Cries of the Korean Comfort Women

Written by Bernie Weisz/Historian & Book Reviewer Pembroke Pines, Florida e mail:BernWei1@aol.com April 10, 2010 Title of Review:Japanese W.W.II Soldiers:Adherents to "Bushido" or "Uniformed Rapists"?,

Samuel Kimm's book "Cries of the Korean Comfort Women:The Vivid Testimony of a Korean Teenage Girl During W.W. II" is the fascinating story of the plight of Agatha Hwang, Kimm's protagonist who served reluctantly as a "Comfort Woman" during the last two years of W.W. II in sexual servitude to the Japanese Military. "Comfort Women" is a euphemism for women who were forced into prostitution in military brothels by Japan during this conflict. The number of women impressed during the conflict seems to be anywhere between 200,000 to 410,000. The majority were as follows:Korean women 51.8%, Chinese 36 %, Japanese 12.2 % The rest came from Japanese occupied countries such as the Philippines, Taiwan, the Dutch East Indies, Thailand and Vietnam, etc. Through different methods, the Japanese would procure these women and send them to "comfort stations" (brothels where the women whould live and perform in sexual slavery) and to all conquered parts of the world to which the Japanese referred to as their "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

Through a story that reads like a novel, Kimm describes the different tactics the Japanese used to ultimately coerce, blackmail, or outright abduct women from their homes. Why did the Japanese want "Comfort Women" in the first place? The rational amongst the Japanese military brainwork was that by providing Japan's forces with well-organized prostitution, it would greatly boost fighting morale, and prevent massacres with rape crimes committed. This would also win the "hearts and minds" of the indigenous population by preventing the rise of hostility among people in Japanese occupied areas. Oher benefits were thought to be the prevention of venereal disease (this was a big problem to U.S. troops in Vietnam) and to thwart espionage. However,most experts believe that by providing comfort women to it's troops, Japan could head off growing soldier discontent in the Japanese Imperial Army that could explode into rebellion at any time.

Kimm explains in his story that initially, Japanese authorities recruited prostitutes voluntarily in Japan. When this source dried up, the authorities turned to Japanese colonies of Taiwan, Manchuria (then renamed by the Japanese as "Manchuko"), China, and especially Korea. Indigent, uneducated and unemployed Korean young women volunteered with Japanese promises of work in it's occupied territories. There were spurious Japanese calls for factory workers, nurses, etc., with the women having no knowledge that they were headed into the evil clutches of sexual slavery. Tricked or defrauded into joining military brothels, gullible women were lured by false inducements of large sums of money, an opportunity to pay off family debts, easy work and the excitement of a new adventure in a foreign land.

However, Kimm uses his story to show the horrible conditions the comfort women actually were faced with once they arrived at these "comfort stations". At the end of W.W. II, only 25% of the comfort women survived the war and of that the majority were sterile as a result of the multiple rapes or the diseases they contracted. Japanese soldiers are supposed to abide by the "Code of Bushido" meaning "The way of the Warrior. This was a Japanese code of conduct which describes the concept of bravery, courtesy, and especially of the "ideal knight" Personifying "Bushido", the Japanese soldier is suppposed to embody the "seven virtues" of this code, which are "rectitude" (integrity and moral excellence), "courage", "benevolence" (kindness), "respect", "honesty", "honor" and "loyalty"

Kimm juxtaposes these tenants with what the Japanese actually did to the Korean comfort girls once these women were in their clutches. The comfort stations turned out to be places where women, some as young as 12, were systematically raped and beaten, day and night. Where was the code of "Bushido" when Japanese soldiers took girls that were not even old enough to have started menstruating and repeatedly raped them? Kimm's book, through the eyes of Agatha Hwang, is full of stories of torture, rape and Japanese inhumanity.

Some deficits in this book are that the reader never knows if Kimm's storyline concerning Agatha Hwang is fact or fiction used as a backdrop to tell the "comfort woman" story. There are times when only the ease and flow of fiction can provide this continuity and avoid "reader boredom". There is no index, no footnotes, and no bibliography. I tried to google "Agatha Hwang" with no luck. Did she exist? In addition, while I believe I have a fairly extensive vocabulary, Samuel Kimm found it necessary to use at least once on every page a word that sent me running to the dictionary to look it up. How many people know what the words "dulcet", "feral", "oneiromancy" and "surfeit" mean? I found that very annoying.

Finally, without being a "plotspoiler" and telling the reader of this review the whole story, Kimm has Agatha fall in love with one of her clients early in the book, a Korean soldier in the Japanese Army. After this soldier is transferred far away (and ultimately defects to an "anti Japanese, partisan Korean movement) Agatha spends much time ruminating throughout the story on how much she wants to be reunited with her lover, ultimately marrying and spending the rest of her life with him. Kimm disappointingly leaves this issue unresolved to the reader's frustration.

Regardless of whether or not this is a true story, Kimm tells the reader in a flowing and eloquent fashion the devious system of sexual slavery the Japanese instituted during W.W. II. How many history books tell students the sad and tragic tale of how the Japanese military, and by extension the Japanese government set up and administered these sexual slavery camps and subjected innocent and unwilling women to them? How many lives were tragically ruined? Along with issues like the Nazi elimination of 6 million Jews in East European Concentration Camps, the Axis murder of 13 million Soviets, and the Japanese liquidation of 20 million Chinese, this is a holocaust of sorts that is simply ignored in history books and must be brought to the public's mind.

Unfortunately, today Japanese revisionist historians are arguing that Japan was the victim and incredulously not the perpetrator of W.W.II and that despite it's defeat, Japan can be proud that it's role in W.W. II led to an end of western colonialism in Asia. By doing this, Japan is denying the fact that by it's actions it was one of the most notorious imperialists to set foot in another country. These same revisionists today claim that the Japanese military was never involved in the comfort woman industry, and the actual comfort women were legal prostitutes, earning money for their families. Read this book, and ask only the handful of comfort women still alive today if this is true, mostly in their 80's or 90's. I truly doubt they will agree

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