The atrocities of war, including the sufferings of ‘comfort women’, are not forgotten
Bill Savadove 04 October 2009
What Chen Deying remembers best from the spring of 1944 is how the young women would sing folk songs from the second floor of the house where they were held captive, like caged songbirds.
Chen, now 75, was too young to realise it at the time but the women were sex slaves of the Japanese military, known as “comfort women”.
“Those girls couldn’t even communicate with us. Physically and mentally, they were tortured,” she recalled as she walked around the former brothel.
A group of Japanese soldiers one day appeared at the Chen family home in Shanghai, a grand two-storey brick building that commanded a fine view of the area, and informed her father that they were taking over the property.
Not long afterwards, several Chinese women from nearby Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces moved into the house. Japanese soldiers in uniform would visit frequently, the only ones able to gain entrance through the tall locked gate.
Local children, including Chen, who moved into a house next door, peeked through a window to see the women receiving medical examinations from the doctor who visited weekly. The gossip of a servant working inside helped fill out the picture. About 20 to 30 Chinese women lived there to service the soldiers. They were ranked in three levels, with the most beautiful taking the best rooms. In late August 1945, the women and their Japanese captors suddenly disappeared as the second world war came to an end.
Chen’s family no longer owns the house, at present-day 350 Qiancang Road, just off a major street in Shanghai’s financial district of Pudong. Surrounded by taller buildings, it is now used for vocational training by the government. The use of the building as a Japanese military brothel would be forgotten by all except Chen but for the efforts of one man, Shanghai Normal University Professor Su Zhiliang. For the past 13 years, Su has made it his academic speciality to track down surviving wartime sex slaves to record their stories and map former brothels in cities across China.
But his interest has gone beyond the academic. Together with Chinese lawyers and activists and overseas organisations, he has helped focus attention on the issue.
“We hold activities all over the world to show that the Japanese government hasn’t admitted war crimes,” he said.
As the new administration of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of the Democratic Party of Japan begins to govern, wartime history remains one of the most contentious issues hanging over the country’s relationship with China.
Ties between the Asian giants hit a low in 2005 when tens of thousands of Chinese took to the streets of mainland cities to air a range of grievances against Japan with the unspoken approval of Beijing.
A series of diplomatic meetings in the years following the mass protests have improved the atmosphere, but issues remain: perceptions of wartime history, disputed gas fields in the East China Sea and food safety, since Japan is a massive market for mainland products.
“Although relations are good, China thinks Japan doesn’t care about wartime history. Japan thinks China doesn’t care about food safety,” a Japanese diplomat said. In an incident last year, frozen dumplings made in the mainland and exported to Japan made people ill. Japan says the food was laced with pesticide, but Beijing denies they were contaminated at the factory.
Hatoyama is trying to build closer relations with Asian countries, including China and South Korea. At a meeting with President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the recent United Nations General Assembly, he pushed his idea of an East Asian community that would share a common currency.
“Although the overall arc of Japan’s trajectory will be fairly consistent under the DPJ, some of the biggest points will be ones of emphasis and tone,” said Devin Stewart, director of global policy innovations at the New York-based Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. “The DPJ will be able to engage with Asia with less of the baggage of Japan’s colonial rule as well as that of a perceived client or ‘lap dog’ of the United States.”
He does not believe closer relations within Asia would hurt ties with the US, an idea echoed by Japanese officials.
“Hatoyama is advocating a more independent foreign policy from the United States, meaning one that will be on more equal footing ... The DPJ has also emphasised another trend that has been under way for years de facto - closer ties to Asia. This should not be seen as a move towards Asia at the expense of the US-Japan alliance.”
In the meeting with Hu, Hatoyama also said he would support a 1995 statement by a previous Japanese prime minister that expressed remorse and apologised for Japan’s invasion of Asia during the war. Many Chinese believe that apology to be inadequate or are unaware of the statement.
Hatoyama has already pledged not to visit Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates Japan’s war dead, as prime minister. Visits by previous Japanese prime ministers to the shrine have brought outrage from China and South Korea.
Still, China has made use of the issue of wartime history as political leverage with Japan and allowed expressions of nationalism by its people to help shore up the legitimacy of the Communist Party.
Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, an anonymous internet user posted photos on a popular Chinese website of the victims of the atomic bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Instead of showing sympathy, many took the opportunity to express anti-Japan sentiments.
“If you’re still human you’d sympathise. But the fathers, husbands, sons and grandsons of the people in these photos invaded our land, killed our grandfathers, raped our grandmothers, beheaded the Chinese as entertainment. To this day their attitude is still indifferent,” one said, as translated by the chinaSMACK website.
