A+Korean+girl+(Age+13+in+1937)+Block+A

Young Ja Lee(Ayame) 13 Female Child(daughter) black-haired, pale, short, skinny, wearing a dark colored hanbok Korea I am quiet and respectful most of the time. I usually do not express my anger. Brother**-** Lee Chul Su (Hanz Hwang) Since my parents did not let me attend a Japanese-owned elementary school, I got my education through private tutoring Korean and a little bit of Japanese My father went to jail, my mother suddenly disappeared and I am going to a foreign country.
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I am the one in the middle, wearing a dark colored handbok.

My Diary Entries

__Diary #1- February 3 1937__

I heard that the Japanese are all over my country. I have seen them just once, because my father did not let me come outside for a few months. He says that the soldiers will take me away or something. He said that no one, including my private Korean tutor, is trustful. So I’ve been stuck here, in my own house, and not been able to hang out with any of my friends or even to attend a public Japanese school for weeks. I guess he is just too conservative and over protective of me. Perhaps it is because of Okja.

My best friend, Okja, had gone to the silk factory in China(was it Manchuria?) so that she can support her family financially, but no one, even her own family, had heard anything from her since then. Now everyone seems to doubt that she even arrived at the factory. Poor Okja! I hope she comes back soon... or at least hear something from her. It is the Japanese that made her family into ruins. It is all their fault that her father died in tragedy! I don’t know exactly why or how he died, since my father also kept that as a secret, but I do know that the Japanese killed him. Her family used to be as wealthy as ours. She would definitely not have gone to the factory it were not those terrifying, evil foreigners.

“I will kill all the Japanese soldiers if they even dare to touch you.” My brother said.

My brother says that everything will be okay. I am so glad that I have such a wonderful brother. He is only five years older than I am, but to me, he is as mature and thoughtful as my dad. I guess he tries to look strong because our mom left us quite recently. I still can’t figure out why she left. She left the house just two days before her birthday. She said that she will be back... But she never did after she went out to get groceries. Did the soldiers take her? But why would they? I will never know. But I'm guessing they my brother is hiding the truth from me, because he thinks I am still in a terrible shock after my sister was taken as a slave.

Oh, I just saw my dad coming back from the backyard. Ever since the our family has been forced to offer all the brass products in the house, so that the soldiers are supplied with more weapons, my dad has been burying them in our backyard every night. I am pretty sure that he will get into huge trouble if he gets caught... But how much more do they need! Every family has to offer them seventy percent of their total harvest. They are making our people to work for more than twelve hours a day just to make more weapons for the Japanese. I hope that somehow they could get out of this country.

__Diary #2- April 17 1937__

Ugh, that satan! That ugly lier and betrayer! My dad was sent to jail when he got caught for being a rebel against the orders of the Japanese emperor; he had been secretly burying the brass products in our backyard. It’s not such a big deal and I don’t get why they would give him such punishment.

An old man, in his forties, claiming that he was a friend of my dad, came to our house one day and told me that if I go work in a factory in China, my dad will get discharged. It did seem a little nonsense, but I trusted him, because he was my dad’s friend! I guess I was too naive. Or maybe I was just too foolish. Anyway, after hearing that good news, I began to pack up; I took my family picture and several cloths. I told my brother that I was going to my friend's house, because I knew that he would stop me from going to China. On the way there, some random Japanese held my hand and would not let me go. He tried to rape me but luckily, my brother appeared and saved me. Then when my brother lost track of me, fighting with that Japanese man, I headed to the Kunbok station to ride a train to Busan. The train was very slow... In there, I met some people who were also going to the factories in China. The guy who once came to our house and guided me left as we arrived to the boat. The boat was really big, perhaps the biggest I have ever seen in my life.

After some time in the ferry, yesterday, we finally arrived to Nagasaki, Japan. I asked others why we were in Japan when we were to work at a factory in China. Things did not make any sense. But others were like me; they knew nothing. The soldiers were watching us the whole time and it seemed like we were rats trapped in a cage or something. That very night, I was raped by an old Japanese officer. I really want to kill him! I tried my best to resist, to run away, and to scream for help... But no one was on my side and no one could help me. When I screamed, he started to beat me up and I fainted. Today, I woke up with several scars and blood mostly in my back and my arms. As I am writing this diary, it makes me shiver just to think of what happened to me last night. I feel so embarrassed...

