THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

The state-sponsored sexual slavery enforced by the Japanese soldiers and defined as an A-class crime against humanity in human history is drawing increasing denunciation and condemnation in the international community.

However, the present politicians of Japan insist that the forcible drafting of “comfort women” is not a truth.

What is, then, the truth of history?

“I Appeal for the Conscience of the World”

Pak Yong Sim, a Korean, is a former “comfort woman” for the Japanese soldiers. She is now known widely in the world. The following is her testimony of her life as a sexual slave until the defeat of Japan in the Second World War:

When I was 14, I was sold to a tailor’s in Hupho-dong, Nampho (a western coastal city in Korea). I was working as a cook there, before falling into the trap of “girl hunt” around March 1938. A Japanese policeman escorted me and a 22-year-old girl to Pyongyang. When I arrived at the Pyongyang Railway Station, I found 15 Korean women there. The first place we arrived after travelling by train and then by truck was Nanjing, China. There were many military barracks. We were dragged to a 3-storeyed brick house surrounded by barbed-wire fences. It was a “comfort station.” The rooms in the house were 2m wide and 2.5m long each. We were given Japanese names. Mine was Utamaru. And we were forced to sexual slavery from the day of our arrival. Each of us had to serve 30 Japanese soldiers every day. They were all beasts of prey. If we failed to serve them obediently, they meted out indescribable punishments, like kicking, beating, and stabbing with sword or beheading at the severest. If one fell ill or malnourished, she was carried away to somewhere or thrown into a river. After three years there, I was taken to a “comfort station” in Rangoon, Myanmar, via Shanghai. I was called Wakaharu there, and had to serve Japanese soldiers, including tankmen. After another two years I was taken to a frontline area along the border between China and Myanmar. In the midst of showering shells and bombs, I had to satisfy the Japanese soldiers’ brutal needs. Most of the comfort women who had been dragged there died either of beating, bombing or illness. The Korean women who had managed to survive were taken, along with the defeated Japanese soldiers, to a POW camp in Kunming, China, after the war. Later back at home, I became a permanent disabled, talking in sleep and fretting now and then because of mitral disease and nervous debility. Whenever those nightmarish days were reminded, I would grind my teeth with indignation at the brutish Japanese soldiers. I have lived without ever feeling the happiness of being a mother. And whenever I recall my unfortunate past, I am reminded of the numerous Korean women who had become forlorn wandering spirits in alien lands after experiencing indescribable maltreatment. But the Japanese government is brazen enough to resort to all manner of trickery to leave its past crimes in the dark. I appeal for the conscience of the world to put pressure to bear upon the government of Japan so that it would clearly repent of its crime-ridden past and make due compensation.

“I Was a Sexual Slave Hunter”

Yoshida Seiji, who worked for the Loyal Labour Society, a peripheral organization of the Japanese police, is one of the testifiers to the truth of the forcible drafting of the Korean “comfort women” by Japan; he authored such books as I Drafted Korean Women in This Way and Japanese People and Korean Comfort Women.

At an interview with Hokkaido Shimbun, he said:

I was, true to the words, a sexual slave hunter who drafted Koreans for “comfort women.” The Korean women drafted under my personal command numbered l 000 and over. When we arrived at a village, first we would gather women along a road. If there were any who tried to take flight, we would batter them down with dummy swords. Under the guard of a rifle-toting policeman, we would kick and beat crying women and separate them from their nursing babies if there were any. Sometimes there were 2- or 3-year-old children running after their mothers, crying; we would throw them away. And then we forced all the women onto a truck. What I want to make clear here is that we didn’t “recruit” the “comfort women,” but drafted them forcibly.

DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENT FROM THE MACARTHUR COMMAND

The nature of forcible drafting of “comfort women” is now being revealed by the declassified documents from the national-level archives of the United States. Most recently, a document on forcible drafting of sexual slaves in 1945 for Japanese troops was declassified.

According to the document, titled Installations for Comforting Japanese Troops and compiled by the Far East Command of the Allied Forces on November 15, 1945 in the name of MacArthur, the then commander, Japanese businesspeople in Korea, at the suggestion of the military authorities, drafted Korean women and took them to Myanmar and various other places with the permission of the military authorities.

This is the truth of history. Nevertheless, the Japanese politicians claim that there is no evidence on forcible drafting of the “comfort women” and they want to see them if there are any. How brazen-faced they are!