As I explained last week, I recently met former "comfort woman" Lee Yong-soo, 89, at a rally in Seoul held at the site where the contentious comfort woman statue is located. Afterwards I joined her on a trip to the House of Sharing, where 10 other former comfort women are currently residing.
During our journey we conversed mostly in Japanese about her hellish experiences in a Japanese military brothel, with some help from a Korean interpreter. It is a poignant saga of abduction from her village at age 16 and ending up on an air base in Taiwan, where she initially resisted her rapists. They beat and tortured her (with electricity) until she succumbed.
One young kamikaze pilot nursed her wounds, and they became so close that not long before his final departure he composed a song for her, saying he would become a star in the heavens and always be there for her. He taught her this and some other Japanese songs that she sang for me in a soulful tenor.