Comfort Women
I couldn’t come out and speak out when I was young, because of the shame. Shame was the first thing in my mind then. Now I’m older and it’s easier for me … since I’ve overcome those thoughts. But when I was younger, I was ashamed… Wouldn’t you feel the same? The fact that you were taken to the Japanese military and used as a comfort woman instead of leading a life as others do. Is it acceptable? No, never! … I kept weeping day and night behind the closed doors. I wept in secret; I had no one to talk to. Because we survived, now the whole world (will know) …
I became a comfort woman. I was in a three‑story building in Nanjing that was at the Kinsui‑rou comfort station. There I was called by the Japanese name Utamaru. I had to service up to thirty soldiers every day. One day I was really in pain …that bastard officer … held a long knife up against my throat … cut me. The blood poured out … Other comfort women who caught diseases and became malnourished were carted out or often dumped into the river to drown. I also saw two Japanese army privates stab a pregnant woman in the belly and kill her. I was there for three years. …
By Park Geun-hye
Historians in Japan as well as historians across the world have been calling on the Japanese leadership to come clean about what they have done in the past so we can move forward. But denial and efforts to gloss over what happened have stymied our ability to make progress.
As for the comfort women, we only have 52 surviving victims. It behooves Japan to bring healing to their wounds and to bring honor to them before another comfort woman passes away.
By Won-ok Gil
My name is Won‑ok Gil, and I am one of the 22 surviving victims who were called comfort women. When I was 13 years … I was forcibly dragged away by Japan and went through unspeakable pain and suffering, the horrors of which I cannot speak of. … Before I die, I want Japan to reveal the truth, and I also want the Emperor of Japan … to sincerely apologize for the comfort women issue.