Zhou Fenying was 22, when she and her sister-in-law were taken by force from their village in Eastern China, and transported to a military brothel by the Japanese soldiers during the 2nd World War.
She has witnessed the vile history of pain and torture, which is still the cause of poisonous relations between Japan and China 60 years after the end of World War II.
She had experienced the life of a ‘comfort woman‘ - as the invading Japanese soldiers used to call women forced into sex slavery.
At the age of 91, she has penetrated through decades of silence to give an account of her wounding experiences. According to her, she had hid under a millstone with her sister-in-law, henceforth discovered by the Japanese soldiers, who pulled them out by their legs. They were then tied tightly to a cart and taken away, as she told Reuters in her home village in Jiangsu province.
She was then transported to the ‘comfort woman lodge’ - apparently a brothel invented to provide sexual pleasure to the Japanese soldiers. The Chinese women taken captive served there as sex slaves.
There was nothing good there
- remarks Zhou Fenying.
From her accounts, the torture would last for nearly four to five hours a day, after which they were given food. Zhou and her sister-in-law, like the other girls in the brothel, could do nothing but cry everyday. They had no appetite left for the food they were given to eat.
Zhou Fenying avoided giving details about what exactly had happened to her in the brothel. The only thing she mentioned was that she was there with 20 other Chinese girls.
However, her son, Jiang Weixun, described her sufferings from the stories he has heard from his mother. He said that Japanese soldiers on a daily basis repeatedly raped the women.
Zhou had served as a ‘comfort woman’ for two months and thereafter was rescued by a local official who paid off the Japanese soldiers.
According to Jiang, his mother had been inspired to tell her story when she learned about the death of Lei Guiying, a well-known former Chinese comfort woman, who died of brain hemorrhage in April. Lei too had spoken out about her experiences as a sex slave last year after hiding the facts from her family for 60 years.
Jiang said that he does not hate his mother, who is one of only an estimated 50 former Chinese sex slaves still alive today. On the contrary, he feels that her experiences should be brought forward as an example of the intensity of wartime crimes committed by the Japanese.
Jiang said -
When my mother told me about this, as her son, I do not hate her for that. The Japanese are the ones I should hate. The Japanese are those who committed the crimes. The Japanese are responsible for this, they raped all of the women.
Zhou, on the other hand, lives with a deep scar on her existence caused by this traumatic experience. Neither can she forget, nor forgive.
If it were you, wouldn’t you hate them? Of course I hate them. But after the war, all the Japanese went home. I’m already so old. I think they are all dead by now
- she said.
According to the Chinese government, Japan has yet to repent properly for its war crimes, which included butcheries, forcing people to work as virtual slaves in factories, and as forced prostitutes.
Japan’s insistence for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat in 2005 provoked violent anti-Japanese street protests in cities across China. Demonstrators denounced Tokyo and demanded compensation and an apology for the war.
Direct compensation have not been paid by Tokyo to any of the estimated 200,000 mostly Asian women forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese military before and during World War II. Japan says that peace treaties that ended the war settled all claims.
Instead, an Asian Women’s Fund was set up by Tokyo in 1995 - a private group funded heavily by the government, who would make cash payments to surviving wartime sex slaves.
The hatred Zhou Fenying has for Japan transcends the boundaries of time and place. It is the perennial hatred that is generated through violence. It is hatred for the cruel exploiter, a protest against the pain of torture and exploitation. Every war brings some of this torture, this exploitation, and accordingly this hatred along with it.
Via : Reuters
Image Credit : Reuters
