Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story (11 page)

E
IGHTEEN

M
rs. Hong tells
me to come back to the table. “You are safe here,” she says. I let go of the door handle and slowly push my shoes off. I go back and sit with her. She’s perfectly composed which is only a little reassuring. She points at the blossom in the bowl on the windowsill. “It’s beautiful in the sunlight, don’t you think?” she asks.

“Yeah, I guess,” I say.

“Every two or three days I get a new one at the market even though I can’t afford it. Notice how the sun brings out the colors. You can see the veins in each petal.” I don’t look at it that closely.

“That blossom started as a seed,” she continues. “It was buried deep in the cold, dark ground. One day when the soil was warm and moist, the little seed split apart and began to climb to a world it could not see. Imagine the courage it had! It did not know what it would find when it broke through the surface. The scorching sun? The gardener’s blade? The crushing hoof of a cow? But the seed courageously pushed on so that one day, it could become a beautiful flower.”

She points a finger at me. “You must have the courage of the seed, Anna. Without it, you will stay buried. You will rot and die. It does not matter how smart you are, or how pretty, or if you have money and many friends. If you do not have courage, you will never blossom into the flower you were meant to be.”

“I don’t have much courage,” I say.

She raises an eyebrow. “You have more than you think. It took a great deal of courage to come here today. And you didn’t tell that awful man what he wanted to know.”

“I was about to tell him everything,” I admit.

“Perhaps. But you didn’t.”

She goes to the stove to put on another pot of
bora cha
. “Tell me Anna,” she says from the stove, “do you know what kind of flower it is?”

I glance at it. “It looks like a hibiscus,” I say. “We have a bush in our back yard.”

“Very good. You are correct. It is in the hibiscus family.” She turns on the stove and comes back to the table. “In Korea we call it a
mugunghwa
blossom. Have you ever heard of it?”

“I think one of our tour guides told us it’s used in Korean architecture. Something about the House of Yi.”

“Did the guide tell you anything more?”

“I don’t remember,” I say. I’m losing the battle against my nerves. I don’t want to talk about the
mugunghwa
blossom or the House of Yi. I’m afraid that Mr. Kwan and Bruce Willis will come crashing back in and arrest me. I just want to get away.

Mrs. Hong frowns. “You need to pay attention. The
mugunghwa
was the symbol of the Chosŏn Dynasty of Korea. The House of Yi was our ruling family from the fourteenth century until the Japanese annexed our country in 1910 and turned Korea into a slave state.”

“Yes, it was a terrible thing the Japanese did,” I say.

“The Americans, too,” Mrs. Hong says.

“The Americans?”

She sighs. “Ja-young, for all of our history, world powers, including America, have exploited us.” Do you remember how the Russo-Japanese war ended?”

“No. I haven’t studied history.”

“You should,” she says. “The U.S. negotiated the treaty in 1905. However, to get the Japanese to sign, and so Tokyo would not challenge America in the Philippines, your President Roosevelt secretly agreed to let Japan occupy Korea. And that is just what they did. They took our country and said Korea was now part of Japan. Of course, because of that secret agreement, America did nothing. The result was thirty-five years of horrible oppression of my people—like being raped by their soldiers

“But Americans didn’t rape you,” I say.

“No,” she snaps back, “but they let it happen to protect their own interests.” 

She lets her point sink in. Then she goes to the stove, pours two cups of bori cha and brings them to the table. The aroma fills the room. I take a sip and immediately the strong, bitter liquid calms my nerves. Mrs. Hong sits in her chair, relaxed and poised.

She turns her attention to the blossom again. “The
mugunghwa
is not only beautiful, it has a pleasant fragrance, too. Smell it.”

“What? You want me to smell it?”

“Yes,” she answers.

I lean over and take a sniff.

“No, no,” she says. “Take the bowl in both of your hands and smell it that way.”

I lift the bowl from the sill and bring it to my nose. The fragrance is earthy and sweet. “I see what you mean,” I say.

Before I can put the bowl back, she lifts an end of the windowsill. There’s a small compartment underneath. She reaches inside and lifts out the package of coarse brown cloth. I have no idea when she put it there. It must have been sometime during her story about the comfort station when I wasn’t looking. Dumbstruck, I continue to hold the bowl with the
mugunghwa
blossom in my hands.

She giggles like a kid who just got away with something. “I have lived in this apartment for thirty-five years,” she says. “Practically since the building was new. I have hidden the comb here all that time. I knew they wouldn’t find it.”

She sets the package on the table and pulls on the twine. The cloth falls open, and there’s the comb with the two-headed dragon.

“By the way,” I say setting the blossom back on the sill, “you said there were two things you wanted me to do. One was to hear your story. What’s the other thing? You haven’t said yet.”

She moves the
mugunghwa
blossom to the table next to the comb and the two photographs. “Listen to the rest of my story first.”

I’m still a bit shook up but her confidence reassures me. I lean back, ready to listen again.

“Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?” she asks.

