M. Evelina Galang - Blog

Transcript of M. Evelina Galang

M. Evelina Galang: At that time, there wasn't a lot out there about comfort women, and the only ones that people would have heard about, if anything, were the Korean comfort women because of the way their people and the government really is in support of them. So we did as much research as we could do about our own comfort women -- we call them the Lolas, which means grandmothers -- and then they were excited. They were excited to go, and kind of scared. And so I brought them there, and then a couple of the girls didn't speak the language at all, and many of the comfort women didn't speak English. So we had a language barrier. So we started to dance with them. They taught us how to tango. We would teach them how to raise the roof. We started to paint with them and do artwork with them, and they started to build relationships with them. So we really came about the interviews in this roundabout way, in relating as people to one another. And they began to adopt the girls as their granddaughters, and vice versa. Whenever they saw the girls, they would come up and -- hugs and kisses, and the whole thing. And slowly they started to share their stories in their own way with the girls one-on-one. And everybody was heartbroken. Everybody wanted to do something. But depending on the young woman and where she was in her life, there was maybe this much that she could do: letter-writing, or communicating with them, or holding their hand. Or there was that feeling of being so overwhelmed that they couldn't do anything, that they would shut down. So there was a range in response. But one thing was for sure: their hearts were touched.