I Hear Them

I just had to write down some things in my mind. I’ve been translating many interviews from Tagalog into English about the comfort women during the Second World War.

The way she talks about what happened to her is so vivid. She talks about it in present form, and it’s as if her gaze goes far beyond the ruins of Fort Santiago. She becomes transported to those days where she was a captive by the Japanese military men for 6 months. She was raped, everyday. Sometimes up to 6 men would take turns raping her. She called them salbahe. They would just be laughing around her, watching as one guy made his way in her. There was nothing she could do. She wanted to fight back, I saw that strong will in her in the interview, but it could mean death if she did. She kept repeating how the Japanese men were little men. But she was afraid they would drag her to death. And they forced her to watch as they tortured her husband. She gave gruesome details about it. She said they struck his husband’s face with the bayonet, slashing his face in half.

And the way she talks about it, you could feel that it really did happen and she was there, but she just ticked these details off when asked. She was very old. She said something like how she grew old like this, and said she even wanted to just die. It was heartbreaking. And in all of this, she is just asking for justice. That’s all, like many of the comfort women out there. I look at her eyes and see the life she had then. There is no trace of giving up in her gaze, but of resolve. She would look around her and then say something like it was there were they piled up the Filipinos they killed. Or it was here where they tied my husband by the feet and tortured him. She had seen so much and yet I am still to comprehend what she went through.

I cringe in the details these women have said. There is this whole other side most people do not know about the war and I get front row seats to hear them from the primary sources.