Yi Yong-su

Yi Yong-su (1928 – )
born in Daegu, Gyeongsang-do, South Korea

“I’m so indignant, I think I’m going to drop dead!  Oh, bring back my youth!” shouts Grandmother Yi Yongsu. 

She was born the only daughter among many sons in a poor Daegu household in 1928.  From a very young age she worked in factories to help her family, until in 1944, at the age of fifteen, she was deceived by a Japanese who pretended to offer her a job, and instead abducted her to Taiwan, where she was made a sexual slave. At Ms. Yi’s “comfort station,” the majority of visiting soldiers were members of a kamikaze suicide squad.  One of these kamikaze pilots, who gave her the Japanese name Toshiko, sang this modified version of a kamikaze song to her just before he departed for the front.

Ms. Yi, always bright and cheerful, received an honorary graduate degree from Gyeongbuk University and is passing her old age vigorously engaged in all sorts of activism.  She travels around Korea and Japan giving testimony about her experience of Japanese sexual slavery, participating in demonstrations and other events, pressing the Japanese government to accept responsibility for its war crimes. 

Song of the Pilots

Writer unknown

“That soldier, he was an officer… Just when he was going off to die, He taught me this song:”

(Japanese)

I take off with courage, leaving Taiwan behind,
Riding and rising above waves of gold and silver clouds.
There is no one to see me off,
And this little one is the only one who cries for me.

“And the second verse…”

I take off with courage, leaving Shinchiku behind,
Riding and rising above waves of gold and silver clouds.
There is no one to see me off,
And the only one who cries for me is Toshiko.

(Korean)

“He gave me the Japanese name Toshiko…”