Among the most vocal are young Chinese, who have no personal experience of the war. Some see no contradiction in admiring Japanese pop culture and buying the nation’s products while condemning Tokyo over its wartime history.
Su at Shanghai Normal University wants more than an apology. He has sought to help former wartime sex slaves bring lawsuits against the Japanese government for compensation and even approached the International Criminal Court at The Hague about the possibility of accepting a case.
Japanese courts typically reject such cases, citing agreements between China and Japan for normalisation of diplomatic ties and the length of time that has elapsed.
Su claims there were 200,000 Chinese “comfort women”, and he has located more than 40 who are still alive. Shanghai alone had at least 160 of the brothels, and he has found others in 22 provinces and cities. “Everywhere the Japanese army was stationed, I can find comfort-woman stations,” he said.
To document the atrocities, he has set up a small museum at his university and written a book detailing the former Japanese military brothels in Shanghai.
He has also co-operated with overseas organisations, including Toronto-based Alpha, founded by Hong Kong-born Dr Joseph Wong, which seeks to pursue justice for victims of the second world war in Asia.
Alpha, or the Association for Learning & Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, leads an annual tour to China for Canadian educators to encourage them to teach this chapter of history. Members of the tour met Su this year.
Wong, a physician, said: “It’s about injustice, about the world forgetting the continued denials of Japan. All of this propelled me to seek the truth and justice, and the proper closure for victims.”
One victim was Ha Sang-sook, an ethnic Korean who has lived in China since she was taken from her rural village near Seoul at age 17 in 1944. Taken to a brothel in the central city of Wuhan, she was given a Japanese name and Japanese-style clothing, and was forced to service up to 10 soldiers a day.
“If I resisted, I was beaten,” she said. On first arriving, a soldier slapped her across the face for not being able to understand a question in Japanese. Later, a doctor gave her an injection, which she believed made her sterile.
After the war, she married a widower with three daughters and worked in a textiles factory. She decided to remain in China, where her daughters live, even though it was the land where she suffered during the war.
After Su found and interviewed her about her experiences of decades ago, he helped her locate her long-lost relatives in South Korea, whom she visited in 2004, and attempt, unsuccessfully, to bring a lawsuit in a Japanese court.
“No one has received any compensation. The Japanese killed many people,” she said. “I can never forgive the Japanese.”
It is a feeling shared by many Chinese and one that is informing Beijing’s foreign policy even today.
3 comments:
Why the pain lingers for China and Japan
The atrocities of war, including the sufferings of ‘comfort women’, are not forgotten
Bill Savadove
04 October 2009
What Chen Deying remembers best from the spring of 1944 is how the young women would sing folk songs from the second floor of the house where they were held captive, like caged songbirds.
Chen, now 75, was too young to realise it at the time but the women were sex slaves of the Japanese military, known as “comfort women”.
“Those girls couldn’t even communicate with us. Physically and mentally, they were tortured,” she recalled as she walked around the former brothel.
A group of Japanese soldiers one day appeared at the Chen family home in Shanghai, a grand two-storey brick building that commanded a fine view of the area, and informed her father that they were taking over the property.
Not long afterwards, several Chinese women from nearby Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces moved into the house. Japanese soldiers in uniform would visit frequently, the only ones able to gain entrance through the tall locked gate.
Local children, including Chen, who moved into a house next door, peeked through a window to see the women receiving medical examinations from the doctor who visited weekly. The gossip of a servant working inside helped fill out the picture. About 20 to 30 Chinese women lived there to service the soldiers. They were ranked in three levels, with the most beautiful taking the best rooms. In late August 1945, the women and their Japanese captors suddenly disappeared as the second world war came to an end.
Chen’s family no longer owns the house, at present-day 350 Qiancang Road, just off a major street in Shanghai’s financial district of Pudong. Surrounded by taller buildings, it is now used for vocational training by the government. The use of the building as a Japanese military brothel would be forgotten by all except Chen but for the efforts of one man, Shanghai Normal University Professor Su Zhiliang. For the past 13 years, Su has made it his academic speciality to track down surviving wartime sex slaves to record their stories and map former brothels in cities across China.
But his interest has gone beyond the academic. Together with Chinese lawyers and activists and overseas organisations, he has helped focus attention on the issue.
“We hold activities all over the world to show that the Japanese government hasn’t admitted war crimes,” he said.
As the new administration of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of the Democratic Party of Japan begins to govern, wartime history remains one of the most contentious issues hanging over the country’s relationship with China.
Ties between the Asian giants hit a low in 2005 when tens of thousands of Chinese took to the streets of mainland cities to air a range of grievances against Japan with the unspoken approval of Beijing.
A series of diplomatic meetings in the years following the mass protests have improved the atmosphere, but issues remain: perceptions of wartime history, disputed gas fields in the East China Sea and food safety, since Japan is a massive market for mainland products.
