Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story

by William Andrews

  I asked him if he had heard from Ki-soo. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked—I still asked too many questions—but I wanted to know. He told me he hadn’t. “She will not change her mind,” he said.

  “I am sorry, Jin-mo.”

  He turned to me. “I’ve been avoiding asking you this, Ja-hee. How much did you hear of our argument the night Ki left?”

  I looked out over the park. “I heard everything,” I answered.

  “Then, you heard what she called you.”

  “Yes.” It was then that I knew that I had heard Ki-soo correctly two weeks earlier. She had called me a comfort woman and a chinulpa. Apparently, they had known all along the secret I had tried so desperately to hide.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “I knew when I first met you. You said you worked in the boot factory at Sinuiju. Ja-hee, there was no boot factory there. It was a cruel joke by the Japanese. When they said they were sending a girl to the boot factory, they meant they were sending her to a comfort station. When you told me you worked there, I knew you had been a comfort woman.”

  I felt so stupid for not knowing this. Boot factory. How fitting. It was like the Japanese were humiliating me all over again. I exhaled a sob. “I’m sorry I lied,” I said. “I did not want anybody to know.”

  Jin-mo turned to me. “I only told Ki because she told me to kick you out. She said she didn’t want a marriage like that. I thought she would feel sorry for you when I told her what you’d been through, but it only made her angrier.”

  “I was tricked into it,” I said quickly. “The Japanese sent orders for me and my sister to report to work at the boot factory. We didn’t know they were sending us to work in a comfort station. We were not chinulpa. We did not want to do it. They forced us to. We would have been shot.”

  “I know,” Jin-mo said. “I know. They forced tens of thousands of girls into their comfort stations. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I had nothing to be ashamed of? Now that I had learned that Jin-mo knew all along, all I felt was shame. For two years, I had let the Japanese use me like a toilet. And Jin-mo knew what I had done! I couldn’t bear to look at him.

  “I should go,” I said. “I should find another place to live. It would be the right thing to do.”

  “I don’t want you to leave,” Jin-mo said.

  He reached out and gently touched my arm. At his touch, the images of the men who had slapped me, punched me, and raped me for two years flashed in my mind and I recoiled.

  He quickly took his hand away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Please know Ja-hee, I will never hurt you.”

  I knew he wouldn’t. My reaction had been instinctive and I wished I had not pulled away. But I had been an ianfu, a comfort woman whore, and Jin-mo was a respectable man.

  “I’m sorry I made Ki-soo leave,” I said.

  “You aren’t the reason she left. I am. We weren’t meant for each other. I’m an idealist and she is a cynic. I wanted to bring Korea together and I put it above everything else, including my family. I’m not going to change, Ja-hee. Neither is she.”

  Jin-mo sank onto the bench. I could still feel the place on my arm where he had touched me. I hoped he would touch me again someday, and if he did, I would not recoil. After a few seconds I asked, “Shall I stay?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I want you to very much.”

  *

  That night as I prepared for bed, I sensed a change in the apartment. In a strange way, I was glad that Jin-mo knew my terrible secret. He had said I had nothing to be ashamed of but I couldn’t believe a man like Jin-mo thought it was true. But he had asked me to stay…

  I put on clean bedclothes and stood before my mirror combing my hair with the comb with the two-headed dragon. I had left my door open to the main room. Jin-mo had a fire going in the fireplace. The apartment was comfortably warm.

  Then, beyond my reflection in the mirror, I saw Jin-mo leaning against the doorjamb, watching me. My stomach jumped. The horrors of the comfort station began to rise in my mind, but I pushed them away. I put the comb on the dresser and turned to him. Our eyes met and my heart beat fast. He came and stood in front of me. He reached out and stroked my hair. His touch was so tender and this time, I did not recoil. I pressed my cheek into his hand and closed my eyes. He moved his hand to my shoulder and down my arm. And then he stopped. He was looking at my comb. He asked me where I got it and I told him it was my mother’s.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. He took his hand from me and picked up the comb. As he examined it, his eyes grew wide. “The dragon,” he whispered, “it has two heads and its feet have five toes.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It has been in our family a long time.”

  “How long?” he asked.

  “For generations.”

  He looked at the comb again, then handed it to me with a weak smile. He went back to the living room.

  I didn’t understand why he didn’t stay in my room. I wanted him to touch me again. I wanted him to make love to me. I followed him with the comb in my hand. I asked him what was wrong. I asked what the comb meant to make him react the way he did.

  He sat in a chair and I sat on the sofa across from him. The fire in the fireplace crackled. He told me to tell him what I knew about the comb. I told him the story Mother had told me and Soo-hee years earlier. I told him that women in my family had passed the comb on to their daughters for generations. I told him how Mother had given it to Soo-hee and how Soo-hee had given it to me at the comfort station.

  “You have had it all this time?” Jin-mo asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  He didn’t answer right away and I thought he was angry with me for not telling him about the comb. Finally, he said, “A dragon is a powerful symbol as you know. But in Korea, a two-headed dragon is extraordinary. You see the two heads are facing opposite directions, east and west. The head facing east protects Korea from Japan. The head facing west protects us from China. And the dragon protects those who possess it so they can serve Korea.”