__Diary #3- June 11 1942__

It is just awful living a life as a comfort woman, as a foreigner, as a Korean and as a creature treated as if I am less valuable than the dust. I hate my life so much that I no longer have the desire to live. I never imagined that I would become like a prostitute. Since I am a Korean, I have to face more soldiers, because they prefer Koreans. They say that Koreans are more pure and clean, unlike the Japanese prostitutes who volunteered to come here.

I was in Japan few years back, when I was writing my second diary, but I got transferred and I am presently in China. Soon after I was transferred, I was raped... These days, I serve about twenty to thirty soldiers during the days and double during the weekends. I constantly faint but as soon as I wake up, other soldiers who were in line comes in and I have to serve back them again. Some of them torture me with weapons just because I fainted, but how can I not, when I only get two rice balls to eat for the whole day? They left several cigarette marks and scars all over my body.

The living condition here is extremely terrible. I, along with about 20 different Koreans like me, live in one, small building. There is no concrete wall between the rooms, so we use blankets for it. The size of the room each person can get is about as big as a single dadami mat, and is constantly interrupted by soldiers, who come everyday from 9 o’ clock in the morning and high ranking officers come in at 6 o’clock in the evening. One of the Japanese officers I served, named Uchiha Itachi, was really awful. He often came in drunk, and would always beat me up, saying that it was for the glory of Japan.

Today, I found out that the director was a Korean. How could a Korean betray its own people and be helping those savages? I heard that the soldiers are going around local Chinese towns, and doing the same things they have done to my own country. Some of my friends here were shot in the vagina because they did not report the fact that they got infection there... Or sometimes, once people get pregnant, they kill the woman and the baby. The would rape them first and shoot the fetus. I had to even eat our fellow Koreans by force, when I, along with some other Koreans, cried after the soldiers shot so many Korean women all at once. The Korean director said that we were crying because we were hungry to eat meat... What have I become? I'm now a prostitute and a cannibal...

I am going through a lot and I try my best just to live. But I often question myself: What’s so good about being alive, especially when I am in a place like hell? What am I going to do even if I can survive until the war is over and come back? I don’t think I will be welcomed by any of my friends or anyone...

__Diary Entry #4- November 4 1945__

I am so lucky that I met Xia Liu, the nicest Chinese man I have ever met. About few months before Japanese surrendered to the Allies, I escaped from the station. I was lucky that there was no officer staying with me overnight. Since much of the soldiers were off to war, I had less chance of being caught, especially when it was about 3 o' clock in the morning. I just simply ran until I found a village nearby. In the village, I met a local Chinese family, Donghun and his wife, who let me stay in their house for several weeks and even gave me a ride back to Korea with a small fishing boat.

I had always dreamed of coming back to my own nation, no matter what suffering I will have to go through. Well, I did thought of killing myself so many times. When I was going through all that humiliation and violence, I thought, ‘what kind of reward am I seeking for surviving a life like this? It be better to die early, so that I wouldn’t have to suffer this anymore’. But now, I am glad that I have survived. Today, I am living a life with much more freedom. Though the house is much ruined and much of the people I was closed to are missing, I can go to the groceries and get some vegetables to cook meals for my brother without fearing that I would be kidnapped. I also do not have to attend Shinto ceremonies by force.

Well, its not that my life here is all that pleasant, since I am still going through much humiliation here. Since everybody in my hometown knows that I was sent to China and that I was raped... They all know that I am not pure anymore. Every men refuses to marry me and thinks that it is an awful thing to marry such women. But it’s not like I wanted to become like that, and that I can’t have a baby! When I think of all the things the Japanese did to me, how they might have killed my parents, sudden anger arouses inside me. If I could ever get a chance to see those generals, those soldiers, I am going to kill them. But at least my grandmother and my brother is alive... Thank God! Thank the Allies, who defeated Japan with atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I want to live my life spreading how awfully I have suffered. But I don’t know if I can... Even though I am a Korean myself, Koreans tend to be negative toward former comfort women.

Bessie. "Visiting the "Comfort Women" of Korea | On Our Own Path." //On Our Own Path - Notes from Our Global Life//. Web. 04 June 2011. .

"네이버 :: 지식iN." //네이버 지식iN :: 지식과 내가 함께 커가는 곳//. Web. 03 June 2011. .

"Comfort Women." //Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia//. Web. 03 June 2011. .

David McNeill, David. "Korea's 'comfort Women': The Slaves' Revolt - Asia, World - The Independent." //The Independent | News | UK and Worldwide News | Newspaper//. The Independent, 24 Apr. 2008. Web. 05 June 2011. .