Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story

by William Andrews

  “Namiko Iwata,” he said, punctuating each syllable of the name. “I suppose I should call you ‘Ja-hee’. Imagine my surprise at seeing you here.” He nodded toward the door. “I told Mr. Han that I wanted to talk to you alone about the contracts. They probably think I’m courting you for sex. How ironic.”

  I kept my head lowered. I tried not to show any emotions, but under my dress, my knees shook.

  “Don’t worry,” Kempei said. “It would be in both our interests if no one knew what happened in Dongfeng.”

  “Yes Kempei,” I heard myself say.

  “Good. As long as you hold your part of the bargain, I will see that your company gets a favorable rate on this contract. I will even tell them I am impressed with your work.”

  “Thank you, Kempei.”

  He slowly traced a circle on the table with his finger. “I have a wife now, and a daughter. Her name is Miwa.”

  “How old is she, sir?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “That is how old I was when… when we first met.”

  He stopped tracing the circle and looked down his sharp nose at me. “It was a war, Ja-hee. We had a duty to fulfill. I had mine, and you had yours.”

  I looked up. “My duty, Kempei?”

  “Yes, of course! The comfort women had a duty to the men, and to Japan.” He pointed his chin at me as if I should naturally agree.

  I returned his stare. “Then why did you kill them, sir?”

  There was a sudden blankness in his face. He blinked twice and said, simply, “I do not remember doing that.”

  It took him a moment to come back. Then he rose to leave. “Do you still have that comb with the two-headed dragon?” he asked. “Colonel Matsumoto said he gave it back to you.”

  I thought about the comb hidden under the windowsill of my apartment. I looked at my feet. “No, Kempei. I had to sell it to feed my daughter.”

  “Too bad. I remember the dragon had five toes. I didn’t know what it meant at the time. But it does not matter, now. I hope you got a very good price for it.”

  “I did, Kempei.”

  “Good. I better get back. They’ll start to wonder what we are doing in here.” He turned to leave and then turned back. “One more thing,” he said. “Give my greetings to your sister. I always did like her. I trust she is well.”

  I quickly lifted my head. “Sir,” I said, “Soo-hee died in Dongfeng. Didn’t she?” My knees stopped shaking.

  A thin smile stretched across Lieutenant Tanaka’s face. He shook his head. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “I don’t know about what, Kempei? Please tell me, sir.”

  Lieutenant Tanaka laughed quietly and put his hands on the back of the chair. He told me that when the Japanese left Dongfeng, Doctor Watanabe insisted that they take all his patients to Pushun, including Soo-hee. No one thought she would make it, but in Pushun, Soo-hee had an operation and eventually made a full recovery. He told me that when he went home to Japan several months later, Soo-hee was trying to get back to Korea. “Don’t tell me after all these years, you never knew,” he said.

  “No Kempei, I didn’t.”

  “My guess is she’s in the North somewhere. So there you go. Your old kempei has given you valuable information to reward you for a job well done.”

  “Thank you, Kempei.”

  Lieutenant Tanaka regarded me for a moment. “Remember our agreement, Ja-hee. No one needs to know about Dongfeng.”

  “Yes, Kempei,” I said.

  Lieutenant Tanaka tapped the back of the chair twice and went out the door.

  I lowered myself to a chair and stared at the door. Was it possible that Soo-hee was alive? Or was this a cruel joke by the cruelest man I had ever known? And why, I wondered, why hadn’t I screamed at him, scratched his eyes, cursed him for what he had done to me? Why did I have to be a good Korean and keep it all inside?

  After awhile, I gathered my papers and left the conference room. It was possible my onni was alive. I hadn’t seen my sister after I fled from Private Ishida. And when I returned to the infirmary, she was gone. Lieutenant Tanaka might be telling the truth. I had to find out. But how? The North and South were bitter enemies with an impenetrable border between them. Yet, there were rumors of underground networks that families could use to pass letters to each other.

  As I went back to my desk, I resolved to find my sister whom I hadn’t seen in twenty years.

