Review: Incredibly moving
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 25, 2012
This is a work of fiction, but it is based on historical fact. Certain details are self-evidently incorrect - it speaks of Japanese government denials, of no apologies, no compensation, when they have actually made full apology and the survivors were financially compensated for their enforced sexual slavery. That said, it gives the history of these women a human face that we can relate to. There are varying estimates of the numbers of women involved. It is difficult to be accurate when so many documents were destroyed and the women involved were too ashamed to come forward. Consensus is roughly 200,000, some prepubescent, all of them young. Most of them never managed to live a normal life afterwards: they were scarred mentally and physically. Their story must not be forgotten, it must never happen again.In this story Ji In-Sil's testimony speaks for the brave Koreans, and women of other nations, who were diabolically tricked. For me their ordeal is unimaginable. This story helps me understand. These young girls were tricked into leaving their poor villages for the offer of earning a fair wage in a Japanese factory. They thought they would be able to help their families. Instead they were forced to become sex slaves. At a time when it was unthinkable for a Korean to have sex before marriage, the shock would be more than most women could bear. I am full of admiration for Roger Rudick. He has somehow not only imagined himself into the mind of a woman, but a woman in a situation I cannot conceive of surviving. But many of these women did survive and lived the rest of their lives trying to cope with the knowledge of what was done to them.This is a very moving account of one young girl experiencing this terrible ordeal. She is so strong in spirit that somehow she not only endures nightly rapes, typically as many as 30 soldiers each and every night, but retains her sanity and determination to resist. She remembers her father's instruction to `remember who you are'. Defiance would be rewarded with death, so her resistance had to be subtle. Keril took an alternative route: suicide. Seyong divorced her mind from reality. Chiping told In-Sil she should envy Seyong as `her spirit is no longer with us, only her body'.In-Sil's testimony is written in a simple style. There is no sensationalisation or inflation of fact. Through it we get to know her, and admire her, and through her the real women who were forced to live this life. She went through hell and still had empathy, not only for her fellow sufferers, but even for her torturers. This is what she was thinking when she and  her friend, Jungyun, had run away from the comfort station and were facing death when they were caught, which they thought was inevitable:"I was sure Jungyung had come to the same conclusion. We could both enjoy the comfort of knowing all was lost and no decision could change that now. Yet, as strange as it seems, we knew we still had to try. For trying, even when it was hopeless, was in itself a form of freedom. There was nothing left, after all, that the Japanese could take from us, except our lives. I wondered if perhaps that was how we made the Japanese feel when they raped us. Part of it, I realized, was the base animalistic pleasure of having sex. But there was definitely something else for them. When all is lost, there is no longer anything to worry about losing. For the Japanese, after raping us, there was no longer any virtue to lose. That too, I suppose, must carry a strange sort of comfort."Rudick uses In-Sil's relationship with Lieutenant Kohei Yanai to explore some of the philosophical issues relating to war, to man's cruelty to man - and women - and the futility of it all. The Japanese soldiers' training had desensitised them to cruelty in all forms."And so it would remain forever, until the weapons became so great that there were no longer any soldiers left to fight, nor any women to make more soldiers.... I could not hate the Japanese. Instead, I pitied us all."It's a shame that there are some formatting issues and some typos, and the incorrect details mentioned earlier, but the story is so well written I cannot give it less than 5*. It is amazingly well told and makes it easy for us to understand, to acknowledge the history of these women, their suffering and their courage in the face of adversity.