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On the
corner of Jalans Burma and Zainal Abidan stands a
typically Malay structure. I'd been past it on many
occasion without noticing it but this time things were
different. The house was the destination in itself.
Today it's called Tong Lock Pub and looks neither
inviting nor repelling. I didn't want to have a beer,
well not just yet, I just wanted a look. The upstairs
shutters were open; the place looked open for business
with a couple of cars in the off road parking area.
The
British cowardly slipped out of Penang a couple of weeks
after the Japanese invasion, under strict instructions
not to tell the locals. 150 years of British rule ended
with the colonial masters slinking in the shadows like a
thief in the night, leaving behind loyal, faithful
employees to their fate. Nannies, drivers, boys, cooks,
whatever their job, their race, the British deserted
them. Perhaps their departure saved the island from a
full blooded attack. That is one question hindsight
cannot answer. There was guilt, there were some kind
words, but the day after there was no more tuan,
or mem or missee. They sat back to await
their fate.
A
Japanese innovation as they swept through the Asia
Pacific was the comfort station. Knocking shop. The
reasoning was that a marauding, victorious army raping
and pillaging Asian bodies and homes didn't fit to well
with their self imposed role of liberators. Kicking out
the Brits is one thing, raping the womenfolk is a big PR
no no. Armies have had camp followers probably since the
first caveman had a row with his neighbours in the next
valley. I have no doubt a studious academic somewhere
has gone in to matter deeply and thoroughly.
So the
Japanese decided to have their own mobile brothels
following hot on the heels of the military. They tried
advertising in local papers, one sought hostesses of all
races, aged 17-28. The money was good but I can't
imagine them getting a whole load of applications and
resumes. Another approach was more traditional, akin to
the press ganging that filled Britain's navy for so
long. Kidnapping at the barrel of a gun was a more
effective method. Break into kampongs, slap or shoot the
men folk, break in the young blood, preferably in front
of screaming parents. This after all increases the
feelings of helplessness. Like the three rules in
business are location, location and location so in power
games, intimidate, intimidate and intimidate. A gun
pointing at pappa's head while the Japanese army sate
their lust on his 15 year old daughter brooks little
dissent.
What
follows is not the story of one individual, rather a
composite of several survivors’ accounts. When words
have lost their meaning, when tears have all been used
up all we are left with are memories. And when people no
longer care, why keep the memories.
They
came at 3 am while Air Itam slept. They knew where to
go, who they were after. They kicked down a door,
shouted, fired some shots in the air, waved torches in
people's shocked faces. They wanted Jasmine, the 14 year
old daughter. Her father lied said she wasn't here. The
soldiers knocked him to the ground, kicked him as he
laid there, others training their rifles on the
defenceless man. Jasmine came from under the bed and
stood in the room. Her father lay on the ground, his
face bloody and bruised, her mother screaming in the
arms of her uncle. In the kampong no one stirred. They
heard the screams and shots and blocked them from their
mind. It was a bad dream, that's all.
One
soldier slapped the unarmed 14 year old girl. As she
fell, he fell on top of her, ripping off her clothes. On
the floor of their tidy house, with her mother and
father in tears Jasmine was roughly broken in, the
soldiers mocking, laughing, taunting. Domination,
humiliation but precious little liberation that night.
Except Jasmine was liberated of her virginity, a
bloodied, brutal attack on the living room floor.
Jasmine has shed blood before, on that floor, the usual
cuts and bruises that come with growing up. This time,
as the blood poured, it took her innocence.
For the
neighbours, the screams soon faded into the
subconscious. For Jasmine she soon lost the power to
scream. She was taken to Tock Lock Hotel where a sign
said 'Exclusive Army Use.' She was given a Japanese name
and from about 8 am was raped. Early on by the lower
ranks. Later by officers who could stay the night. There
was no time to change, shower. Everyday 20 or 30
soldiers would go through her. It was less an act of
procreation and more a machine in a factory.
For 2
years it went on. Jasmine, who knew nothing about sex,
learnt a lot about brutality. Her insides were raw. At
the end of the war she was spat out of Tong Lock and
returned to her village, her family, her emotional womb.
But things had changed. She had been a comfort woman,
she had been with the Japanese, she was soiled. She had
brought shame on her family, as if she had made the
conscious decision 2 years earlier to aid the Japanese
war effort by sleeping with the soldiers. She wasn't
welcome, she reminded people of that nightmare night
when no one had wanted to help. Of course her personal
nightmare had lasted far longer but who cares. So she
left the village to find a new beginning elsewhere.
There
are of course two sides to every story so let's consider
the Japanese soldier. Brought up on the warrior ethics
of bushido, fanatically loyal to the god like
emperor he would have been, essentially a brainless
automaton. One such soldier described how sometimes he
would give gifts to his favourite ladies. The ladies to
would buy presents for their favourite customer. He
described this as the springtime of his life. Not sure
how Jasmine would react to that.
And so I
stood outside the hotel that held so many Jasmines. I
considered my own girlfriend. What if she was put into a
similar situation? I shuddered at the options. Number
one, work on your back and pray for an early end to the
war, number two, take your life now. That's what
happened when the Americans reached Saipan. Thousands of
Japanese ladies jumped from the cliffs, breaking
themselves on the rocks below. Better that than being a
sex slave. They knew their men.
Then I
thought about me. What would I have done if I had been a
soldier? Unlikely, when younger I refused to sign up
refused to be cannon fodder for someone else’s mistake.
To be a soldier implies indoctrination, brainwashing,
how else can you get someone to kill? As a non thinking
moron with a gun, a high sex drive and driven on by peer
pressure would I have been any different? Could I have
kept my personal morality on a battlefield while all
around had lost theirs. All too often people have proven
eager to discard the robe of civilization and inflict
pain on fellow people because of some ideology. Maybe we
are better off without ideology or maybe we are not as
cultured or civilised as we like to think we are. Maybe
the veneer of civilization is as fake as eye liner and
smudges just as easily. Or perhaps we can only truly
judge a man’s morality when he has power and see how he
uses it.
It was
lunch time; this was heavy stuff, so I headed to the
Kashmir on Jalan Penang. I wasn't really hungry; I just
needed somewhere quiet to think. The issue of comfort
women has not been suitably solved. Post war, a newly
independent Malaysia sought foreign investment from
their erstwhile invader and, well, it doesn't pay to ask
too many questions does it? |
