My name is Huang Jinzhou, and I was born in a family of scholars.
I heard that my ancestors have been reading for many generations, and they have a lot of books at home.
My grandfather and grandfather have been friends since childhood.
Before my father was even born, he was married to a mother who was five years older than him.
Later, my grandfather died of illness.
Under the control of the family, the 12-year-old father married the 17-year-old mother.
At that time, they lived in Buyeo. A total of three children were born, two girls and one boy.
I am the eldest daughter and have a younger brother and sister below.
After the father got married, he continued to go to school, and the household chores were mainly handled by the mother.
My father went to junior high school in Seoul and went to Japan to study after graduation.
Academically, my father was very gifted and hardworking. However, studying abroad required a lot of expenses, and although the family was not very poor at that time, because of the economic recession, they were not rich, and they were just able to barely make a living.
Although my uncle and other family members provided a lot of financial support, the cost of living in Japan was still very large, so my father worked tirelessly everywhere, but when he was about to graduate, he became seriously ill.
Because he was seriously ill, he had to stop his studies and go home to recuperate. For this reason, a lot of money was spent, but the father's illness was not cured, and the family was dragged down and fell into an economic crisis.
At that time, there was a medicine that was said to be miraculous and could cure my father's illness. However, I went to ask and was shocked because it was too expensive, asking for 100 yuan, and we couldn't afford it at all.
The whole family was very worried about this, and it happened that a friend of my mother's came to the house and wanted to introduce me to a job. The person she introduced was a businessman in Seoul and his surname was Cui.
I went to meet the businessman surnamed Cui, who was very kind. So I told him about my house.
He was very sympathetic to my father's plight and agreed to lend me 100 yuan for my father's medical treatment.
However, at that time, I simply could not afford to repay the huge debt of 100 yuan.
So, I made my own decisions behind my family's back and sold myself to this businessman surnamed Cui.
The merchant surnamed Cui asked me to be his adopted daughter and to work as a maid for his concubine.
But he said that the family took the 100 yuan to buy the medicine and gave it to his father, but they could not save his father's illness.
Only a year later, my father died. It was 1934, and I remember it very well, I was 13 years old. I am very saddened by the death of my father.
And I, on the other hand, sold myself for the huge debt of 100 yuan and went on a different path.
first worked as a maid at the concubine surnamed Cui, but the concubine had a strange temper and beat people at every turn.
I endured it for two years, but I couldn't bear it, so I told the businessman surnamed Cui, who asked me to call him my adoptive father, about these situations.
He didn't say anything and asked me to go to his wife to do something.
His wife lives in Hamxing and is a very good person. There are also four children, two boys and two girls.
Seeing that I was diligent and sensible, the wife of a businessman surnamed Cui was very open-minded and sent me to a night school, the Xiancheng Girls' Training Center, when I was 17 years old, and let me study.
I went there for two years and learned arithmetic, reading and writing, Japanese, and knitting.
Those were my happiest two years, and I am very grateful to my wife surnamed Cui, whom I call my adoptive mother.
However, there is always a limit to good days.
Then something happened.
About a year later, because the area was under the management of the Japanese, a Japanese leader told the families that he would send a woman to work in a Japanese munitions factory for three years.
This is mandatory, so I, as an adopted daughter, went for the Cui family.
The wife of a businessman surnamed Cui was very touched by my performance, and she said that when I came back, she would find me a good in-law and marry me off in style.
This year, I was 20 years old, and I remember very well that the time was the second lunar month of 1941.
After registration, I was given a departure date and meeting place. Then, I arrived at Hamhung Station as scheduled. When I got there, I found that all the girls from all the counties were gathered there, most of them were fifteen or sixteen years old, and I was the eldest, 20 years old.
My adoptive mother treated me well and gave me clothes to wear for three years, as well as menstrual belts and underwear that girls must use, as well as daily necessities such as toothbrushes and soap.
We were met at the station by a 50-year-old North Korean man.
Because he is a compatriot, and he doesn't seem to be a brother, we girls who go out for the first time feel a little comforted in our hearts.
Then, under his leadership, we got on a train.
The train had a number of carriages, some of which were reserved for military use.
And in our carriage, all the girls are doing it, there are about 50 people in total.
