During an interview with the Japanese weekly Josei Jishin in September 1988
Bae Bong-gi – readers may not be familiar with the name, but she was the first woman to testify about her experience as a sex slave, or comfort woman, for the imperial Japanese military. In November 1944, at the age of 30, Bae left her home and went to Tokashiki, a small island in Okinawa Prefecture, where she became a comfort woman. She lived under the pseudonym of Akiko in a comfort station for the Japanese army that was called the “house with the red-tiled roof.”Not long afterward, Japan was defeated by the US in the War in the Pacific. After the Japanese left, US troops came to the island. In a concentration camp run by the US troops, Bae had to keep doing the same work. Korea had been liberated, but she wasn’t able to go home.Bae’s body and spirit were broken on that distant island. Without a home of her own, she stayed in a tiny shed, without any gas or running water. As she suffered a nervous breakdown in her shed, she would scream from her headaches and neuralgia. Children in the neighborhood called her the “crazy old woman.”In May 1972, the Japanese government regained sovereignty of Okinawa, which had remained under the control of the US after World War II. At that point, Bae had to make a tough decision. Japan had announced that it would only be granting special permanent residency to Koreans living in Okinawa Prefecture who could prove they had entered Japan before Aug. 15, 1945.In order to avoid being deported from Okinawa, Bae had to confess that she had once been a comfort woman. “I lived in Okinawa as a comfort woman,” Bae said to the owner of a restaurant she’d used to work for. In October 1971, the Japanese press covered the story of Bae, who was 51 years old at the time. Thus, Bae was forced by the Japanese government and press to reveal her past.Bae cried when she thought of her home. In September 1988, reporters from a Japanese women’s weekly called Josei Jishin interviewed Bae, who was 74 years old at the time. The reporters said they would pay her way if she wanted to visit Korea. “You know, I’d like to go, I really ought to go sometime,” Bae said and then sobbed for quite some time.
