Comfort Woman

by Tanya Ko Hong

On August 14, 1991, in Seoul, a woman named Hak Soon Kim came forward to

denounce the Japanese for the sexual enslavement of more than 200,000 women during WWII. They were referred to as “Wianbu” in Korean and “Comfort Women” in English.

1991, Seoul, South Korea

The voice on TV is comforting,

like having a person beside me

talking all the time

while I eat my burnt rice gruel.

Suddenly in Japanese

But we didn’t—

Those women came to us                                                               

for the money.

We never forced—

I dropped

my spoon into my nureun bap

On the screen

a photograph of young girls

seated in an open truck

like the one I rode with Soonja

over the rice field road that fall

Awake in a cold sweat

I gulp Jariki

bul kuk

bul kuk

but my throat still burns

It’s 3 a.m.

I reach for a cigarette

blow a smoke

and the white smog spirals

like Soonja’s wandering soul

They called me, wianbu—

a comfort woman—

I had a name.

1939, Chinju, South Kyangsan Province

We are going to do Senninbari, right?

No, Choingsindae, Women’s Labor Corps

Same thing, right?

Earn money

become new woman

come back home—

Holding tiny hands

red fingertips

bong soong ah

balsam flower red

together and colored by summer’s end

red fingertips

ripening persimmons

bending over the Choga roofs

that fade into distance

When the truck crosses over the last hill

leaving our hometown in the dust

Soonja kicks off her white shoes Ko Mu Shin

1941, That Autumn

That autumn night, Japanese

soldiers wielding swords

dragged me away

while I was gathering pine needles

they fell from my basket

filling the air with the scent of their white blood.

When you scream in your dream

there’s no sound.

Grandma’s making Song Pyunon the maru,

asking mom, Is water boiling?

Will she bring pine needles before my eye balls fall out?

I feel pain

there—

They put a long stick between my legs—

Open up, open, Baka Chosengjing!

they rage, spraying

their sperm

the smell of

burning dog

burning life

panting 

grunting on top of me—

Under my blood I am dying

1943, Shanghai, China

One night

a soldier asked all the girls,

Who can do one hundred men?

I raised my hand—

Soonja    did    not.

The soldiers put her in boiling water

alive

and

fed us.

What is living?

Is     Soonja    living  in  me?

1946, Chinju Again

One year after

liberation,

I came home.

Short hair

not wearing Han Bok

not speaking clearly

Mother hid me in the back room

At night Mother took me behind the house by the well and washed me

Scars seared with hot steel like burnt bark

like roots of old trees                                                                                          

all over my body

under the crescent glow She always smiled when she washed me

My baby! Your skin is like white jade, dazzling

She bit her lower lip

washing my tummy softly like a baby’s

but they ripped open my baby house

with the baby inside

What is dying?

Mother made white rice and seaweed soup

put my favorite white fish on top

 —but Mother, I can’t eat flesh.

She hanged herself in the granary that night

left a little bag in my room

my dowry with a rice ball.

Father threw it at me

waved his hand toward the door

I left at dusk.

30 years

40 years

forever

Mute    mute     mute

bury it with me

                       

                        They called me, wianbu—

                        I had a name.

  

 

 

1991, 3:00 AM

[That night,

the thousand blue stars

became white butterflies

through ripped rice paper,

and flew into my room.

One, One hundred, One thousand butterflies—

These endless white butterflies going through 

the web in my mouth,

going into my unhealed red scars,

stitching one by one—

butterflies lifting me, heavier than the dead

butterflies opening my bedroom door, heavier than shame.]

At

dawn,

I stand.

* * * * *

This excerpt  of  “Comfort Woman” was first published in Beloit Poetry

Korean American poet, Tanya Ko Hong, has been published in Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Two Hawks Quarterly, Portside, Cultural Weekly, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles, and is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Mother to Myself, A collection of poems in Korean (Prunsasang Press, 2015). Fluent in Korean and English, Tanya is an ongoing advocate of bilingual poetry, promoting the work of immigrant poets. She lives in Palos Verdes, California with her husband and three children. Find out more at www.tanyakohong.com