I was nervous, but I was also a little looking forward to it, I hope to be able to work hard in Japan, earn enough money, and then return the 100 yuan I borrowed from the businessman surnamed Cui, and I still want to go back to my biological mother.
This should be human nature, and probably every child will want to go back to their parents.
As the car drove away, I felt a little anxious. But the windows in the carriage were covered with oiled paper, and there were military police guards at both ends of the carriage, so we sat in it, except for going to the toilet, we couldn't move around, and we didn't know where the car was going. And the car is on the road, always stop-and-go. Even in the middle of the way, I changed trains at night.
It wasn't until the last stop that I got off the train and suddenly heard a loud voice on the radio. I didn't understand, so I asked others to find out that it said that this was Jilin Station in China. The North Korean man who brought us here told us that this was the northeast of China.
I was very surprised and scared! I knew that we were not sent to Japan, and we must have been deceived.
The station listened to several Japanese military trucks, the canopy was covered with thick dust and dirty. The Japanese divided us fifty girls into groups and got into different cars.
Then we were transported to different places.
When I got out of the truck, I realized that it was a Japanese military camp.
We were a group of girls, and we were taken into a house by the Japanese army, so let's rest here first.
The house was fenced with tin sheets, wooden planks on top and bottom, and tatami mats on the floor.
The Japanese army gave each of us a blanket and quilt.
At that time, it was still very cold, which could not protect against the cold at all, and we were so cold at night that we couldn't eat, so we had to hug each other next to each other to keep warm.
There were several women in the house, and when one of them saw the Japanese soldiers leaving, she said to us:
"You're in hell, it's pathetic, you don't even know it. ”
We were all amazed and asked her, and she said:
"Alas, don't ask, just do whatever you want to do, if you don't obey, you will be beaten to death. ”
I was terrified, and sure enough, the next day, the nightmare began.
The new women were constantly being taken out one by one, and I was also taken out, to a Japanese officer's room.
I vaguely understood in my heart that when the Japanese officer was about to touch me, I decisively refused, or rather, instinctively.
My mother once told me that the most important thing for a woman is her chastity.
However, my refusal brought me a severe beating, but I still cried and begged him to let me go.
But in the eyes of the beast, it is useless to plead.
The Japanese officer tore my clothes like a beast and picked open my underwear with his saber, and I was stunned.
When I woke up, I was bleeding······ I felt pain all over my body and couldn't stop crying.
At this time, I completely believed what the woman who had come before said, this is the land of beasts, and those who do not obey will be killed.
In the first half month, I would be called three or four times a day by those beastly Japanese officers.
However, none of the officers wore condoms, and as a result, many of our new virgins were pregnant, and after pregnancy, they would be injected with 606 gauges, and then they would be sent to a hospital in Japan for curettage.
However, this is just the beginning, and more terrible nightmares are yet to come.
Half a month later, we were all sent to the comfort station, a row of makeshift huts made of wood, planked into several rooms, each room with only one bed. There was a sign hanging at the door of the room with the name of the woman in the room.
Then, there was an endless reception of Japanese troops. At most, a dozen or even twenty people are received a day. The Japanese soldiers were more brutal and beastly than the Japanese officers, and they were often drunk, because the war had made them grumpy, and all of it was vented on the comfort women, weak and pitiful, powerless women. If you disagree with them, you will be scolded and beaten. Some Japanese soldiers were so terrible that they lost their humanity and provoked them, they would draw their bayonets!
Day after day, I feel like a walking corpse!
If being alive is a nightmare, I feel like we're more like living with a living instinct, stiff and numb.
Our hearts are dead.
The food we ate was mainly miso soup and radish pickles, and the clothes we wore were all issued by the Japanese army at first, but later, with the gradual defeat of Japan in the Chinese battlefield, maybe the supplies were relatively tight, they cut off the supply. We, the comfort women, had no choice but to pick up the uniforms discarded by the Japanese army and put them on.
Especially after entering 1945, even eating became a problem, and pickles were gone. Therefore, when the rice balls given at each meal were difficult to swallow, we could only get some salt water and eat the rice balls.