  I wanted to ask questions, but I stayed quiet and let Jin-mo continue. “When the Japanese annexed us, they forbid anyone from having that dragon. They said we were Japanese now and did not need protection from them. So when they found something with the two-headed dragon, they destroyed it and arrested whoever owned it. Nothing with that dragon was thought to have survived.”

  “I didn’t know. It must be very valuable.”

  “Valuable?” he said. “It is beyond value.” Jin-mo focused on the comb as if it had put him under a spell.

  I stared at it too. “Do you believe it?” I asked. “Do you believe a dragon can protect someone?”

  He shook his head. “I am an educated man,” he said. “I believe in science and history and observation and careful analysis. I am not given to superstition. Normally I would not believe such a thing. But honestly, I do not know what to believe anymore.”

  Then he looked at me with his mouth slightly open as if he wanted to say more. Instead, he took a step back and forced a smile. “I should go to bed,” he said. “I’m very tired.”

  My heart sank. I so wanted him to come with me to my room, but I could tell he wouldn’t, not tonight. Perhaps not ever. “Yes,” I said. “I am tired too.”

  I closed my hand around the comb, bowed and said goodnight. I went to my room and shut the door. I hid the comb in the lining of the old suitcase Jin-mo had given me. I curled up in bed and pulled the blanket to my chin. The familiar guilt I had carried with me since the first day Colonel Matsumoto had raped me came flooding back.

  The dragon protects those who possess it so they can serve Korea, Jin-mo had said. I closed my eyes. Just like mother, it had not protected me. I had been a comfort woman whore. And surely someone like me would never have the love of a man like Jin-mo.

  T WENTY-FIVE

  Months Later

  I was cooking rice flour at the cast iron stove to make dduk with jujube for Jin-mo. I hoped the
sweet rice cakes and jelly would entice him to eat something. It was morning and snow fell among the bare willows in the park outside.

  Jin-mo sat at the low table in the kitchen and stared vacantly into his bori cha. His hair was a mess and his wrinkled, unwashed clothes drooped on his thinning frame. He had stayed up all night reading his books, scribbling on paper, pacing the living room and talking aloud to no one.

  “Jin-mo, you have to go to work,” I said. “You’ve missed too many days.”

  “I do not feel well,” he said.

  “They are asking about you. I’m running out of excuses.”

  “Why do they care?” Jin-mo scoffed. “They don’t listen to what I say.”

  “What should I tell them when they ask about you?”

  Jin-mo sighed. “Tell them you don’t know anything. Tell them we never talk. Tell them you just have a room here. I’m serious. That’s what you should say.”

  I continued to steam the dduk as Jin-mo stared into his bori cha. After a long silence Jin-mo said, “Tell me about your sister.”

  “What do you want to know?” I asked.

  “She was your onni, right?”

  “Yes. Two years older.”

  “And the last time you saw her, she was still alive?”

  I set the spoon on the stove. “You’ve asked the same questions three times this past week, Jin-mo. Yes, she was still alive but she was almost dead. And the Japanese Kempei-tai killed all the Korean girls. I’m sure they killed her, too. Why? Why do you want to know?”

  Jin-mo turned away.

  I went back to stirring the rice. “I’m making dduk for you. You should eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Jin-mo, you have to eat.”

  “No!” he said angrily. He marched into the living room and flopped in the upholstered chair. He picked up a book.

  I removed the rice from the stove. It hadn’t finished cooking but I knew Jin-mo wouldn’t eat it. I poured myself a cup of bori cha, sat at the table and stared out the window at the snow on the willows. Months earlier, Jin-mo had asked me to stay with him and I had hoped we would become a couple. It never happened. After he saw the comb with the two-headed dragon, he regarded me with caution, as if I was a fragile thing not to be broken. I yearned to have him touch me, kiss me, make love to me the way it should have been done before the Japanese had raped me. Instead, he had fallen into fits of depression and had lost himself in his books. I orbited around him and felt like a fool.

  I finished my bori cha and went to the living room. Jin-mo had curled himself up in his chair, reading. His books and papers were in stacks all around him. I picked up one of his papers and began to read it.

  “What are you doing?” Jin-mo asked from behind his book.

  “I’m reading this.”

  “Leave it,” he said. “Put it back exactly where it was.”

  “I want to see what you’re working on.” I held on to the paper.

  Jin-mo slammed his book closed. “Put it back!” he yelled. “You’re messing up the order.”

  His tone startled me. He had never talked to me like that before. “I’m messing up the order? What order, Jin-mo? I do not see any order at all.”

  Jin-mo looked around the room and his shoulders sagged. “You think I’m mad, don’t you?” he asked.

  I sat on the couch across from him. “I am worried about you.”

  He set his jaw. “I wasn’t wrong. The compromises I proposed were right for Korea. It was the only way to have one government.”

  “You cannot compromise with a dictatorship,” I said.

  “Dictatorship?”

  I pushed myself to the edge of the couch. “The way I see it,” I said, “Marx’s revolution of the proletariat is not possible. That much power will always turn into a dictatorship. It is human nature. In Korea, the dictator will be Kim Il-sung, just like Stalin is in Russia.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That is a problem, isn’t it?” He picked up his book and fell into it again.

