11/05/2025
We miss you Lee Oksun
*Name Lee Oksun
*Year of Birth 1927
*Drafted Year 1942(aged 15)
*Comfort Station China(Jirin)
*Year of Return 2000(after she had lived in China)
*Present in 2016 At the House of Sharing
I was born on October 10th, 1927. I was the second child of six children. I had an older brother, two younger brothers, and two sisters. My older brother` name was Bongjo, and the sisters`names were Okju and Oki, but I can`t remember the names of my younger brothers. My family was very poor. My father was a laborer, but he didn`t earn enough money. Moreover, he drank a lot, so my mother had a very hard time. My mother did everything she could to make money. She cleaned bean sprouts in the market, sewed, sold vegetables and morning drinks in the streets. I remember that we didn`t have anything to eat, so my mother brought bean sprout roots, which were thrown away in the market, and cooked them for us.
One day when I was fifteen, my mother said to me “There is a noodle restaurant in Busan, and the owners want to adopt a daughter. Do you want to go there?” I said, “Will they let me go to school?” and she said they would make me study and give me a lot of food. So I said yes and was adopted. But far from making me go to school, they made me do all the chores and wait on the tables in the restaurant. I told my foster parents that I had to earn money to study, but they didn`t listen. So I ran away twice, but I was caught every time and was beaten.
I tried to run away a lot, so they sold me to an inn in Ulsan after a few months. I couldn`t even drop by home. I also had to work until midnight. It was so hard that once I wet the bed.
One day, I came out to run some errands in the late afternoon, and two men caught me in the street. They were big men in their forties, and they held my wrists from behind. They said “Let`s go,”and I protested saying “Where are you taking me?” They covered my mouth, saying “Be quiet and let`s go,” and I was dragged away even without a scream. The place they took me was far away from the station. Ulsan was a rural town, and there were a lot of trees, so there were no people who could see me when I was kidnapped. They took me to Ulsan station on a truck and left. There were several other kidnapped girls at the station. Five girls including me were made to get on the train. There were some civilians and soldiers. We were put into a freight compartment, so we couldn`t see or talk to anyone. We couldn`t do anything.
There were fifteen girls on the train. One of them was fourteen, and another was the same age as me. We talked about killing ourselves by jumping off the train, but we couldn`t carry out the plan. After two days, we arrived at a town called Tumen in China. I arrived there in pigtail and traditional Korean clothes I was wearing when I had been kidnapped. I was taken to China at fourteen in July 1942, less than one year after I was sold to the inn.
It was dark when we arrived at Tumen station. I don`t know how many of us got off. Five of us including me were locked up near the station. We spent the night there, and I was the only one who was locked up alone. I still don`t know why they separated me from the rest. They didn`t ask us any personal questions. The Korean men who took us there didn`t sleep at the same place with us, and I didn`t know where they spent the night. They still didn`t give us any food.
The next morning, we got on a train again, and we arrived at an airfield in Yanji. There was a Japanese squadron. I can`t remember the name of it. They took us to a building. It was a tile roof house with mud-plastered wall. It used to be a military quarter. The soldiers moved out to other place and they gave it to us. The ten of us had to use it together, but the house was too small for us. Two or three girls used one room together.
Not long after, they built a new brick house, and they gave each of us one room.
The manager of the comfort station was a Japanese couple, and they wore civilian clothes. They told us to call them Obasan (aunt) and Okasan. There was a Japanese woman among us. She voluntarily came from Japan to earn money. We called them Nesan (older sister). The managers weren`t harsh on her, so she had more freedom than us, and only served soldiers.
They changed my name to Domiko in Japanese. The other women were kidnapped from various parts of Korea, and their names were all changed to Japanese ones such as Gachumaru or Gumeko. At first, we did chores like cleaning the yard and picking weeds. One day, soldiers came in and r***d us like animals in front of other soldiers. They took turns in ra**ng us in the rooms I just wanted to die at that time. At first they didn`t even use condoms, and we didn`t get health checkups.
After that, they came regularly. We began to have checkups not long after. The doctors came from the military hospital once a week. Soldiers were required by law to use condoms at all times, but some of them didn`t follow the rule. When I asked them to use it, sometimes a quarrel broke out, and I was beaten a lot. When they came into the room, they never talked about their military unit.
They were from a squadron, so they carried out sorties. We couldn`t go near the airfield, so we didn`t know how many planes were there, or how many of them flew a day. I just saw them taking off and landing. I couldn`t go anywhere near the planes. I got to take a close look at an airplane for the first time when I was going to Korea. It was my first time on a plane.
We didn`t have any decent clothes or food. We just wore something the soldiers gave to us, and ate a piece of Chinese bread a day. The food was distributed according to class, and the Japanese were the first class, the Koreans second, and the Chinese third. So we couldn`t eat decent food and were always hungry. I can`t even talk about all the horrors I went through in that place. I saw many girls who died of hunger or illness.
