Japan's Comfort Women (14 page)

Another Korean woman, Yi Sangok, who was taken to a comfort station on the Palau Islands, tells of a similar experience:

We each had a room with a small wardrobe and bedding, the cost of which we were told was to be deducted from our income later on . . . My monthly income was said to be 30 yen. But the proprietor provided me with things like clothes, cosmetics and a mirror, and deducted the cost of these from my promised wages. So I never had any money in my hands. He said that we had to keep clean and have nice clothes in which to serve our clients, so he gave us Korean dresses, Japanese kimonos and Western dresses. He also offered us expensive food, but always deducted the expense from our wages.69

Most former comfort women testify that they received little payment from their managers, and the money they did get was mainly pocket money from occasional tips from their “clients.” One Korean former comfort woman, Mun Okuchu, 56

Procurement of women and their lives
claims that she managed to save money given to her as tips by officers. She sent some of it to her home from Thailand. However, it seems that her case was exceptional. Even in her case, she lost all the savings she had deposited in a Japanese Post Office deposit account when she lost the deposit book at the end of the war.70 Some women also managed to save small amounts of “cash,” but in most cases they were saving the so-called Gumpy
d
– the Japanese military currency – which became totally worthless at the end of the war. As a result, most of the comfort women ended up penniless at the end of the war.

In addition to the financial strain, comfort women were constantly in danger of violence committed by their “client” soldiers and officers, in particular those who were drunk. Although drinking alcohol on the premises of comfort stations was prohibited, some men smuggled in liquor. Despite the military regulations banning intoxicated men from entering comfort stations, it was difficult for managers to refuse military personnel, especially officers. Intoxicated men often made various unbearable requests of the comfort women. They inflicted violence upon their “hostesses” when such requests were refused. The following extract from the testimony of Yi Sunok, a Korean woman who was taken into a comfort station in Guangdong, is an example of this.

Among soldiers, some carried a flask of alcohol at their side. They would get drunk and become violent. Not long after I arrived [at a comfort station in Guangdong] I was stabbed on the thigh by one. This happened after I tried to refuse him when he went for me several times. I screamed when I was stabbed and the other women and soldiers in the station rushed to my room in surprise. I had to continue to serve the soldiers, even while I was receiving treatment from the military hospital. When this wound had nearly healed, another soldier pushed me backwards for not welcoming him. My hip was hurt, and my thigh began to swell because of the impact. It became so swollen and painful that I had to have an operation.71

Mun P’ilgi describes a similar experience:

There were many times when I was almost killed. If I refused to do what one man asked, he would come back drunk and threaten me with his sword.

Others simply arrived drunk, and had intercourse with their swords stuck in the
tatami
. This left the
tatami
scarred, but this sort of behaviour was more a threat to make me accede to their desires and give them satisfaction.72

Mun P’ilgi’s testimony also refers to a man who tore all her clothes off, beat her, and eventually pressed a red-hot iron against her armpit, all as a result of her rejecting his unreasonable advances.73 It seems that problems caused by drunken soldiers at comfort stations were particularly frequent towards the end of the war when morale declined as Japan faced imminent defeat. The following extracts from the Bulletin of the Ishi Corps, issued in the latter half of 1944, verify the low morale of the members of Ishi Corps stationed in the Naha and Urazoe
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57

areas of the main island of Okinawa. Almost all members of this army unit perished during the Battle of Okinawa the following year.

No. 62, September 28, 16:00

Item 7. Regarding Base facilities:

1. Ensure there is an adequate supply of condoms.

. . .

4. Some soldiers have been seen drinking
sake
from water canteens while at the brothels. If found, all members of such a battalion will be banned from visiting the comfort stations.

No. 74, October 19, 12:00

Item 10. Regarding Base facilities:

1. Although a warning was issued in Bulletin No. 62, some soldiers continue to enter the comfort stations without showing their tickets, peep into girls’ rooms or forcibly demand service by grabbing a girl. Some soldiers came at night without tickets and when refused began pelting the reception area with stones. Ensure that this recalcitrant behaviour is not tolerated.

No. 79 October 26, 16:00

Item 8. Regarding Base facilities:

1. Some soldiers are altering the time and date on their tickets, knowing full well that this is against the regulations. Others are turning up with four tickets all at one time, while still others turn up at the station at one o’clock in the morning. On September 24 one heavily drunk Warrant Officer (from 4283 Battalion, Ishi Corps) entered the station without a ticket, threw himself on the floor of the reception area and then went into a girl’s room demanding service. Tickets on which the time and date have been altered are treated as invalid and those which are not used should be returned to the person in charge immediately.74

However, intoxicated men were not the only violent ones. Some men were equally violent when sober, as the following extract of Kim Hakusun’s testimony indicates:

They [soldiers] varied in the way they treated us: while one soldier was so rough as to drive me to utter despair, another would be quite gentle. There was one who ordered me to suck him off, while he held my head between his legs. There was another who insisted that I wash him after intercourse. I was often disgusted by their requests, but if I resisted they would beat me until I gave in.75

Many comfort women were maltreated by their managers. Managers beat women as punishment if they failed to meet their daily quota of tickets, or contracted VD or became ill and were unable to serve the men for a long period.

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Procurement of women and their lives
Plate 2.5
Japanese soldiers waiting for their turn to be served outside a comfort station in China. The date and exact location are unknown.

