A piece of advice for Ramseyer

By Yi Woo-won

J. Mark Ramseyer, professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School, still claims that no one has ever located any documentary evidence that the Japanese military forcibly recruited any Korean women into comfort stations.

I assumed instantly that Ramseyer had been pushed again by Japanese government authorities to tell Koreans what he had told them before and to keep their mouths shut. This situation was probably because the Korean government or someone demanded again a formal apology from the Japanese government for the comfort women who were sexually enslaved during World War II.

It is undeniable that the documents are always there somewhere, unless they were destroyed intentionally, which is unbelievable by Japanese conventional standards. Besides, we know that the records of forced Korean laborers, numbering close to the millions, in Korea, Japan and elsewhere overseas, have been maintained well until now and in detail. Therefore, it's a lie and nonsense that they couldn't find the documentary evidence of the former sex slaves.

The truth is that they didn't intend to find the documents, because the revelation would compel them to admit the reality of the shocking “comfort stations,” the organized prostitution of Korean women for the Japanese military during the war ― an indelible dishonor against humanity.

When the records are uncovered and real facts divulged, we will know when, where and how they joined the comfort stations, and if they were recruited, coerced, intimidated or volunteered. We understand that the majority of victims were recruited in groups by military recruiting officers at schools or in villages. It is estimated that the total number of women rounded up around the peninsula numbers up to 200,000 or more.

“Teishintai” (the 3-syllable phrase of Chinese characters that literally mean “sacrifice,” “self” and “military unit”) were in fact suicide mission volunteer detachment units of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The “Self-Sacrifice” slogan was highly instrumental in boosting the morale and fighting spirit of the Japanese troops. The Kamikaze (“divine wind”) suicide-bombers were among them.

Let me give you a piece of advice now, my friend Ramseyer. Stop wasting your time, beating around the bush. You'll never find the documents you're looking for in Japan. I doubt, but if you sincerely want to know the facts about “comfort women” for your paper, come to us and meet those surviving former comfort women ― the living evidence. In addition, let me show you some extracts of my other essay about comfort women titled, “Silent Rage,” published in The Korea Times on Feb. 12, 1992.

Extracts from “Silent Rage:” “After the war, some conscientious and sympathetic Japanese stood up in resentment and offered to testify to the horrifying crimes their country had committed. Mr. Yoshida Seiichi, 78, a former Japanese recruiting officer, remorsefully confessed that in 1943, he personally directed his troops to seize villages and mobilized about 5,000 laborers and 1,000 former sex slaves.

Mrs. Ikeda, a former Japanese teacher at a primary school in Seoul, recalled with tears in her eyes that she witnessed six students in her 6th grade classroom being pulled out by a recruiting officer in 1944. She also added that a few principals had been promoted for their good recruiting records in their schools.”

Those who made their way back home after the war, now in their 60s or 70s, childless and forlorn, live virtually in seclusion, fighting against the haunting nightmare of the past ― the secret they can't disclose to anyone.

Yi Woo-won (

yiwoowon1988@gmail.com

) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province, and has been writing since 1986.