of anger because my mother made this Chogori for me. I was forced to change my name into Japanese name, “Reiko.”
When I was in the room, a military officer came in. He put his sword aside on the wall and took off his clothes, and he pushed me down. I was terrified of Japanese soldiers more than a tiger since I was innocent at the time. When I cried out and bit his hand, the officer injected me with anesthetic. I lost consciousness in a short while. Then, he raped me.
Other soldiers raped me over and over again after I came back to myself. I heard screams from all the other rooms. I felt so frustrated that I cannot forget all about it.
I was forced to work with 20-30 soldiers a day. One soldier said to me, “I will remove your womb,” and cut me with a small knife as I resisted him. Another scar on my left thigh stabbed with a sword (Katana) still remains. My right shin was scooped out with a sword. My whole body is covered with scars by knives and swords.
I had to have a plaster on my arm for about two months because another soldier twisted and broke my arm saying, “You do not follow my order.” Another man grabbed me by my hair and dragged. I was filled with great anger rather than pain.
I was not the only person who suffered from such damages. Ri (Lee) Chunshim was also forced to be taken into the building with me. When a Japanese soldier tried to rape her, she cried out and resisted fiercely. Then, he bit her nipple off to bleed, and she lost her consciousness. She died from tetanus caused by this accident. Another woman died in two days after having her womb kicked.
“Obey me, or you shall go to a cellar!” a Japanese soldiers said and took us in it, where corpses of girls were abandoned. It was filled with such horrible smells of the rotten bodies that we would have a headache when we breezed.
A woman was caught by a Japanese soldier after failing to escape. He beat her with a leather belt in front of us. “We’ll never try to run away, so please don’t hit her anymore!” we begged, but she died a week later and she was thrown into the cellar. There were about ten women killed in the same way.
I was convinced that “I am going to die just as others did.” That’s why I decided to run away. One Sunday of November, I departed from the place through a small gate without telling anyone while a sentry was falling into a doze. It was four o’clock in the morning.
I stumbled along about 8 km and finally found a building written “Choson-Pyongwon” (Korean Hospital), which was a private hospital run by a Korean. As I know Korean alphabet a little, I said, “Please help me! I was forced to work as a ‘comfort woman’.” Although the doctor’s wife cooked rice for me, I did not eat it as I thought “I have no time to eat.” Then she told me, “I’ll shelter you in some way, so you can stay here.” The doctor whose name was Kim was from South Hamgyong Province and he was about 35 years old.
Thanks to their great care, I recovered my health, and worked there as a nurse. I wanted to return home but I married an electronic engineer as the doctor, my lifesaver, said to me that “you can still have a baby. I think you can marry someone. ”
However, we lived together only for four months because he was conscripted to Japanese army, and never came back again. On December 1945, I gave birth to a baby. I couldn’t go back my home because of US military occupation of the southern part of Korea. I’m going to return home when Korea is reunified.
Japan committed high crimes. They took me away when my life began to bloom, and ruined my life before it bore fruit. A large number of Korean girls were also taken to battlefields in far-away Southeast Asia, and raped by 20-30 soldiers a day. Japanese authorities treated Korean girls as slaves. They did what humanity could never do. Although I could narrowly escape, how many girls who couldn’t run away were killed! Would any other nation do such a thing in the world? To be honest, I regard Japanese people as extremely vicious devils.
Please look at my body full of scars. I was hit violently by Japanese soldiers. Even now, I’m still suffering from headaches. I feel dizzy and nauseous as well. I suffer from numbness in my legs when I do the laundry or put muscle into them.
How long can I live my life? I’ve had strong will to “avenge myself on Japanese authorities”. That’s why I’ve lived until now. Japanese should liquidate the past before we, the victims, die. Even if I die, my spirit would surely fry out to Japan and receive sincere apology and compensation.
I guess, there are a large number of elderly men who used to be a former soldiers in Japan. I think that their family must know the fact that their father and grandfather made many Korean girls sex slaves according to the direction of the government, and their children and grandchildren have to demand Japanese government to resolve serious problems in the past. I’m sure that the resentment against Japan would be carried over to the next generation in Korea if they don’t offer sincere apology and compensation.