Newsletter

The End of the Battle of Songsan in Yunnan Province, China

: The Annihilation of Japanese Forces and the 'Sexual slavery victims'

On September 7, 1944, the fierce battle between the Chinese expeditionary forces and the Japanese army in Songsan, Yunnan Province, China, ended for about 100 days. On September 14, Japanese troops were annihilated in the Téngchōng area. At the battle scene, the body of the Japanese ‘Sexual slavery victims’ was found among the Japanese soldiers who were killed or committed suicide. Of course, there was also a ‘Sexual slavery victims’ who fled or were rescued by the Chinese army. The newspaper 『Roundup』, read by U.S. troops stationed in the China-Burma-India(CBI) military strategic area, reported on the ‘Sexual slavery victims’ discovered during the Battle of Yunnan on November 30, 1944.

『Chinese Army captured 10 Japanese and Korean women. These women lived with the enemy for three months, experiencing bloody shelling that ruined the Songsan area, and infighting with life and death. Eventually, 14 of the 24 women died from shelling. [Japanese soldiers said,] "If you are caught by the Chinese army, you will be tortured," and all the women believed that. They did not give their real names to protect their families, but the vague trust they had previously had with the Japanese ruler was shattered over the past two years."』

‘Sexual slavery victims’ on the verge of escape

Among the surviving and captured ‘Sexual slavery victim’ was Park Young-sim, who was 22 years old. She remained in the last Japanese army position of Songsan. Just before the Japanese soldiers who foresaw the defeat committed suicide, Young-sim escaped there with four colleagues. She was about to come due.

『I thought I wanted to die several times, but I did not want to die there. I couldn't live or die. There was nothing I could do. It was like hell. When I heard that the Japanese had burned a military flag, I thought, 'Japan was defeated'. It was really scary. So when a Japanese woman told us to run away together, we immediately ran out of the trenches. (Oral Statement by Park Young-sim, listen by Lumiko Nishino in May 2000)』

Park Young-sim and her group ran down the mountain toward the river. They were found hungry by Chinese troops while eating corn in another person's field. A woman from Gyeongsang Province, who was frightened by the Chinese army, jumped into the river and died. At that moment, Park Young-sim, who started to suffer severe bleeding, was taken to a Chinese doctor and underwent surgery. Her baby is stillborn.

At the last minute of the battle of Songsan,

Park Young-sim and her group escaped from Yokomata position were found by Chinese troops.

Among the Japanese soldiers who committed suicide, there were two bodies of sexual slave victims.

The woman on the right is Park Young-sim.
- Data Collection: National Archives and Records Administration of the United States

At the Kunming camp

Park Young-sim waited for the day to return to his hometown. She was transferred to the Kunming camp via the Baoshan camp and the Chuxiong camp. There were 23 Korean ‘Sexual slavery victim’, 4 Japanese ‘Sexual slavery victim’, and 77 Japanese prisoners. Among them was Masanori Hayami, a soldier who had visited the so-called ‘comfort station’(a space set up by The Japanese imperial army had forcibly mobilized women to exploit as sexual slavery). He told the researcher Miyuki Endo, who interviewed him on September 6, 2005:

『"Even when I was in Kunming camp, Wakaharu (the name Park Young-sim called as the sexual slave victim of the Japanese army) was well taken care of and came well when washing. Wakaharu was good at Japanese, and she often sang Japanese popular songs. She was a cheerful, pleasant person, and she was really good to me."』

Did he want to say that he was comforted by the so-called ‘comfort women’ in the camp that were imprisoned as prisoners? He did not see the anguish she had as a human being behind Park Young-sim's 'cheerfulness'. According to a 1995 North Korean testimonial, Park Young-sim says that ‘It was ridiculous’ in a word about her life in Kunming camp. “They’re Japanese soldiers, we’re victims. Why were we in the same prison?” When she visited Songsan in 2003 with North Koreans, Chinese and Japanese to face her past, Park Young-sim once again asked.

『The surviving Joseon women became prisoners of war. And they were held for about seven months in the Kunming camp with the remnants of a defeated japanese troop. It was so embarrassed to think They should be a prisoner with these beasts. (Oral Statement by Park Young-sim, The Scream of a Tumbled Life, 1995, page 80)』

When Japanese-American and U.S. Army Koji Ariyoshi visited the Kunming camp in May 1945, hundreds of Chinese people stood outside the camp to see the Korean ‘Sexual slavery victims’. Korean Women were resentful of this gaze. May 6, 1945. The Korean Independence Army, as well as the visiting agent of the OSS, participated in the interrogation and wrote 「Kunming Report - The Korean of Kunming and War Prisoners」 as "They became ‘Sexual slavery victims’ with obvious coercion and fraud."

From Chongqing to home, and back to the battlefield

The 'Sexual slave victims' of Kunming camp were transferred to the Korean Provisional Government in Chongqing. Bang Soon-hee, a propaganda member of the Provisional Government, took care of and educated them. Jung Jeong-hwa recalled them and said that they were always drunk and couldn't change them through persuasion and rebuke. She also said, “People have done it, but people can not finish it.” This 'Sexual slavery victims' departed Chongqing in late January 1946 and arrived in Korea through Incheon Port between March and April. It is unknown whether they all came together, or at any moment they scattered and each came.

Yoon Kyung-ae(from Hwanghae-do Jaeryeong) and Park Young-sim(from Nampo, South Pyeongnam) returned to their hometowns and revealed that they were sexual slave victims in the early 1990s. Yoon Kyung-ae knew where she was taken to Singapore and died in 1999. Park Young-sim interviewed Japanese activist Lumiko Nishino in Pyongyang in May 2000 and it was revealed that he was one of the sexual slave victims in a photo taken by the Allied forces in Songsan in September 1944. In addition, Hwang Nam-sook(from Pyongyang), who served as 'Madame' in the so-called 'comfort station', was specially hired as a police officer on the executive board by the South Korean Military Administration in May 1946 and was purged in October 1950. The other 20 people have not yet been confirmed. On August 21, 2006, the newspaper 『Joseon Sinbo』 published by the Association of Korean Residents in Japan published a story left by Park Young-sim, who died on August 7 of the same year.

『"In the vortex of bombs, I lived a life full of humiliation. Fortune or emptiness, I escaped the line of death and continued my life. I came back home, but I was depressed by the memories of the time. I have lived like a sinner. Every night I was in a nightmare, hiding to avoid telling people what had happened in the past. What is my life that has lived with such a hard pain?"』

Park Young-sim appealed for anger and pain, but tried to convey what he had experienced and did not stop his will for life. And finally, she asked, ‘What is my life?’ Most of the victims are now dead. This is a question that we should solve against those who deny 'The History of Sexual Slavery Victims for the Japanese Imperial Army'.