“Although relations are good, China thinks Japan doesn’t care about wartime history. Japan thinks China doesn’t care about food safety,” a Japanese diplomat said. In an incident last year, frozen dumplings made in the mainland and exported to Japan made people ill. Japan says the food was laced with pesticide, but Beijing denies they were contaminated at the factory.
Hatoyama is trying to build closer relations with Asian countries, including China and South Korea. At a meeting with President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the recent United Nations General Assembly, he pushed his idea of an East Asian community that would share a common currency.
“Although the overall arc of Japan’s trajectory will be fairly consistent under the DPJ, some of the biggest points will be ones of emphasis and tone,” said Devin Stewart, director of global policy innovations at the New York-based Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. “The DPJ will be able to engage with Asia with less of the baggage of Japan’s colonial rule as well as that of a perceived client or ‘lap dog’ of the United States.”
He does not believe closer relations within Asia would hurt ties with the US, an idea echoed by Japanese officials.
“Hatoyama is advocating a more independent foreign policy from the United States, meaning one that will be on more equal footing ... The DPJ has also emphasised another trend that has been under way for years de facto - closer ties to Asia. This should not be seen as a move towards Asia at the expense of the US-Japan alliance.”
In the meeting with Hu, Hatoyama also said he would support a 1995 statement by a previous Japanese prime minister that expressed remorse and apologised for Japan’s invasion of Asia during the war. Many Chinese believe that apology to be inadequate or are unaware of the statement.
Hatoyama has already pledged not to visit Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates Japan’s war dead, as prime minister. Visits by previous Japanese prime ministers to the shrine have brought outrage from China and South Korea.
Still, China has made use of the issue of wartime history as political leverage with Japan and allowed expressions of nationalism by its people to help shore up the legitimacy of the Communist Party.
Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, an anonymous internet user posted photos on a popular Chinese website of the victims of the atomic bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Instead of showing sympathy, many took the opportunity to express anti-Japan sentiments.
“If you’re still human you’d sympathise. But the fathers, husbands, sons and grandsons of the people in these photos invaded our land, killed our grandfathers, raped our grandmothers, beheaded the Chinese as entertainment. To this day their attitude is still indifferent,” one said, as translated by the chinaSMACK website.
Among the most vocal are young Chinese, who have no personal experience of the war. Some see no contradiction in admiring Japanese pop culture and buying the nation’s products while condemning Tokyo over its wartime history.
Su at Shanghai Normal University wants more than an apology. He has sought to help former wartime sex slaves bring lawsuits against the Japanese government for compensation and even approached the International Criminal Court at The Hague about the possibility of accepting a case.
Japanese courts typically reject such cases, citing agreements between China and Japan for normalisation of diplomatic ties and the length of time that has elapsed.
Su claims there were 200,000 Chinese “comfort women”, and he has located more than 40 who are still alive. Shanghai alone had at least 160 of the brothels, and he has found others in 22 provinces and cities. “Everywhere the Japanese army was stationed, I can find comfort-woman stations,” he said.
To document the atrocities, he has set up a small museum at his university and written a book detailing the former Japanese military brothels in Shanghai.
He has also co-operated with overseas organisations, including Toronto-based Alpha, founded by Hong Kong-born Dr Joseph Wong, which seeks to pursue justice for victims of the second world war in Asia.
Alpha, or the Association for Learning & Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, leads an annual tour to China for Canadian educators to encourage them to teach this chapter of history. Members of the tour met Su this year.
Wong, a physician, said: “It’s about injustice, about the world forgetting the continued denials of Japan. All of this propelled me to seek the truth and justice, and the proper closure for victims.”
One victim was Ha Sang-sook, an ethnic Korean who has lived in China since she was taken from her rural village near Seoul at age 17 in 1944. Taken to a brothel in the central city of Wuhan, she was given a Japanese name and Japanese-style clothing, and was forced to service up to 10 soldiers a day.
“If I resisted, I was beaten,” she said. On first arriving, a soldier slapped her across the face for not being able to understand a question in Japanese. Later, a doctor gave her an injection, which she believed made her sterile.
After the war, she married a widower with three daughters and worked in a textiles factory. She decided to remain in China, where her daughters live, even though it was the land where she suffered during the war.
After Su found and interviewed her about her experiences of decades ago, he helped her locate her long-lost relatives in South Korea, whom she visited in 2004, and attempt, unsuccessfully, to bring a lawsuit in a Japanese court.
“No one has received any compensation. The Japanese killed many people,” she said. “I can never forgive the Japanese.”
It is a feeling shared by many Chinese and one that is informing Beijing’s foreign policy even today.
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