Despite such a poor life, those Japanese soldiers continued to come and abuse us like beasts every day. And it was even more terrible than ever, and a day a comfort woman would even receive thirty to forty Japanese soldiers. In the face of such a frenzied torture, none of the comfort women were healthy, their bodies were destroyed and collapsed, and they were riddled with all kinds of diseases, and some of their bodies were so swollen that they were difficult to see directly, starting from the lower part of the body to swell and suppurate all the way to the face.
Such comfort women could not receive the Japanese soldiers, so they were carried out by the Japanese soldiers, burned or buried alive.
Many of the comfort women were in pain and tortured to the point where they could not get off the ground, but they still had to receive the Japanese soldiers.
In the comfort stations, the Japanese army was a beast and never regarded the comfort women as human beings. And the guards are very tight, and sometimes, the comfort women don't even have the right to look up at the moon, because the Japanese soldiers on guard will think you are homesick. If the comfort women talk to themselves, the Japanese military guards think you are cursing or cursing the Japanese. At these times, they were severely beaten by Japanese soldiers.
Therefore, in our comfort station, when we went out, we all looked down at the road, or tried not to look at the Japanese. Because you don't know what kind of behavior will be seen as disobedient by those perverted, neurotic Japanese soldiers, and you will be severely beaten.
Once, when I could not receive me because of uterine bleeding, a Japanese soldier made an excessive request, and I refused him, and he was so angry that he beat me like a terrible beast until I fainted.
When I woke up, the comfort women in the same room told me that I had been in a coma for three days and that if I didn't wake up, I might be carried out.
Soon the Japanese army told us that there was a new place where women were needed. At that time, I already hated this place, and thought that the Japanese soldiers here were all beasts, and that it might be better to change places.
So, I signed up. As a result, when they arrived at the station, they found that they were comfort women of a Japanese naval unit. Compared with the Japanese army in Jilin, the Japanese army here is even more abnormal, more beasts than beasts, beating people frequently and viciously, beyond imagination, every day seems to be struggling on the line of life and death.
I even felt that I might be killed here by the Japanese army.
After a while, the Japanese troops on this side suddenly began to retreat to Jilin. It turned out that the Japanese were not going well in the Chinese theater, and they were defeated, which made us feel a little happy.
Soon after they withdrew to Jilin, the Japanese army ran away and left us comfort women on the battlefield.
When a Japanese liaison officer was on the run, he told us that Japan had dropped its atomic bomb and that Japan had surrendered, so you should go back to Korea.
It was the autumn of 1945!
When I heard the news, I had been in China for 4 years.
From 1941 to 1945, I was tortured, tortured, and humiliated by the beastly Japanese army for four years.
My body was bruised and sick, and my whole life was ruined!
At that time, there were only seven comfort women left in the hut where I was, and when I first came, there were dozens of them, some of whom were taken away by the Japanese army, some were tortured to death by the Japanese army, and some were ······
Seven of us, all North Koreans, heard the news and quickly started to flee.
By the time I returned to the cool room, it was the end of the 45th year, and the weather in December was very cold.
I should have been happy to finally return to my hometown, but I felt very frightened, and I squatted on the side of the road alone and cried for a long time. Because, I don't have the face to go back.
I didn't dare to go home, I kept doing odd jobs everywhere, sometimes in factories, sometimes in restaurants.
Later, we saved some money and adopted two poor orphans.
Later, I came to Seoul and opened a small restaurant, which was very difficult to run by myself, but I could barely support myself.
However, I never dared to go back to see my loved ones. I didn't dare to marry again, because I had lost my fertility after four years of devastation. I am even more afraid that if I get married, the other party will find out about my past experience and will be abandoned and discriminated against.
I have been holding back the pain in my heart, I dare not speak, and I have nowhere to say.
This feeling is very scary, it weighs down on me like a mountain, and I have various mental problems such as insomnia.
It was not until November 1991 that Ms. Kim Hak-soon of South Korea was the first to stand up and publicly tell her story of her comfort women on television and condemn the Japanese government. So, I called Ms. Kim and told her what had happened to her.
Saying everything seems to be much more comfortable, but it is also equivalent to completely cutting off the relationship with the family.
My greatest wish is that others will not discriminate against me, and I also want to help some people in need by my own efforts, until one day, I can leave this world quietly and without discrimination.