I tried to escape, but it was difficult because we couldn`t get out of the house. The managers watched us all the time. Even though there were no guards at the gate, there were soldiers everywhere, so we couldn`t run away. There was a Korean cook. We didn`t cook or make a fire in the kitchen. Even after we had been there for a long time, the food was horrible. They gave us steamed kaoliang, cooked millet, kimchi, radish leaves, and cabbages. We also ate plants that were used to feed pigs. We steamed them, and ate them with soybean paste. We were under so much tribulation. We also had to get clothes and underwear on our own.
There was a girl from Jeolla-do, and she said she had been sold there. Her behavior was bad. She stole things and sold us her clothes for money. If we needed clothes, we asked her for help. She sold us socks or underwear. They were expensive. Because I didn`t bring anything, I had to buy clothes from her. I fell into debt, so it became even harder for me.
I started menstruating when I was in China. I was sixteen, and I didn`t know what it was at first. I was very scared. I thought I got sick because I served too many soldiers. My friends in the house told me I was having my first period. I didn`t have any money, so I couldn`t get any cloth for my period. My friends lent me theirs. I went through so much trouble every month when I had my period.
The rule stated that we couldn`t serve soldiers when we were on period, but the manager didn`t let us take a rest. She stuffed us with cotton and made us serve soldiers. The doctor who came in once a week didn`t stop us either. There were Korean and Chinese men besides the Japanese soldiers working in the airfield as laborers. There were hundreds of them, and most of them were Koreans. I got to know a Korean man who was a platoon leader. We accidentally got to know and like each other. The laborers couldn`t come to our place, but his friends helped him to meet me secretly.
I had stayed in the comfort station in the airfield for less than a year when I was moved to Yanji in the spring of 1943. At that time, there were not a lot of houses in Yanji. There was a Japanese police station, a new school, and a lot of trees. There was a Japanese military base near the train station, and many other bases nearby. The comfort station was far away from the base. I didn`t know if there were any other comfort stations other than ours. There were nineteen women in our station.
What was the name of the house? We just called it “comfort station,” and the soldiers called us “comfort women.” There were a big gate and a corridor at the station. Rooms were lined on both sides along the corridor. They were Korean style underfloor heating rooms. The soldiers took their shoes off in the corridor before entering the rooms. When you walked into the station, there were many wooden name plates on the wall. Written on them were the names of the comfort women. There were no numbers or name plates on the doors. If there was a girl with a venereal disease, the manager turned over her name plate.
The soldiers bought tickets from the manager. We had to get the tickets to prove that we served. Sometimes the women directly received money from them and took it to the manager to exchange it with tickets. I served from ten to thirty, forty soldiers a day. I had to serve more of them than when I was in the airfield. There were not a lot of soldiers on weekdays. Sometimes there were only one or two. There were a lot of them on Sundays. They finished quickly, so they didn`t have to wait in long lines.
The price was the same for the rank and file and the officers. Sometimes the officers slept over, but they didn`t have to pay extra money to sleep over. Rich officers gave us some extra money. When there were no soldiers, we sat outside and talked.
Once I got syphilis. I couldn`t serve soldiers, so I went to the military hospital. I was injected with No. 606, but I didn`t get better. The doctor gave the manager mercury for my treatment. He boiled it, and made me steam myself with it. He made me take off my underwear and steam my va**na with the mercury v***r. The syphilis was cured after a while, but I became barren because of the treatment. I still feel grudge and frustration. I couldn`t bear children because of the Japanese. What should I protest to?
I was beaten by a lot the managers. If I didn`t obey them or the soldiers, and rejected them, I was severely beaten. The managers didn`t hit us. They brought the military police to beat us. We couldn`t even try to stop them when they beat us. They beat us everywhere with leather belts.
Once I was beaten until my nose bled, I rolled over on the floor because of the pain. I was out of favor of the managers, so I was beaten a lot. Once, the manager made me run some errands. I went to a store next to the comfort station, and there was a Japanese police officer of Korean origin. He asked me in Japanese, “Where are you from?” I answered in Japanese, “I am from that house.” He asked, “Where is your hometown?”and I said, “osu-jung, Busan-bu, Gyeongnam.” And then he started to beat me terribly. I still clearly remember my hometown address because I was beaten so much for saying it.
He hit my ear very hard at that time, so I still can`t hear with that ear. It would have been better if I had been treated, but it was impossible. They only treated us for venereal diseases and nothing else. We just couldn`t bear it. A young fourteen year old girl came to the station in 1942 or 1943. She ran away. She didn`t serve soldiers in the station. She only served the old commander. A soldier brought her to him. She was also a Korean. Her appearance was just plain. I can`t remember her name. She ran away once and was caught, and ran away again. They couldn`t catch her that second time. The whole unit looked for her but couldn`t find her. After she ran away, everything was restricted for us, and the monitoring became stricter. So no one could even think about running away.
The station was moved near Yanbian hospital because the old house was too small. The new place was also a brick house and was bigger than the last one. The war ended when we were there. I arrived in China in July 1942, and the war ended in August 1945. I was a comfort woman for three years.
