We travelled to 4 different cities --- Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing, Harbin --- the main sites where the events that we were studying took place.
Today, what I want to focus on is the issue of sexual slavery, or the system of "comfort stations" established by the Japanese military in East Asia, stretching all the way from Korea, across China, into the Phillippines and down south to Indonesia.
Women and girls, some as young as 13, were kidnapped and imprisoned in comfort stations where each woman, according to records a
nd eye-witness accounts, might be forced to service as many as 29 Japanese military-men a day.One of these women that I met in Shanghai was Madam Lui. She was kidnapped by Japanese soldiers when she was no more than 15 and forced to become a comfort woman. Our team was among some of the last people from the West to meet her and listen to her testimony.
Unfortunately, Madam Lui died in 2007, without seeing the injustice that had been inflicted upon her addressed.
Below is a poem that I wrote after meeting Madam Lui. It is my dedication to her and all the other women, most of whom were Koreans, who were forced to suffer the same fate as her.
A Dedication to Madam Lui
Lament of a Comfort Woman
Lament of a Comfort Woman
I was fifteen, gentle and innocent,
When you came and ripped me
From the warmth of my father's home,
The tenderness of a mother’s arms,
To be fed, like two hundred thousands others,
To your countless lusty wolves,
Which defiled and devoured me
And tossed me, broken and scarred,
Into the cold scornful sea.
O, my beloved country!
Why am I to blame?
Why do you turn your face away from my pain?
O, my father! O, my brothers!
Who will help me bear my shame?
O, Hirohito! O, You mighty Meijis!
I comforted your soldiers in their struggle;
Now who comforts me in my pain?
O, Koizumi and all your faceless Yagushini men!
How do you sleep at night,
While I shiver and cry in an endless nightmare,
Alone in my hovel, broken in body and spirit,
Frightened and ashamed?
Shanghai
July 15, 2006
(first published in November 2006)
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2 comments:
I believe that rape, sexual abuse and any form of abuse is one of the most devastating things in this world. I think it is worse than death. These people are pretty much the living dead. They live in fear, shame and mental trauma for the rest of their lives. Basically these acts take these women and kill them from the inside. These issues occur right inside our community, everyday. It is absolutely repulsive. And most of the time these stories are unheard of in Canada due to the fact that the majority of these women are fiancially unstable and are Native. There is so much hate and fear in the media that we, as humans have become desensitized.
- ysgyecher
To juxtaposedschism:
thanks for your comments.
I couldn't agree with you more that rape is the violation and slow killing of a woman. In the case of the Japanese systemic establishment of "comfort stations", it is a blatant display of disregard for humanity --- a demonstration of the need of one nation to exert its power and control over another. In its process, however, it only served to manifest the immorality of the controlling nation.
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