  As I stood to go to the kitchen, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m sorry about me… about you and me.”

  “You and me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure you wanted more. From our relationship, I mean.”

  I let his words sink in. He was right, I had hoped for more. But as the weeks and months passed without anything happening between us, my hope had faded. And when his depression came and deepened, my hope died completely. I had tried everything, but I couldn’t reach him. I had lost him before I ever had him.

  “Yes, I did,” I said. “But I understand why you cannot love me.”

  “No you don’t,” Jin-mo said, setting his book down. “You think it is because of what you did… because of what you were forced to do by the Japanese.”

  A lump grew in my throat. I turned away.

  “That’s not why, Ja-hee,” he said. “You were just a girl when the Japanese tricked you. How could you know?”

  “I could not possibly,” I said quickly.

  “The Japanese did unspeakable things. They murdered our children and the elderly. They forced our women to work long hours in their factories and made our men fight their war. They raped girls like you. It’s not your fault. Do you understand? It is not your fault.”

  I looked at Jin-mo. “Then why don’t you want me?”

  “I do,” he said.

  I had never had a man say he wanted me before. Not like this. And the man who said it was my beloved Jin-mo. “I want you, too,” I heard myself say.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I cannot fall in love with you.”

  But I was already in love with him and couldn’t wait any longer. I went to his side and took his hand. I lifted his chin so our eyes met. “I love you, Jin-mo.”

  “Ja-hee. No.”

  I leaned into him and we kissed. The sublime tenderness of Jin-mo’s lips on mine pushed away the demons of the thousands of men who had raped me. And where the demons had been, a warmth rose. Jin-mo lifted a hand to my back and gently pulled me in close. I ran my hand along the muscles of his smooth back and the warmth in me grew into a fire. I pushed myself into him and kissed him harder. He wrapped his arms around me and our bodies met, chest to breast. I fell into his embrace. He lifted me in his arms and carried me to his room.

  And there, I made love for the first time in my life.

  *

  I lay next to Jin-mo and ran my fingers across his bare chest. I had never felt this way before. I had never even imagined it. I’d had sex thousands of times with thousands of men, but this, this was the first time I felt anything other than pain. For years, I worried that if true love came, the demons of my rapists would haunt me and make love impossible. But in Jin-mo’s embrace, the demons never came and I knew I was meant to love him.

  And he loved me too, I could feel it. It was in his hold, in the way he said my name when we made love. It was in the way he touched me so tenderly, kissed me and held me close. Maybe what I did in Dongfeng, as shameful as it was, was not my fault after all.

  I thought about my onni. Poor Soo-hee never knew the joy of making love. She had only known the pain of forced sex and the humiliation of rape. Perhaps it was because Soo-hee had given me the comb. I am sorry, Soo-hee, I said to myself. This should have been you.

  I asked Jin-mo why he was asking so many questions about my sister. He said he was just curious and that it was nothing for me to worry about.

  “Jin-mo,” I said, “she is dead.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” he said.

  I thought for a moment. He was right—I didn’t. Of course, I had often wondered what had happened to Soo-hee after I left her for dead in the infirmary. I knew it would have taken a miracle for my onni to survive. And it was best not to hope for miracles.

  “I do not think it is possible she’s still alive.” I said.

  “It is possible,” he said.
“And I can find out. I am an official in the provisional government. I have access to records.”

  I pushed myself up on an elbow. “You’ve looked? What have you learned?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Jin-mo sighed. “I want to find her, so you will not be alone.”

  “Alone? But I have you,” I said putting a hand on his shoulder.

  Jin-mo pushed me away. He sat on the edge of the bed with his bare back to me. “Listen to me, Ja-hee,” he said over his shoulder. “This… this was a mistake. We should not have done it. I should have been stronger.”

  I pulled the blanket over my shoulders. “So everything you said before, about it not being my fault was a lie?”

  He turned to me. “No. I meant what I said. This, what we did, it was beautiful. I have wanted you for a long time. Don’t you see? Didn’t you feel it?”

  “Yes, I did,” I answered. “So why was it a mistake?”

  He shook his head. “Because I am a marked man. Those fools think I’m their enemy. They want to kill me. But you, Ja-hee, you must go on. That is why I want to find your sister.”

  “If they kill you, they will have to kill me, too,” I said.

  “I believed you would do that, but I will not let you.”

  I pushed myself straight. “Then we should run away, Jin-mo, escape to the South. Thousands of people are doing it.”

  “They will never let me escape, Ja-hee. If you go with me, they will kill you, too. And then they will get your comb.”

  “My comb?” I said, surprised. “What does my comb have to do with this?”

  “They cannot have it. I don’t want the dragon to protect them.”

  “I don’t believe what you said about the dragon. It did not protect me.”

  “Maybe it did,” Jin-mo said. “You survived, Ja-hee. Do you understand? When your family and the other comfort women died, you survived. And now you must go on.”

  “But you said the dragon protected those who possessed it so they could help serve Korea. I haven’t done anything for Korea.”