On the 15th of August we celebrated the 64th anniversary of world war two, yet still it causes pain in the lives of former sex slaves to the military in the asia-pacific who are still waiting for an apology...
Submitted
9/17/2009
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Tully
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9/17/2009
“I was playing jump rope in front of my house when an automobile pulled over. I had never seen a car before in my village. When the driver offered me a ride, I, curious and naïve, climbed in with my friend. Immediately, that car rolled on with us in it and it kept going and going, never returning me to my village…” Ms Kim Yoon Shim, a former sex slave, tells about her abduction at age 14.
Recently we celebrated the sixty- fourth
anniversary of the end of world war two, but for some the memory of this war is still strong, as though it was yesterday. During world war two 20 000 women and girls were forced into sexual slavery for the military throughout the Asia- Pacific, some being as young as twelve.
Gil Won Ok is a woman who experienced the hell of what the military called a ‘comfort woman.’ Abducted at age 13, she served the military as a comfort woman for six years. “I was taken at 13 and ruined by the time I was in my twenties.”
Ashamed, instead of returning to her family, Gil lived her life alone as a peddler, never seeing her family again. She is now 83 and still cannot sleep peacefully at night.
Korea shunned women who lacked ‘purity’ and any ‘spoiled’ women were forced to stay indoors and were unable to live a normal life. In 1992, the Korean council for the women drafted for military sexual slavery by the Japanese was established and the Japanese government admitted to any direct involvement, though they claimed that the women ‘volunteered’ and were given wage. In the year 2000, all references to the comfort women were erased from the Japanese records.
These former comfort women now seek retribution in as simple a form as an apology, but the are ignored.
Japan, being a ‘pacifist’ country should now live up to expectation and apologize for the pain and suffering they inflicted onto the comfort women and their families.
This work is licenced under an Attribution licence.
© 2008. First published on actnow.com.au
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