  T HIRTY-EIGHT

  “What did you and your sister do in Dongfeng?” Mr. Lee asked, peering over his glasses from his metal desk in the Department of Records. Mr. Lee’s desk sign identified him as the Administrator of Records. He had a slight paunch and his white shirt was gray from age. His office was on the first floor of one of South Korea’s new government buildings. For the past fifteen minutes, he had been asking me questions so he could complete his form. He hadn’t even bothered to look up until I mentioned Dongfeng.

  I told him we worked for the Japanese hoping he would accept my answer and move on, but he asked me to be more specific. He held his pen over his form.

  I wondered what I should tell him about the comfort station. What people had done during the Japanese occupation was something proper Koreans did not discuss. But I had come here to see if Lieutenant Tanaka had told me the truth about Soo-hee and if there was information about her. So I had to tell Mr. Lee about Dongfeng.

  “My sister and I received orders from the Japanese military command to report to work at a boot factory in Sinuiju,” I said. “The orders were a trick. They put us in a truck and shipped us to Dongfeng. They forced us to become comfort women. That’s what we did there. We were ianfu.”

  Mr. Lee glared at me for several seconds and then pushed the papers to the side of his desk without writing anything more. “I cannot help you,” he said flatly.

  “Why?”

  “Because we have no records of that sort of thing happening.”

  “It is what happened,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I spent two years there. If we had not done it, we would have been shot.”

  Mr. Lee looked from side-to-side as if he were afraid someone was listening. “You should not talk about it,” he said. “The Japanese are our allies now. They’re helping us. There is no need to bring up what happened twenty years ago. I’m not putting it in the records.”

  “That’s fine, but please see if you have anything about my sister. Her name is Hong Soo-hee. She was from Sinuiju.”

  “Look,” Mr. Lee said, leaning forward, “families were scattered after World War II and again after the Korean War. Millions died. The chances of your sister still being alive are small. The chances of you finding her if she is alive are even smaller.”

  I moved to the edge of my chair. My jaw tightened. “Mr. Lee, isn’t that what this department is for? Helping family members find each other? You have thousands of files here. Can’t you at least look? Just because the Japanese forced me to be an ianfu, does not mean you don’t have to help me. Why do you make me suffer for what the Japanese did to me?”

  Mr. Lee sighed. “Okay, I will look if it will get you to leave. I doubt if I’ll find anything. What was your sister’s name again?”

  I gave it to him and he wrote it down. He said it will take some time and I told him I would wait.

  Mr. Lee disappeared into a huge open area filled with tall, beige file drawers and long shelves packed with boxes. I looked at the form on Mr. Lee’s desk. I was glad he didn’t want to write down what Soo-hee and I had done in Dongfeng. But as I waited for him to return, I wondered why it had to be that way. For years, there had been hushed talk throughout Korea about tens of thousands of women who the Japanese had forced to be ianfu. Apparently, there were many more women like me who the Japanese had raped and tortured. Now, the Koreans and Japanese were allies and we were sweeping aside the atrocities of their brutal occupation. No one wanted to hear about our suffering. I knew why. Just like me, Koreans did not want to admit what the Japanese had done to us. Sim
ply put, we were ashamed.

  Twenty minutes later, Mr. Lee returned scratching his head and holding a stained envelope. “I found something,” he said. “Before the Korean War—in May of 1949, to be exact—there was a letter delivered to our department by a Park Seung-yo from Sinuiju who had escaped to the South. Apparently, Mr. Park lived with you at one time. He delivered this letter.” Mr. Lee looked at me over his glasses as he handed the envelope to me.

  The letter was water-stained and yellowed with age. On the back was a government label with the name ‘Hong Soo-hee: Sinuiju’ and a file number. On the front, handwritten in smudged ink, was; “For Hong Ja-hee, born twenty miles east of Sinuiju, last seen in Sinuiju, October 1945.”

  I pressed the envelope to my chest. My heart beat fast knowing my onni was alive. Lieutenant Tanaka hadn’t lied. Soo-hee had recovered from her botched abortion and was living somewhere in North Korea.

