Belated Brides

In Taipei, “comfort women” were honored with white dresses and flowers after 60 years’ disgrace.

Lee Yong-su at the wake of former comfort woman and activist Kim Gun-ja Photo: Hankyoreh

Cheng Chen-tao “was a student at Tainan Girl’s School. One day, as she was passing the police station, Japanese police officers seized her and sent her abroad to serve as a ‘sex slave.’

Comfort women in a brothel in Songshan, China taken by the allied forces in 1944. September 3, 1944. Photo: Courtesy of the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Professor Chung Chin-sung’s research team, Seoul National University

“After coming back, she didn’t tell anyone about her painful experience. She tried to kill herself twice. Her family members said they couldn’t live with the fact that she had served as a prostitute.”

They were called “comfort women,” the tens of thousands of girls kidnapped and forced into sex slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. The Japanese government rationalized its barbarism as hygienic, sexual containment. Historians estimate that 200,000 women were subjected to this policy of rape, in Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Dutch East Indies. Some, like Cheng Chen-tao, have only spoken up in recent years.

Many thousands of these women have died, but some of the survivors are coming forward now, to describe what happened and demand reparations from Japan.

Six women, ages 82-90, who’d been forced into
wartime sex labor by Japan’s military during WW II,were honored as brides in Taipei in 2006
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, for AP

In Taipei, a few former “comfort women” bravely were honored with a special ceremony on Tuesday, April 18 (2006): a wedding. “Six women—ranging in age from 82 to 90—came together in Taipei to put on white wedding dresses, hold bouquets and have their pictures taken.” Cheng Chen-tao was among them.

Why flowers and a wedding? “After Japan ended its 50-year occupation of Taiwan in 1945, many of the women were rejected as ‘damaged goods’ by their relatives and never found a spouse.” They bore the past as a shameful, personal secret.

But a bride stands before the public, to be acknowledged for her beauty and worth. She carries flowers as the fragile, glorious emblem of her sexuality. So how fitting that the Women’s Rescue Foundation, which organized this event, had a beautiful bouquet for every “bride.” May these flowers be a small reparation.

Originally published: HFP April 20, 2006)

Update: In twenty more years, reparations of a sort have issued from Japan. One especially fraught agreement with Korea in 2015 appears to have been accepted by the Korean government with one oversight — the injured women never agreed to it.

Former “comfort women” offer flowers in celebration of the Holy Mass at the Redemptorist Church in Manila, Philippines, 2022. More than 1,000 Filipino women were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese aggressors when Japan occupied the Philippines from December 1941 until August 1945.
Photo: Jire Carreon

Amnesty International has spoken out on the atrocity, as most recently has a group assembled by the United Nations. Its international experts stated “survivors require proactive and sustained support…. This includes providing legal aid and other forms of practical assistance, preserving and, where appropriate, declassifying relevant records and engaging in diplomatic efforts aimed at advancing accountability.”

Kimberly Choi tends to the flowers at Glendale, California’s controversial memorial to comfort women.
Photo: Susan Valot/KQED

A monument in remembrance of the “comfort women” in Glendale, California, was met with a lawsuit when Japanese residents demanded its removal. A San Francisco Gallery mounted an exhibition of paintings by six Korean survivors.

And in 2014, yet another “wedding” took place, this one in Toechon, South Korea, at the House of Sharing, a residence and museum dedicated to women who were forced into sex slavery during the war. Foster Klug’s article for the Taipei Times conveys the many jagged sides of rage and shame. And it stresses that time runs out, not on the historical record itself but on the claims and demands of survivors, many thousands who have already died.

Klug features 89 year old Kim Gun-ja: “photographed in a long white wedding gown, she carries a bouquet of red flowers and stares at the camera, her deep wrinkles obscured by makeup and a diaphanous veil.”

In 2007 Kim had spoken before the U. S. Congress, testifying to the atrocities she suffered as a sex slave. She continued to press for justice.

Yet it is difficult to fathom what justice could look like. How could this kind of prolonged and deliberate cruelty ever be assuaged?

South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in referred to the 2015 agreement with Japan as “undeniable” — a matter settled firmly by official protocol. Yet he added, “A real settlement would come if the victims can forgive, after Japan makes a sincere apology and takes other actions”.

Forgiveness?

The veiled Kim Gun-ja said at her ceremony 12 years ago, “That could have been my life: Meet a man, get married, have children, have grandchildren,.. But it never happened. It could never be.” She asked, ““Once the victims are gone who will step in and fight for us?”

Kim Gun-ja died July 23, 2017, at the House of Sharing, age 91.