He looked for the document he had brought from Manila and sent it to the Kyoto News Agency’s Washington bureau.
The document was such an eye-opener to the young American working in Asia at the time that Goodman kept a copy for himself.Īlmost a half century later, in the early 1990s, Goodman, then retired from teaching but still living in Lawrence, read an article about Houses of Relaxation written by a Japanese professor in Tokyo. Illiterate farmers, islanders and common laborers were taught to read and write as well as to be self-reliant. Miles and miles of dirt roads were converted to paved roads and freeways were built. Straw-thatched roofs in the countryside were replaced with asphalt shingle-roofs. The majority of the $800 million was spent for the government’s New Country Building Movement - a five-year project during which time South Korea made a major facelift and housecleaning: corrupt politicians and government employees were booted out. None of the thousands of South Koreans conscripts or forced laborers, including the former comfort women, received compensation.
In reality, only a small portion of the money went to families whose members were killed or whose property was destroyed by the occupation forces. Satisfied, the Korean government, then under militant leader Park Chung-hee agreed with Japan that no further claims against Japanese government would be made by any South Korean citizen. In 1965, the South Korean government received $800 million from Japan as reparations for its long occupation and damages caused by its occupation forces to Korean people and the land.
When the comfort women voiced their anger repeatedly and persistently, demanding Japan to apologize for its long-dead soldiers’ barbarism against them, Japan counterattacked, calling them “wartime prostitutes” and saying that their services had been paid already. There is no simple answer to such a compelling and complicated issue as Japan’s occupation of Korea (November 1905 to August 1945), during which time they forced Korean men to fight for Japan and women to serve soldiers in military brothels all over Asia - among other atrocities - and why it took so long for Japan to admit and apologize to the victims, particularly to the comfort women.įor nearly seven decades, Japan declined to admit its wrongdoing and hoped that its shameful past would fade away from Korean people’s memories. After Japanese Prime Minister Shinto Abe’s apologies to 46 surviving former Korean comfort women (a poetic name for sex-slaves used by the Japanese military during World War II) was aired in December, many people asked me how I felt about it, knowing that my first book, “A Gift of the Emperor” (published in 1997), is the story of a 17-year-old Korean school girl whose life shattered after she and her classmates innocently volunteered to help the emperor’s efforts to unite all Asian countries under Japan by joining the “Women’s Brigade.”
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