Since 1991 individual memories of ‘comfort women’ have been incorporated into reconstruction of the past history. This article analyzes narrative acts of sixteen ‘comfort women’, whom I interviewed in 2002 as primary researcher with sixteen colleagues. As I listened to the stories of these ‘comfort women’ about past experiences, I came to realize that the issue of ‘comfort women’ is not so much about the past as about the present. The issue of ‘comfort women’ is not about the events which happened in the past; they exist here and now, influencing our lives, and are closely connected with patriarchal family relationships as well as unequal Korea-Japan relationship. I noticed the fluidity in the identities of ‘comfort women’ and followed the path of change in self-consciousness (that is, from silence to speaking out), while they narrated their stories. Instead of trying to figure out whether what they say is ‘true’ or not, we had better try our best to understand how and why ‘comfort women’ narrate their past in certain ways. By incorporating the voices of women victims and analyzing the context in which present lives of these women operate, we will be able to transcend the limitation of text-oriented writing of history, which is often based on male-centered and entire-history-centered perspectives. Previous works on ‘comfort women’ have mainly focused on their ‘testimonies’ of past experiences. Little study has been done on the issue of memory regarding historical ‘facts’, mechanism of memory, narrative act, meaning of narrative performance as a present act, and individual as well as social contexts where memory is reconstructed. This article is an attempt to discuss problems of ‘truth-claims’, and analyzes the positionality of ‘comfort women’ as subjects who actively engage in narrative acts. It focuses on how and why they provide us partial stories rather than ‘complete’ stories of the past.