Prints of sexual slavery
September 4, 2008
My friend Eunhye walks up to the wall that is covered by prints of hands in clay. She looks at the wall, then slowly lifting her hand,letting her fingers sink into the print. After a while, she takes her hand away, lookts at her palm and touches it with her other hand. Then she puts her hand into a new print.
During World War II and the Japanese colonialisation of Korea, more than 200,000 women were abducted by the Japanese military and used as sexual slaves, as comfort women. The women were Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Taiwanese, Burmese, Indonesian, Dutch and Australian.
In 1991, Kim Hak-soon was the first who came forward with her experiences during World War II. Dedicated to her cause, she kept on telling her story over and over again. And others followed. Today, 220 comfort women have come forward. The stories of the women have become like pieces of a puzzle, pointing out locations where the Japanese military where keeping the women.
Eunhye keeps on following the clay prints. She stretches out her fingers in the prints, let her fingertips touch the fingerprints.
The Sharing House was established in 1992 in Seoul by private funds from Buddhists and Korean nationals. The aim was to provide a home and place of healing for “halmonies”. Since the term “comfort women” comes from the Japanese military, the word “halmoni,” meaning grandmother, is used to refer to the women. In 1995, the house was moved to the current location, outside Seoul, and in 1998 “The Museum of Sexual Slavery by Japanese Milisary” opened. Today seven halmonies live in the house. The clay prints are all from Korean women who have come forward, telling what happened to them during the war.
Eunhye has reached the end of the clay prints. She doesn’t say anything, she just looks at me and shows me her palm. Around her neck is the new necklace I just bought her.
The Museum is not yet completely adjusted for people not speaking Korean, Japanese or Chinese, so a group of volunteers are organizing tours in English twice a month during the summers and once a month during the winters. The volunteers pick up the participants in Seoul, following them all the way to the Sharing House. The tours usually have between 20 and 40 participants, most working as English teachers in Korea. When one of the halmoni feels well enough, they come and speak to the visitors.
“What do you want to hear,” Lee Ook-san says and looks at the group in front of her. Everybody is silent. The girl interpreting for her explains that we can ask anything. But the group remains silent. Lee looks at us, she doesn’t move, she just keeps her body in the same position. Then she starts to speak.
“I am exhausted from saying ‘I was taken to China as a comfort woman when I was 16,’” she says. “But it is important for people to hear the story from my mouth.”
Lee was born in Busan, in the south of Korea. From the age 7 to the age of 15, she cried every day.
“I wanted to go to school so badly,” Lee says. But the family was too poor.
When Lee was 15, she was sent to be a maid in a family that had a small restaurant. They promised that they would let her go to school, but instead, she was hit everyday. When she tried to run away, she was captured and sold to another household. The mistreatment went on.
At the age of 16, Lee was captured in the street and thrown into a truck together with five other girls. They were put on a train to China and as prisoners of war, where they first worked on a constructing site. After some time, Lee and other girls were taken to another site. They were give cloths, but once they had taken them, they were told that they had to pay back. They had to serve as comfort women.
Lee couldn’t stand the treatment. She ran away, but was caught.
“I refused to say ‘I mad a mistake,’” Lee says. Instead she kept on saying that she was going to run away again, that she cannot live like that. Somehow, they did not kill her.
Lee came back to Korea on June 1, 2000. 58 years after she was thrown on that truck. When she returned, she didn’t have a citizenship any longer. Her family had reported her dead. It took her a year to reclaim her citizenship.
For Lee, the Japanese colonialisation is the reasong for everything bad that happened during her life. Without the colonalisation, her family would not have been poor and she would never have ended up a sexual slave.
“Even if they all die, I will always have this outraging anger,” she says. “It is not against the Japanese people, but their government.”
Lee believes that the Japanese government is only waiting for the women who were comfort women to die off. She is questioning why the prime minister issued and apology in the United States. She thinks he should have come to the Sharing House, giving an apology straight to the people who were suffering.
Many share Lee’s opinion. Every Wednesday, there are protests outside the Japanese embassy. In February, number 800 was held, meaning that the protests have been going on every Wednesday for over 15 years.
When Lee gets tired, the whole steps out to the yard of the Sharing House. It is a beautiful day and we sit down having our lunch looking at a green field. Malcom Trevena, one of the volunteer, starts to tell about his work. Before he came to Korea, he lived in Uganda, working with women going through the same thing as Lee did. In Uganda, Malcom and his friends started an NGO with some women. The women started to do handcraft that they are selling in an attempt to make the women have some income. Malcom has brought bags and necklaces. Eunhye walks up the Malcom and starts looking through the necklaces. She keeps on returning to one with several colours. I buy it, and put it around her neck.
After the lunch, Malcom takes us into the museum. At one place, a “comfort station” is built up. It is a small hut of wood. I follow Eunhye into it. It is dark inside, with a bunk as the only furniture. Outside the hut we hear Malcom speak.
“There were three reasons for having comfort women,” Malcom says. “They wanted to provide stress relief to the men even when they were far from cities, reduce STD and avoid spies.”
Eunhye listens to Malcoms words, then lower her head, letting her fingertips follow the splinters of the wodden wall.
Seoul. September 4, 2008.
The Sharing House
comfortwomen.wordpress.com
www.nanum.org
Grassroots Uganda
www.grassrootsuganda.com
Women’s active museum on war and peace, Tokyo, Japan.
www.wam-peace.org
