Chinese Comfort Women (24 page)

A few months later I was captured by Japanese troops for the third time. It was in the Twelfth Lunar Month [around January 1944]; Japanese troops encircled Yangquan Village at night just as the local people were eating Laba porridge. [“Laba” means “the Eighth Day of the Twelfth Lunar Month.” The local people customarily eat a special porridge with nuts and dried fruits on this day.] They kicked my door open, came into my house, and took me away with them. This time the Japanese soldiers tormented me particularly cruelly to punish me for my previous escapes. I clearly remember the faces of the Japanese men who raped me. Among them, the “red-faced captain” and the “bucktoothed captain” were especially brutal. They let a group of Japanese soldiers hold my arms and legs while another soldier raped me. They took turns raping me in this manner and also tortured me for information until I passed out. The torment continued day after day up to the Preliminary New Year’s Eve on the Twenty-Third Day of the Twelfth Lunar Month. That day I passed out again and didn’t wake up for quite a long time, so the Japanese soldiers thought I was dead and threw me into a runnel by the village. I had no clothes on my body and the water in the runnel was frozen. Luckily, Zhang Menghai’s father discovered me and saved my life. He said that my body was already freezing cold and that I had almost ceased breathing when he saw me. He watched over me for a day and a night, feeding me soup and massaging my body. When I finally came back to life, he secretly moved me to the home of an acquaintance of mine in Fengsheng-po Village.

I was unconscious for a very long time. When I woke up it was already New Year’s Eve, so it must have been in February 1944. I was bedridden for three years, and my body was completely deformed. I could no longer stand straight because my hips and rib bones were broken. My arms were dislocated, my neck was knocked into my chest, and my lower backbone was compressed
into my pelvis. My height had been more than 160 centimetres but was reduced to less than 150 after my torture. The earlobe of my right ear had been ripped off. The Japanese soldiers had beaten my head with a nail-studded board, which left a sunken spot on the top of my head that is still there today. Hair never again grew over the scarred areas. When the Japanese soldiers hung me up and beat me, they pulled out my armpit hair. Although I didn’t die, for five years I had to be taken care of by others. Even today I suffer from severe uterine damage and body aches, and I rely on massage therapy to ease the pain. When the weather changes every bone in my body aches like hell.

My past was full of misery, full of horrible experiences. It was very hard for me to survive in the village. My husband died not long after I survived the Japanese torment for the third time. I adopted a two-year-old girl, who has been living with me. I moved from Yu County to Quyang and eventually came to Taiyuan and rented a small room here. We moved often and didn’t have a stable place to live.

I still live in Taiyuan City. I moved from the countryside to the city and changed my name to Wan Aihua, using my
ganma
’s family name. I have made a living by doing needlework and by doing massage for people. I learned massage from a village doctor when I was young and have been helping local people with this skill. When I was in Yu County many people in my neigh-bourhood came to see me for massages. I am still doing massages for people now, and I don’t charge poor people money.

My daughter has helped me tremendously ever since she was a little girl. She went out to beg for food by herself when I was too ill to work. She is a good daughter. I have worked hard to provide her with a good life, and I want to prove that she has a good mother who was a fighter during the Resistance War.

In 1992, a person contacted me saying that I had been a Japanese comfort woman, which made me very angry. I was not a “comfort woman,” and I never comforted any Japanese troops! I came forward to tell people how the Japanese troops abducted me and forced me to be their sex slave. I want the world to know the cruel atrocities the Japanese soldiers perpetrated on Chinese people, and I want justice for all the women who suffered as I did. I don’t consider myself a “comfort woman” for the Japanese army. I never comforted the Japanese troops and never wanted to. I attended the International Public Hearing Concerning Post-War Compensation of Japan in 1992 and testified on stage. When I recalled the torture I suffered and the unbearable things the Japanese military did to me I became so angry that I passed out.