Source
:
i
tsuki Shoten Many women contemplated escaping from the stations, but invariably they had little idea about exactly where they were and how they could find their way home. In addition, they could not speak the local language. Even those successful enough to escape the camp were soon arrested by the kempeitai. Ha Sunnyo was one woman who escaped but was forced to return to her station because she could not find her way home. The following is an extract from her testimony: After about a year in Shanghai, I ran away from the comfort station on a snowy winter’s day. I ran as far as the rickshaw terminal. It was late at night.

But there was nowhere for me to go. I couldn’t communicate with anyone, because I didn’t know Chinese. I crouched in the corner of the terminal and tried to sleep, waking frequently. I was frightened. In the morning, I still didn’t have anywhere to go, so I returned to the comfort station. I crept back to the kitchen. I cooked breakfast, as usual, and sat down to have my own meal. But the proprietor knew. He came in and beat me all over, saying that he would teach me a lesson once and for all.76

It was natural that some women resorted to using narcotics to escape the physical and psychological pain of their circumstances. They used opium and Philopon.

Some managers apparently allowed their comfort women to buy narcotics, often
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59

as an incentive for the women to work harder. At some places where the purchase of such drugs was difficult, medics secretly provided some addicted women with morphine injections.77

Some women could not endure life as a “sex slave” and were driven to suicide. Some committed suicide by drinking cresol soap solution, which had been provided for them to wash their genitals. Others chose overdoses of drugs mixed with alcohol. There were also cases in which a depressed soldier forced a favourite comfort woman to commit double suicide with him.78

It is assumed that many women, especially those who were sent close to the battle zones, died as a result of being directly involved in warfare. Life was harrowing for the women on the battlefields. Pe Pongi was one such woman. She witnessed the deaths of her colleagues and experienced the hardship of surviv-ing the Battle of Okinawa. She and six other Korean women were sent to the comfort station on Tokashiki Island, a small isolated island of Okinawa, in November 1944.79

On March 23, 1945, in anticipation of the US invasion, the Korean women were moved to a local school building where members of the Japanese naval unit were staying. That evening the school building was bombarded. A woman named Haruko was killed and two other women – Aiko and Mitsuko – were seriously injured. Aiko and Mitsuko were left in an air-raid shelter by themselves while the four remaining women, including Pe Pongi, followed the Japanese unit and hid in the forest. During the next five months, until mid-August when the Japanese surrendered, these young women lived in a cave with the Japanese soldiers. In the day time they prepared meals, washed the soldiers’ clothes, gathered edible plants, carried ammunition and nursed injured soldiers. At night they worked as comfort women.80

Yi Tungnam, who spent the last few years of the war at a station in Sumatra, had a similar experience to that of Pe in Okinawa. Towards the end of the war, she and her colleagues would spend the day doing the laundry and treating wounded soldiers at a field hospital near their comfort station in the Sumatran countryside province of Aceh. In the evening they returned to the station to serve the Japanese men.81 In other places women were forced to serve the men in underground shelters during bombing attacks by the Allied forces.82 It is impossible to estimate how many comfort women died as direct victims of warfare.

When the war finished, most of the comfort women were simply abandoned by the Japanese.83 Some were fortunately rescued by the Allied forces and eventually sent home, but many had to find their own means to travel the long distances back to their homes. There were unfortunate women, such as Mun P’ilgi and her colleagues, who were left behind in Manchuria and then had to face the danger of rape by the Russian troops who came southwards in early August 1945.84 There were also women who decided not to return home because they felt stigmatized by the sexual abuse they had been subjected to. They could not face their families and friends again. They preferred to stay on in a foreign place and survive as second-class citizens. Today there are still such Korean former comfort women living in China and Kampuchea.85

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Procurement of women and their lives
Although we have so far dealt only with Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Filipina comfort women, there is some evidence, supported by testimonies, to verify that other Asian women, such as Vietnamese and Malaysians, were also exploited for the same purpose by the Japanese.86 Unfortunately, available his-torical documents on the comfort women from these countries are quite limited at this stage. Only a few former comfort women have been identified from these countries.

However, recently some information about comfort women in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) under Japanese occupation has come to light. In the next chapter I will focus on the testimonies and documents from this region of Southeast Asia in order to examine the ordeal experienced by Dutch and local Indonesian women.

Comfort women in the Dutch East Indies
61

3

Comfort women in the

Dutch East Indies

Japan’s invasion of the Dutch East Indies and

military violence against women

For the Japanese Imperial forces that entered the war against the Allied nations in early December 1941, the conquest of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) was a high priority. This area had a number of major oil fields, particularly, in southwest Borneo, Java and Sumatra. In order to secure these oil fields as well as those in northwest Borneo, occupied by the British at the time, Japanese forces invaded northeast Borneo soon after the destruction of Pearl Harbor.

Seria and Miri oil fields and the refinery in Lutong were captured in mid-December, and by the end of January 1942 the whole of Borneo was in Japanese hands. By late February, Sumatra was also seized by the Japanese. On March 1, the Japanese forces landed at three different places in Java – Merak, Eretan Wetan, and Kragan.1 On March 8, three days after the Japanese forces entered Batavia ( present Jakarta), the Dutch forces, led by General Ter Poorten, officially surrendered. This was the beginning of a three-and-a-half year occupation of Indonesia by the Japanese Imperial forces. Java and Sumatra were put under the control of the Army, and the rest of the islands were administered by the navy.2