  I opened the envelope. Inside was a letter dated April 1949.

  Ja-hee,

  If you are reading this letter, you know I survived my illness in Dongfeng. After several years in China, I returned to Sinuiju to look for you. I made inquiries and found this man, Park Seung-yo, who said he knew you. So, I am sending this letter with him, hoping to find you some day.

  I have learned that Mother and Father are dead. You and I are all that is left of our family. Please write to me in Sinuiju. Perhaps we can be together again soon.

  Take care Little Sister,

  Your onni, Soo-hee.

  I read the letter twice more. I nodded to myself and asked Mr. Lee how I could get a letter to my sister in Sinuiju.

  He shook his head. “It is impossible. Communicating with people in the North is prohibited.”

  “But my sister is alive,” I said. “I must get a letter to her. I’ve heard it can be done. Help me. Please.”

  Mr. Lee eyed me carefully, and then looked from side-to-side. He motioned for me to lean in close. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but… there is an underground network. It is not cheap and, if you are caught, you will be arrested.”

  “I understand. How do I do it?”

  He told me about a Chinaman named Dr. Wu that I would find in a warehouse in Songdong. He wrote down an address and gave it to me. He told me to tell Dr. Wu that he sent me. “Don’t get caught,” he said, “and do not tell anyone where you got this information.”

  I thanked him and assured him I would be careful. I took the address and letter, then left the government building to catch a cab for Songdong.

  *

  The address was for the Daegu Refrigerated Warehouse and the taxi driver drove right to it through the late-afternoon traffic. As the cab waited for me, I entered the building through an open loading dock door. Workers on the warehouse floor noisily moved crates of vegetables from trucks to refrigerated rooms. The warehouse had the pungent smell of onions, which reminded me of our family farm. I climbed a set of open wooden stairs to a second floor office filled with file cabinets and cardboard boxes. A thin man sat at the office’s only desk. When he saw me, he asked who I was.

  “My name is Hong Ja-hee. I am looking for Dr. Wu. Mr. Lee sent me.”

  “What do you want with Dr. Wu?” he said without looking up.

  “I was told he could help me get a letter to a family member in the North.”

  “Contact with people in the North is against the law. Go away.”

  I started to leave, but turned back before I got to the door. “I have money,” I said.

  The thin man didn’t respond and I went to leave again. As I opened the door, the man said, “It will cost a lot of money,” he said, still not looking up.

  “I will pay whatever it takes,” I said.

  The man finally looked at me. “How do I know you aren’t from the police?”

  I thought for a moment, shook my head and said, “I guess you don’t. But I assure you, I only want to find my sister. I just learned she is alive. I have not seen her in twenty years.”

  The man licked his lips. He told me to wait and went through a door. After a minute, he came out and pointed to the office. “Dr. Wu will see you in there,” he said.

  I walked inside the office. It was dark inside and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust. There was the sweet smell of incense in the room. Persian rugs covered the floors, and beautiful Chinese tapestries with scenes of cranes and snow-capped mountains hung on the walls. In the center of the room was a massive rosewood desk with thick carved legs. In front of the desk were matching chairs with embroidered cushions. Sitting in the shadows at the desk was a rotund man wearing a maroon smoking jacket. Between his stubby fingers was a long cigarette holder tipped with a thin cigarette. Smoke drifted up from the end.

  I went to the desk and bowed. The man motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “What is your name, woman?” he asked in a husky voice. He had no trace of a Chinese accent.

  “Hong Ja-hee,” I answered.

  From inside the shadows, the man nodded. “The Hong clan. From the North. Mostly farmers, if I’m not mistaken.” He took a puff from his cigarette. The tip glowed orange.

  “Yes, my family had a farm outside of Sinuiju.”

  “Sinuiju. I cannot say I like the place.” He angled his head and blew cigarette smoke toward the ceiling. “I prefer the Chinese city of Dandong across the Yalu River. The Great Wall begins there and it has a lovely park at the base of Jinjiang Mountain. I am told you have a sister who you want to find.”

