No comfort in history

  BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Fourth-year
political science and East Asian studies student Eunkyung
Claire Shin (foreground) takes notes Monday night to
translate former "comfort woman" Soon-Duk Kim’s
narration of her experiences during WWII.

By Barbara Ortutay
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

When she was 17, Soon-Duk Kim signed on to become a factory
worker, but instead she found herself abducted and forced into
sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army.

She was one of at least 200,000 “comfort women,” who
during World War II were abducted and systematically raped and
abused by Japanese soldiers.

Kim, now 80 years old, spoke through a translator Monday night
to a group of more than 100 students, professors and community
members who wanted to know more about this dark chapter of
Japanese-Korean history.

“Hundreds of soldiers came and lined up in front of the
house, and they started coming into the house. The women in there
were crying, running around, and there was a lot of turmoil,”
she said of the first night soldiers arrived in the Sanghai army
station and raped the women there.

“Low-ranking soldiers and high-ranking officers would go
to the house and summon girls they would like to be with,”
she said.

Kim was held captive for three years, sexually abused day after
day. Girls as young as 15 were forced to have sex with 30 to 40
soldiers in one day, she said.

The women underwent medical examinations once a week ““ and
this was the only time they could go outside the barracks. On the
day of the examination, Kim would see women from other comfort
stations and talk to them about who was at the hospital, who was
sick or dead.

“The women missing were the women who committed suicide,
who couldn’t take 30 to 40 soldiers a day,” she
said.

  Duk Kyung Kang "Japanese Soldiers Picking Flowers," a
painting by Duk Kyung Kang, is one of the pieces
on exhibit in the Quest for Justice Tour of artwork by former
"comfort women." The hands in the painting represent Japanese
soldiers. When the Japanese troops moved on to Nanking, the comfort
women moved with them.

Between December 1937 and March 1938, the Japanese army
massacred and raped hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians in
Nanking. The invasion later became known as the Rape of
Nanking.

“The soldiers were ordered to kill everybody they saw to
move into Nanking,” Kim said.

By this time, Kim was severely ill, hemorrhaging and going in
and out of the hospital. She said a Japanese person gave her
medicine, and a few days later asked if she felt better. After she
answered no, he told her the medicine was made from a Chinese
soldier’s ashes.

“She started having nightmares, where the Chinese soldier
was bleeding and coming forward to her,” said the translator,
fourth-year political science and East Asian studies student
Eunkyung Claire Shin. “Even now she still dreams of
it.”

Nearing death, Kim returned to Korea in 1940, after a
high-ranking army officer gave her permission to leave.

Today, she lives in Korea with other surviving comfort women in
the House of Sharing, where she expresses her memories through
painting and drawing. She is currently touring North America with a
traveling art exhibition, sponsored by the House of Sharing and the
Historical Museum on Sexual Slavery in Japan. Her UCLA appearance
was co-sponsored by the Asian Pacific Coalition.

Kim remains one of a few hundred surviving comfort women who
have come forward, for many died from old age, illness or suicide.
Today, she calls for the story of women like herself to be told in
history books for generations to come.

“This is an international issue and a global issue. It is
ridiculous that every time there is a war, women, especially young
women, suffer through sex trafficking,” she said.

Accounts of soldiers raping and abusing women in war-torn areas
like the former Yugoslavia have long surfaced, but are often
dismissed as an unavoidable consequence of war.

The Japanese government denied the existence of comfort women
until 1993, according to Kyeyoung Park, associate professor of
anthropology, who also served on the Los Angeles Board of the
Coalition Against Military Sexual Slavery in Japan.

In 1996, due to increasing pressure from the international
community, then prime-minister Tomiichi Murayama set up a civilian
fund to give money to former comfort women, but many of them, as
well as their children, don’t see it as enough payment for
the horrors they suffered.

“The Japanese government admitted it and made a formal
apology, but it wasn’t followed up by reparations,”
Park said.

In August 2000, 15 former comfort women filed a lawsuit against
the Japanese government under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act, which
gives foreign citizens the right to sue other foreign citizens in
U.S. courts. The outcome of the case remains to be seen.

“These are Japanese and Korean horrors, but they are not
unique,” said Miriam Silverberg, history professor and
director of the Center for Study of Women.

“This is in fact what Soon-Duk Kim told us last night when
she said that her history was not her history alone,” she
continued.

HISTORY OF KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN During its
occupation of Korea, the Japanese government forced women to
perform sexual services for its soldiers. 1910 Japan colonizes
Korea. 1920 The Japanese Imperial Army begins using Korean women as
physical laborers or comfort women. 1932 The Japanese Navy
establishes comfort stations in Shanghai. 1939-1945 During World
War II, Korean women serve as comfort women while more than a
million of their countrymen become physical laborers. 1945 As Japan
loses World War II, retreating soldiers attempt to hide their
crimes by killing comfort women. 1948 In Batavia, Indonesia, the
only military tribunal concerning sexually abused comfort women
convicts the Japanese military officials 1991 Hak-Soon Kim becomes
the first woman living in Korea to come forward as a former comfort
woman. 1994 The Japanese government announces the creation of the
Peace and Friendship Exchange Plan, trying to compensate former
comfort women. 1996 The United Nations Human Rights Commission
releases special commissioner Coomarswamy’s "Report on Violence
Against Women," officially recognizing crimes by the Japanese
government. 1999 California adopts the Honda Resolution, urging the
Japanese government to issue a formal apology and to pay
reparations to survivors of sexual mistreatment and slavery, as
well as the Nanking Massacre. 2000 Fifteen former comfort women
from Korea, China, the Phillippines and Taiwan sue the Japanese
government for physical and sexual mistreatment. SOURCE: Young
Koreans United of Los Angeles Original graphic by MAGGIE WOO/Daily
Bruin Web adaptation by ROBERT LIU/Daily Bruin Senior Staff