“The Japanese left and the Russians had come.”

“Ah yes,” she nods. She holds her teacup in both hands. “The communists. How disappointing.”

N
INETEEN

September 1945. Dongfeng, Manchuria.

F
or two years
in Dongfeng when I dared to dream, I dreamed of the day I’d be free and could go back home. I thought it would be the happiest day of my life. But when the day finally came, I was lost and alone. With the Japanese, I always knew what I had to do—laundry in the morning before the soldiers came, cooking on the days the
geisha
s assigned it to me, servicing the soldiers all afternoon and night. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere outside the comfort station except the infirmary for my monthly inspection and the officer’s quarters at night. My routine was simple and my world was small. But now it was gone and I didn’t know what to do.

And I was afraid. I was afraid of the Russians with their strange, guttural language. I was afraid the Japanese might come back and kill me.

So for days I hid among the low stucco buildings of Dongfeng still dressed in my green
yukata
. I snuck from empty house to empty house, always staying far away from the comfort station. I ate what food I could find and each night I took shelter in one of the abandoned houses, curled up in a dark corner, and tried to sleep.

One day, I went inside a house that had a mirror and I saw my reflection. At first, I didn’t recognize myself. But gradually, I could see it was me who was dressed in the green
yukata
. I was horrified. I immediately stripped off the
yukata
and searched the house until I found regular clothes.

I do not know how many days I lived like that. It might have been weeks. But eventually, the Russians caught me and took me to their headquarters in Colonel Matsumoto’s old office. The thick-browed Russian officer sitting at Colonel Matsumoto’s desk spoke Japanese and asked me what I was doing in Dongfeng. I couldn’t answer his question. I honestly didn’t know what to tell him. He asked me where I was from.

“Korea,” I answered.

“You were one of the Korean girls,” he stated.

“Have you found Soo-hee?” I asked. “She is two years older than me.”

“We only found the bodies by the burned out barracks. You’re the only one we found alive.”

I was too numb and confused to put together all that had happened those last days at the comfort station. I must have looked confused, too, because the officer said, “The Japanese have surrendered. They’re gone. Go back to your home. You can’t stay here.”

I didn’t know exactly where my home was from Dongfeng, so I asked the Russian officer. He told me it was two-hundred-eighty miles to Sinuiju and there was no transportation there. Apparently, I’d have to walk the entire way. The Russians gave me some rice which I wrapped along with the comb in a wool blanket.

I was afraid to go back home where I would have to tell my mother and father I had been an
ianfu
. How could they possibly understand? But I longed to see them again and have things the way they were before. So on a clear morning, I lifted the blanket sack to my shoulder and asked an old Chinese farmer which way it was to Korea. The farmer nodded down the road and I set off.

After a mile, I turned onto the main road. I looked back at the low, tile-roof buildings of Dongfeng and thought of the eleven girls I knew there, my
ianfu
sisters. I thought of my
onni
, Soo-hee. Somehow, I had survived and I wondered why. Perhaps it was because I had been born in the year of the dragon. Maybe the comb had brought me good luck after all. Whatever the reason, I had to go on. I had to go on for them. So I joined a thin gray column of refugees with bundles on their backs, pots and utensils tied to their waists and children in tow. There were young and old, Chinese and Koreans, bent under their loads, going east, going south—going home.

*

I walked for many miles each day. Then on the third day, a Russian soldier offered me a ride on the back of his flatbed truck. I was tired and my feet were sore so I climbed up and hung on. After a few miles, the driver stopped where there was no one on the road. He pulled me off the truck and led me to the ditch. I lay in the dewy grass and opened my dress as the driver unbuttoned his trousers. He went to mount me, but he wasn’t stiff yet.

“Slap me,” I said in Japanese.

He looked at me confused. “Slap me hard!” I yelled. I took his hand and made him slap my face. “Pinch me!” I demanded. I brought his fingers to my breasts and made him pinch me. “Come on!” I screamed at him. “I know what you like. Aren’t you a man?”

He pulled back confused and started to button his trousers. I flew into a rage. I jumped on him. I scratched his face and spit on him. I screamed at him, nasty words that I learned from the Japanese
geisha
s. I punched him in the nose making it bleed. He punched me back throwing me hard to the ground.

“What’s the matter?” I said looking up at him. I’d never had anyone pull away like that before. He walked backwards to his truck mumbling something in Russian. He climbed in and drove off, leaving me alone in the ditch.

I sat in the tall grass and watched the truck disappear down the road. And then I laughed. I laughed out loud at the stupid Russian driver who thought I wouldn’t know what to do. I faced toward Dongfeng and laughed at the thousands of Japanese men who had raped me, slapped me and pulled my hair. I laughed at the arrogant
geisha
s who did exactly what we did, only they volunteered. I laughed at all of them without covering my mouth. And then I stood up and screamed. I screamed so hard that it hurt my throat. My scream echoed off the hills, and I laughed again at the echo of my scream, this time careful to cover my mouth as I did. After a while, standing there in that field with my dress wide open I wanted to cry. Instead, I buttoned my dress and lifted my sack and I marched on.

