Korean "Comfort" Women Still Forgotten

So by now you may have become used to my digressions into seemingly random political or historical subjects of an international nature, and this is another one of those tangents. A close friend of mine who resides in Korea was sharing with me about her visit to what is called The Sharing House, (I warn you that the stories in these links are very explicit and are not pleasant to read) a place where women, brutalized by the Japanese during World War II and used as sexual slaves, remain outcasts from their own people because of traditional and bigoted social mores that say that woman to whom these brutalities occurred although due to no fault of their can never be acceptable marriage partners. The Japanese war machine enslaved nearly 200,000 women from many countries, and especially from Korea, during their colonization of Korea from 1905 until the defeat of Japan. If you have a hard time empathizing with a Korean woman, perhaps your heart will be touched by this story of a gorgeous Australian woman who was also enslaved by the Japanese when they captured her in what was then the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). In 1992, three Korean "comfort" women finally broke the imposed silence of their society and thus the tacit complicity of that society with the brutalization of these women and demanded that the Japanese apologize and make things right with the survivors. The Japanese have done little to provide for these women. Neither do they teach these atrocities in their schools. Talk about whitewashing history. It reminds me of the famous saying about those who do not remember their history being destined to repeat it.

If you wish to read further about this horrific story, this website has a long list of links relating to "comfort" women enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Army.