GOLDSEA | IDENTITY

WITNESS UNBOWED
Page 3 of 5

"One day the police came and took my father away."

     The next day, I went to her hotel in Beijing at her invitation. When I knocked at her door, she was still in her pajamas, frantically trying to communicate with a Chinese cleaning woman. Her face, exhaustion hovering, brightened up at seeing me. "Oh, I am so glad to see you. I was so tired that I stayed in bed until a while ago but I had to get up because my stomach grumbled for food. I was trying to tell that woman to get me some food. Everyone is out; no one is around." "Not to worry anymore. I will go and grab some food. Go back to bed and rest. You don't need to change, either." We sat by the window, she still in her pajamas, looking out at the ancient city of Beijing with food and Coke bottles between us. "You saved me. It is a kind of sickness. I can't function unless I put some food in my stomach when I feel this hungry." Slowly, color came back to her face, accompanied by a smile. "Thanks for inviting me to come. Yesterday your testimony was painful but moving. I felt as if my chest was choked with sadness even while I was so intensely translating," I said. "Thank you. In the evening, I had to go see a Japanese government official. That's why I am in this shape. It was awfully intense." I chewed my food and waited. "Last night, I asked him how he felt to see all these women from around the world demanding justice from Japan, many of them from countries which Japan had victimized; if they felt ashamed about what Japan did to us. I took off my glasses and showed the scars on my face and said, 'If you were a woman, I would take off my clothes and show the numerous scars all over my body, but I can't do that. I was taught not even to roll up my sleeves in front of a strange man. So you can imagine how I felt when the Japanese officers and soldiers tore apart my clothes and humiliated me, doing the most unthinkable things to my naked body. It is bad enough that Japan committed such a horrendous crime against humanity but it is even worse to avoid responsibility for the wrong you committed. When is Japan going to face up and render justice to us, not that you can ever bring my life back to age fifteen.'
He said, 'I feel sorry,' but his voice was hardly audible." Her hand holding a Coke bottle to her mouth shook a little. "It must be hard on you to talk about such a painful past all the time, especially at the public meetings." "Oh, but I have lived for these opportunities. In any case, my past is never over whether I talk about it or not. I am still in the battle every day. So often my dreams are battlefields in which I am desperately fighting the Japanese soldiers. In the darkness of the night, I scream and yell. Then, my husband wakes me up and gently wipes away the cold sweat pouring over my body." I did not have to ask her to tell me her story. In fact, there was no stopping. We talked until the sun set in the sky of that ancient city and shared dinner at a hotel restaurant. Alas, space does not allow me to present her full story, but this is her story in the first person.

They Defiled My Body,
Not My Spirit
As told by Chung Seo Woon

was born as the only daughter without sons in the family of a wealthy landowner in southern Korea. I know that the majority of the women who suffered my fate came from poor and uneducated families but I was a protected child of a well-to-do family. Like many of my friends, I wanted to go to school but my father would not let me. He said, "What's the use of learning Japanese language and history before you know your own?" He kept me at home and taught me Chinese characters, written Korean, and calligraphy. My father was adamantly opposed to changing our names into Japanese. So we never did. In those days, the Japanese took all of our brassware to use for the war, for weapons, etc. My father dug a deep hole in our rice field and buried all of our brassware. He said that it wasn't because we had such an attachment to them but he was opposed in principle to contributing to the Japanese war effort. One day police came and took my father away. I learned that the police took my father to the hiding place and made him dig it up. When they found all that brassware, they kicked and beat my father. I don't know how they found out about it. My father was put into a prison. We asked to see my father every day but each time we were refused. One day, however, a Japanese official came and asked if I wanted to visit my father in the prison. PAGE 4

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