The accounts, however, dovetail with testimonies about abortions and babies abandoned at birth, given up for adoption, or brought to their new home countries to face chilling receptions.
The heart-warmers involve children of comfort women from various nations. The Survey of Korean Comfort Women Used by Japanese Soldiers (Center for War/Women's Rights, Seoul, 2002) says that over 30 percent of the interviewees produced biological children and 20 percent adopted children during the post-war decades. Here, the focus falls on those who adopted children.
Lee Ok-seon, 90, is such a mother. After her "comfort woman" life in Yanji, China, she was abandoned by her manager with no way to get back to Korea, she struggled to survive. Unable to bear children because of injuries from her comfort woman years and after her childless marriage ended, she married a Chinese man with two children. She poured her love on those children while caring for her husband, who later became paralyzed. After his death, she repatriated to Korea but left her heart in China _ with her children and grandchildren. We shared a hotel room in Dallas, Texas, in April 2016, during her testimony-giving trip to the United States. Asked about her children, she breathed a sigh "powerful enough to crack the earth." Her son, handicapped, is doing poorly, and she sends him the money friends occasionally give her. Her love for him is wringing her heart.
In the 2016 documentary "The Apology" by Tiffany Hsiung, former Chinese comfort woman Grandma Cau, 92, cackles pleasantly as her adopted daughter serves her steaming soup. Cau's tiny eyes form smiling curves, even after her daughter chided her in a shrill, "Don't cut wood, Mother. You hear me?"
In another scene, former Korean comfort woman Grandma Gil Won-ok, 89, and her adopted son, a minister, enjoy a kimchi-enriched meal in her room. Then, he says, "The Korean War! What ‘ass-splitting' poverty we lived through, Mother. People didn't have even barley to eat, but we ate white rice! You worked hard to feed me well!" She flashes a smile. Soon, he stretches out on the floor for a nap. She lies down and slings her arm around his shoulder. They become a mother and her little boy again.
Emah, an Indonesian, cursed her beauty as this forced her to serve ten Japanese soldiers daily in military brothels in Chimahi for three years, longer than plain-looking girls had to do. After the war and a brief marriage, she adopted two of her brother's children and lived as a fulfilled mother. Following a year as a 16-year-old comfort woman, Doming, a South Moluccan, adopted two children and lived to enjoy 10 grandchildren and a few great-grandchildren. (Comfort Women Troostmeisjes, Jan Banning, 2012, p.41, p.77).
To those experiencing comfort-women-fatigue or acid reflux attacks upon hearing yet more comfort women sexual violence stories while watching politicizing by government officials and advocates of opposing camps, these stories of love should provide relief and more reasons to honor these women _ the snatchers of heaven in their loving.
The author of an autobiographical novel about Korea, "The Voices of Heaven," and a book of poetry, "Long Walks on Short Days," Maija Rhee Devine is working on her next books _ a work of nonfiction and a novel about the comfort women of WWII. Contact: www.MaijaRheeDevine.com or maijadevine@gmail.com.