Aging 'comfort women' in grim situation
- By Chen Boyuan
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 12, 2015
UNESCO recently inscribed the 1937 Nanjing Massacre on its Memory of the World Register. At the same time, the organization has dropped another application from China – "Comfort Women": the Sex Slaves for Imperial Japanese Troops during World War II.
The documentary heritage relates to files about the "Comfort Women" and is constituted of records of the conditions and suffering of these women. The records were created primarily during the period 1931 to 1949, according to the UNESCO website.
Professor Su Zhiliang from Shanghai Normal University, who has been researching this part of history and was an observer at UNESCO's latest meeting on the Memory of the World, expressed disappointment at missing another opportunity to have the "comfort women" archives acknowledged by the international body, but showed courage to maintain its importance.
Among all "comfort women" who survived the war, only 20 are still alive; they mainly live in Xiaogan in Hubei Province, Yuxian in Shanxi Province and other provinces such as Hainan and Heilongjiang. These war victims are around 90 years' old, and mostly frail with illness. "If we cannot inscribe the documents on 'comfort women' before they all pass away, we will be forever indebted to them and their misfortune," said Prof Su, during an interview with Wuhan Evening News.
According to Su, there were more than 100 known "comfort women" initially, most of whom did not have children and struggled to live. Kind hearted entrepreneurs set up a fund 10 years ago, following his initiative, to provide 100 yuan (US$16) as a monthly allowance allotted to each victim. The figure has risen to a yearly 5,000 yuan (US$787) allowance, but the number of recipients has dropped to 20.
Su wrote the book "Studies of Comfort Women," based on his 13-years of research and evidence collection. With hard evidence, he has tried to show that China was the greatest victim of Japanese aggression during the era.
Su's researches show that the invading Japanese troops set up stations of comfort women in 21 provinces and municipalities. Some of these stations existed for up to 14 years, and the number of active sex slaves ranged from one to up to 500, considering size of each facility. In such centers, some Chinese women were locked up for several weeks, and others for seven years.
"I have visited more than 100 comfort women, and found thousands of old sites of comfort women stations nationwide. My documents include piles of text records and audio tapes of victims speaking about their miseries. Each of those records is imbued with blood and tears," said Prof Su.
Before submitting his archives as part of China's UNESCO application, Su had been an activist in refuting Japanese right-wingers' denial of the Nanjing Massacre and the existence of comfort women.
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