These examinations were continued for days.  Sometimes a girl would be examined several times a day.  Sometimes a couple of examiners would rush at her, beating and kicking her; sometimes they would make her hold a chair or heavy board out at full length, beating her if she let it sink in the least.  Then when she was worn out they would renew their examination.  The questions were all directed towards one end, to discover who inspired them, and more particularly if any foreigners or missionaries had influenced them.  During this time they were kept under the worst possible conditions.

“I cannot recount all the vile things that were said to us while in the police quarters in Chong-no,” declared one of the girls.  “They are too obscene to be spoken, but by the kindness of the Lord I thought of how Paul had suffered in prison, and was greatly comforted.  I knew that God would give the needed help, and as I bore it for my country, I did not feel the shame and misery of it.”  One American woman, to whom some of the girls related their experiences, said to me, “I cannot tell you, a man, all that these girls told us.  I will only say this.  There have been stories of girls having their arms cut off.  If these girls had been daughters of mine I would rather that they had their arms cut off than that they faced what those girls endured in Chong-no.”

There came a day when the girls were bound at the wrists, all fastened together, and driven in a car to the prison outside the West Gate.  Some of them were crying.  They were not allowed to look up or speak.  The driver, a Korean, took advantage of a moment when the attention of their guard was attracted to whisper a word of encouragement.  “Don’t be discouraged and make your bodies weak.  You are not yet condemned.  This is only to break your spirits.”

The prison outside the West Gate is a model Japanese jail.  There were women officials here.  It seemed horrible to the girls that they should be made to strip in front of men and be examined by them.  Probably the men were prison doctors.  But it was evidently intended to shame them as much as possible.  Thus one girl relates that, after her examination, “I was told to take my clothes and go into another room.  One woman went with me, about a hundred yards or more away.  I wanted to put my clothes on before leaving the room, but they hurried me and pushed me.  I wrapped my skirt about my body before I went out, and carried the rest of my clothes in my arms.  After leaving this room, and before reaching the other, five Korean men prisoners passed us.”

For the first week the girls, many of them in densely crowded cells, were kept in close confinement.  After this, they were allowed out for fifteen minutes, wearing the prisoners’ hat, which comes down over the head, after breakfast.  Their food was beans and millet It was given to the accompaniment of jeers and insults.  “You Koreans eat like dogs and cats,” the wardresses told them.