  “Yes, sir. The Department of Family Records had a letter on file. I think my sister might be in Sinuiju. I want to get a letter to her.”

  Dr. Wu leaned his bulk over the rosewood desk and his round face came out of the shadows. His eyes were white and lifeless. “It costs a lot of money to get a letter to someone in the North. We do not know where she is or if she is even alive. We have to avoid the authorities on both sides of the border. It is all very… complicated.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  He leaned back into the shadows and took in a long draw from his cigarette. He angled his head in the manner of a man who has been blind all his life. “If I agree to do this for you, it will cost two-hundred thousand won or one thousand American dollars if you prefer. And I make no guarantees. The chances are your sister is dead. So many of your people died in the civil war. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes, sir. I think I can get the money.”

  He took another pull from the cigarette. “Where will you get that kind of money, woman?”

  “I work for the Gongson Construction Company.”

  “What do you do there?”

  “I am an interpreter.”

  “What languages?”

  “Japanese and English. I also speak Chinese.”

  “Impressive! When did you get separated from your sister?”

  I peered into the shadows at the bulk of Dr. Wu. I hesitated only a moment and then answered, “We were ianfu in Dongfeng. The Japanese tricked us into working for them. I thought they had killed my sister, but as I said, today I learned she is alive.”

  Dr. Wu pointed his cigarette in my direction. “I doubt you earn enough as an interpreter for the Gongson Construction Company, but if you can raise the money, I will help you. When you have it, bring it here with your letter and everything you know about your sister. We will get back to you if we find her.”

  “How long will it take?” I asked.

  Dr. Wu leaned forward exposing his lifeless eyes again. “Months,” he said with a blind man’s grin.

  “Thank you, sir.” I bowed and hurried out.

  *

  I climbed in the cab and gave the driver the address of my apartment. Two hundred thousand won. I didn’t have that much money. But I was hopeful and excited because I knew one person who could give it to me.

  T HIRTY-NINE

  Chul-sun and I planned our wedding as we ate at an expensive restaurant in Itaewon. Since I had agreed to marry him, Chul-sun walked with his
shoulders back and his chin held high. The pockmarks on his face didn’t show as much, and his clothes seemed to fit better. He hadn’t blushed all night. At the restaurant, he had ordered a bottle of plum wine and an elaborate meal. Several dishes of banchan were spread before us on the low table. We sat close to each other on mats.

  Chul-sun took a sip of wine. “I want a traditional wedding,” he said, holding his glass out. “I do not care what it costs. I want both of us to wear new hanboks. I want a moja for my head. just like the yangban wear. We will have a formal tea ceremony and a wedding feast at a hotel. Bulgogi, galbi, mandu, bibimbop, gamjatang and jajagmeon, banchan and all the trimmings. We will invite my family, our friends, and people from Gongson. It will be a grand wedding.”

  I picked at my food. “Maybe we shouldn’t spend so much,” I said. “It could be expensive.”

  “It will be expensive,” he replied.

  I took Chul-sun’s hand and gave it a squeeze. A flash of excitement crossed his eyes. “We will have other expenses too,” I said. “We will need money to send Soo-bo to school… and for other things.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Don’t worry. We will have enough.”

  After a long silence, Chul-sun said quietly, “Ja-hee, now that we’re engaged, it would not be wrong if you went home with me tonight.”

  I lowered my eyes. “I have to get home to Soo-bo.”

  “It’s still early. I’ll pay a cab to take you home. You will be back to Soo-bo in plenty of time. Come home with me, Ja-hee, just for a little while.”

  I peered into his face and saw how deeply he wanted me. But I wondered if he would still want me if he knew my secrets. Would he still want to take me home, make love to me, go through with the elaborate wedding and take me as his wife?

  I looked at my hands. “Chul-sun,” I said softly, “I have to tell you where I went yesterday. I went to the Department of Family Records and discovered that my sister is alive and living in the North. I want to get a letter to her, but it costs a lot of money.”