뉴스레터

List of Female Passengers on the Chuuk Islands

The Chuuk Islands (Truck Islands) in the middle of the Pacific are situated to the south of Japan and were called the “South Sea Islands” during Japan’s colonial period. Japan had governed over the Chuuk Islands since World War I under the name of mandated rule. After the late 1930s, Japan sought to build military bases on the islands and use them as the center for its Pacific defense. The Chuuk Islands, which had been a base for Japan’s combined fleet during World War II, lost its function as the forward base due to massive air strikes by the U.S. Armed Forces in February 1944. The islands had been under Japanese occupation until Japan surrendered, but the nearby sea was being controlled by the U.S.

Given that Japan stationed “comfort women” in all places in which it was in a state of war, Joseon comfort women would have also been placed in the Chuuk Islands. However, there was not enough evidence. Joseon comfort women in the Chuuk Islands appeared in memoirs written by Japanese soldiers or Japanese comfort women at time.

Ethnic Korean-American Researcher, Dr. Bang Seon-ju, disclosed lists of passengers from the Chuuk Islands discovered in America’s National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The lists included 368 Joseon people and Okinawans who had been aboard vessels returning under the command of the Allied Forces after the war. The fifth list in particular, that was comprised of 26 women and three children, was unusual. However, they could not rashly be identified as “comfort women” because their occupations were stated as “laborers.”

The 26 women who seemed to have escaped people’s minds received a renewed interest after having been forgotten for 20 years. In the summer of 2017, a research team led by Professor Jeong Jin-seok of Seoul National University, who had visited the NARA to look for materials related to Japan’s comfort women, discovered photos of women that were in the combat records of U.S. forces stationed in the Chuuk Islands. The photos were of young women who were packing or moving, wearing dresses resembling nurse uniforms on January 17, 1946, the day they boarded ships returning home. Among them were females who carried infants less than one-year-old on their backs. Written records in U.S. Forces’ combat records did not pay much attention to these women. They were mentioned briefly only in the item of “medical activity”:

“This month there was a massive removal of Japanese civilians, including Okinawans, Koreans, and Taiwanese. Removal of Korean women who were mostly ‘comfort women’ lowered the rate of sexually transmitted diseases among American soldiers.”

The job title “laborers,” that had been transcribed on the list, may have been the fruit of the women’s wishful thinking. The U.S. forces included them in the list according to their wishes but articulated them as “comfort women” in their hygienic records.

Memories of Female Victims and Following Their Experiences

As a member of the research team at that time, I found a woman who mentioned “Dorakudo (Chuuk Islands)” in the records of the female victims registered with the Korean government. The woman was a grandmother named Lee Bok-sun who passed away in 2008 while living in Daegu. A supporting organization in Daegu stated that the woman was victimized in Java, Indonesia. I showed Lee In-sun, one of the concerned individuals (who is now head of the Heeum - Museum of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan), the photos of the U.S. combat records and inquired if Mrs. Lee Bok-sun appeared in any of them. Lee In-sun immediately pointed out a photo and sent me a photo of the 80-year-old woman. The old woman greatly resembled the 20-year-old woman captured in the photo.

I reviewed the lists of passengers on the Chuuk Islands and a woman identified as “Hitokawa Fukujun,” “Daikyu-fu” caught my attention. “Fukujun” is a Japanese phonetic transcription of “Boksun (福順).” Was the woman in the photo really Mrs. Lee Bok-sun? I had to confirm if her changed family name was “Hitokawa.” However, even while tracking down her family register, I was not able to find her permanent address of residence, including the name of her father, anywhere in the computer network. The moment I gave up, I received news that the family register of her father that had been published during Japan’s colonial rule had been discovered. A section chief at the office of Giran-myeon, Andong-gun, after sensing the limitations of computerized search, carefully checked aged primary source records one by one and discovered the family register. Mrs. Lee Bok-sun lived in Giran-myeon until her death and the section chief expressed a sense of the historical weight of the family register. The changed family name of her father that been discovered after three months of searching was Hitokawa (仁川) and the address in 1943, about the time when Mrs. Lee Bok-sun was taken, was “Naedang-dong 871, Daikyu-fu.” This information perfectly matched the name and the address the 20-year-old Ms. Lee Bok-sun called to by U.S. soldiers in January 1946. Lee In-sun had to speculate that the region in which she was victimized was Indonesia, as Mrs. Lee Bok-sun did not specify the time in which she was victimized, only explaining that the weather was hot and that she had learned how to give injections. In 1993, when she reported her victimization to the government, she recounted, “I was taken to ‘Dorakudo,’ after hearing that I would be offered a good job there, and arrived in Japan’s ‘Uranggawa’ aboard a vessel of the Allied Forces after the war. After that, I took a train in Tokyo to Fukuoka’s ‘Hakata’ and then arrived in Busan before returning home in Daegu by train.”

If her story is reconstructed through narration, photos, testimony, and primary source data, Mrs. Lee Bok-sun left the Chuuk Islands on January 17, 1946 aboard the Ikino with 26 colleagues and three children, suspected to have been born to these women. According to a U.S. Marine officer featured in an article published in the March 2 edition of the New York Times, these women seemed to be afraid of the future, fearing that they would be rejected and outcasted wherever they went. The Ikino was a vessel that returned to the “Uraga Port,” Yokoska, Kanagawa Prefecture. At this time, Mrs. Lee Bok-sun went to Tokyo and returned aboard a vessel bound for Busan from Hakata Port, Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu.

Filling in the Records of Physical and Emotional Damage of Comfort Women

The commonly-encountered awareness of the comfort women problem only proves damage and the necessity to uncover more primary source data to hold Japanese accountable for their atrocities. However, it is not easy to discover primary source data related to “comfort women,” as these are words that both victims and assailants would have wished to avoid or cover up. Even if data is discovered, it is difficult to get to the bottom of the real truth about comfort women because they are only records on paper that would relativize female victims. The stories of Joseon comfort women on the Chuuk Islands is not a fact of physical and emotional damage proved my primary source data. Mrs. Lee Bok-sun, a directly involved victim, and her story existed with supporting photos and documents, and there were memories and efforts of the people who put together the pieces of her story. It was possible to put together the fragments and pieces because there were the hearts of those who strived to listen carefully to stories of those directly involved, rather than relying on documents. To be sure, records on comfort women will continue to be pieced together, in accordance with our strong will to work together.