On the eighth day, I ran out of food. My legs ached from walking. My feet were on fire with blisters and bleeding, and my stomach growled constantly. I was weak with fatigue. I stopped for the day along side two elderly Chinese women. They told me they were going to Dandong, China, across the Yalu River from Sinuiju. I spoke Chinese to them and they were nice to me. They gave me some rice and a pair of
tabi
for my raw feet. They said I could travel with them. At night before they went to sleep, one of the women asked, “What did you do in Dongfeng?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was exhausted and confused and nothing about the past two years made sense. After a few long moments, I said, “My sister and I worked for the Japanese.”

“What did you do for them?” the woman asked.

“I…I…” I stumbled, “we were supposed to work in the boot factory,” I finally said.

The other woman raised an eyebrow. “You worked for the Japanese in a boot factory?”

“We did not volunteer,” I said quickly. “We were not
chinulpa
. They made us do it.”

The women exchanged glances and said nothing more. They crawled under their blankets to go to sleep. When I awoke the next morning, they were gone.

*

Midday on the fourteenth day, I arrived at the outskirts of Sinuiju. I had run out of food and water again. My stomach had stopped growling a day earlier and my tongue was thick and dry. But I didn’t go to the city. Instead, I turned up the road that Soo-hee and I had taken to Sinuiju two years earlier. I was desperate to get home. I wanted to see my mother and father again. I wanted Soo-hee to be there too. But the last time I had seen my
onni
, she had been close to death. It wasn’t possible that she had recovered and found her way home. No, it wasn’t possible at all.

I forced myself up the long road to our farm. My heart raced when I saw our big, stucco house with the tarpaulin door. The gray-green roof tile was crooked and broken from neglect. Someone had cut down the persimmon tree and weeds grew in the yard. The front window was broken.

I stood in the road a long time looking at our house. I tried to think of what I would say to my mother and father if they were inside. I thought about turning around and going back to Sinuiju.

Finally, I went to the house and stepped inside. It was musty and dark. “
Ummah
?” I called out hesitantly. “
Appa
?” My calls echoed off the walls. There was no answer. Cobwebs grabbed at my face. “Soo-hee?”

I went to the back of the house. In the field, tall weeds cast long shadows in the setting sun. I went to the well and took a long drink of water. I filled the bucket with water and took it to the kitchen. I took off my clothes and washed myself. I scrubbed and scrubbed until my skin was raw, but I didn’t feel clean. I washed my clothes and laid them out to dry. I wrapped a blanket around myself and lay on the floor of the big room. I curled up and went to sleep, alone.

The next morning, hunger pains knotted my stomach. I dressed, went out back, and dug up the
onggis
of rice and vegetables that Soo-hee and I had buried two years earlier. They had not been touched. I opened one. The brine and spices had not preserved the vegetables and they were rotten. The stench of it almost made me retch. I opened the other
onggi
. The rice was unspoiled, so I dragged it inside the house. I made a fire with dried weeds and brought some water to boil in a pan I had found inside the stove. I threw in some rice. As the rice cooked, I went out and found some carrots and potatoes growing in the field. I dug them up and took them to the house. I washed them and sliced them with a rusty knife from the kitchen drawer. When the rice finished cooking, I ate it with the raw carrots and potatoes. Eventually, my hunger pangs went away.

I looked around the house. There was a thick coat of dust on the floor and cobwebs in the ceiling. In the main room, only one chair and the low table remained. I went to the sleeping area. Mother’s cabinet was gone. But where it once stood, I saw an old photograph of my family taken during the New Year’s celebration when I was just four years old. My family, dressed in
hanbok
s, stared out at me from the photo. Father stood tall with his beautiful young wife at his side. Soo-hee and I, innocent young girls, stood in front of our parents holding hands. I was so happy to have found the photograph, but for some reason, it made me cry.

I put the photograph inside my dress and went out to the field to dig up more potatoes and carrots. I found some garlic and dug it up too. I gathered dried weeds and sticks. I took it all back to the house and made a fire in the stove. Soon, the home’s
ondol
system warmed the floors. Next to the stove, I found some ground bori cha and Father’s tin cup. I filled the cup with water and a handful of bori cha and put it over the fire to seep. Soon, I had bori cha, bitter and strong.

I went to work cleaning the house. I swept the floor and spent an hour scrubbing the kitchen sink. I brushed the cobwebs from the ceiling and spent another hour cleaning the soot from the stove. I made several trips to the field, all the way back to the tall aspen trees, and gathered wood and brought it back to the house. I stacked it neatly next to the stove.

Then I scrubbed myself again until my skin was raw like I had done the day before. I braided my hair and washed my clothes again. When night came, I sat at the table drinking
bora cha
and stared out the window. I desperately tried to remember what it was like when Father and Mother and Soo-hee were still there and we read books by the firelight, but the images never came.