From that point on I have sought to reinstate my CCP membership. I was an underground CCP member during the war, so not many people knew about my party membership and I didn’t feel that I needed to prove it. Now I feel I must prove to people that I was a member of the resistance movement and Communist Party, and that I would never do anything to “comfort” the Japanese troops. It was not easy to verify my CCP membership because most of the people who knew my history had died. After much effort I finally found a few veteran local leaders, including Yu County head commissioner Zhang Guoying, Gao Changming, and Li Menghai, who witnessed my activities as a CCP member. All these people have died now. In 1994, after fifty years, my CCP membership was finally restored.

Since 1995, because my past work experience in the Resistance War was verified, I have received a monthly stipend of fifty yuan. Every month the government sends the money to my home. Fifty yuan is a small amount, and the money is not what I really care about. I wanted to prove I fought during the Resistance War. I have to admit, however, that even fifty yuan is a big help to me. I had major surgery in 1993 and am suffering from many medical problems now; I have a large number of medical expenses.

I want the Government of Japan to admit its war crimes. I am willing to go anywhere to tell about the atrocities the Japanese forces committed, and I went to Japan many times to testify in 1996, 1998, and 1999. In December 2000 I participated in the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery in Tokyo as one of the plaintiffs. When I was giving my testimony and showed the audience the scars from my injuries, I passed out again. My health is getting worse and worse. I expressed my opinion strongly at the tribunal that the Shōwa emperor and the Japanese government must be found guilty. They must apologize to us and admit their wrongdoing. Only by doing so can we protect future generations from the kind of torture I suffered. I will continue fighting for that as long as I am alive.

On 30 October 1998, Wan Aihua and nine other Chinese victims of Japanese military sexual violence filed a lawsuit against the Government of Japan at the Tokyo District Court. She went to testify in person with survivors Zhao Cunni and Gao Yin’e in September 1999. Their claims were denied. Wan Aihua is currently seriously ill and bedridden
.

(Interviewed by Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei in 1999, 2000, 2001 2002, and 2007.)

7 Southern China Frontlines

Huang Youliang

Japanese troops landed on Hainan Island off the Guangdong coast on 10 February 1939
.
¹
In order to secure control of this important strategic position in the South China Sea, the occupation units built a large number of strongholds on the island. In Lingshui County alone fourteen strongholds, eight blockhouses, and two military airports were constructed
.
²
The occupiers set up comfort stations in towns and cities as well as in military strongholds and village homes, for which they drafted women both abroad and locally. The troops also rounded up women with the help of the Association for Maintaining Order and the Self-Guard Corps. Huang Youliang’s treatment by the Japanese military was commonplace: first she was raped, then kept as a sex slave by Japanese soldiers in her home village, and eventually taken to the Tengqiao Detachment Comfort Station. The Japanese troops later burned her village to the ground. The stronghold near the village no longer exists, but the Tengqiao military comfort station, where Huang Youlian was imprisoned, remains
.

Figure 16
Huang Youliang, in 2000, speaking to interviewers about her experiences in a Japanese military “comfort station.”

That year [1941] I was only fifteen.
³
Judging from the weather, I think it was around the Tenth Lunar Month. That morning, I carried two baskets on a shoulder pole to a rice paddy outside of the village [of Jiama]. All of a sudden I heard shouts. I raised my head and saw a group of Japanese soldiers standing not far away. I was very frightened, so I dropped the baskets and ran back towards the mountains. But the Japanese troops chased after me until I couldn’t run any farther. I was caught. One of the soldiers said something loudly. I felt as if my head were swelling and I couldn’t understand a word. One soldier with no beard on his shaved face suddenly grasped me in his arms. Another one moved his hands over my back and then began to rip off my shirt and skirt. The rest of the soldiers were laughing like crazy while watching. I was so angry that I wanted to kill them. I grabbed the hand that was roughly fondling my back and bit it with all my strength. The soldier gave a loud scream and pulled his hand away. He was furious and held up his bayonet. As he was about to stab me with it, another Japanese military man who looked like an officer stopped him with an ear-splitting yell. I was scared stiff. The officer smiled at me saying, “Don’t be scared.” He turned to the Japanese soldiers and said something I didn’t understand, then waved his hand. The soldiers left. After the soldiers went away, the officer pulled me into his arms. I struggled to get away and he let me go. I thought I was free, so I put on my clothes and carried the baskets home. I didn’t notice that the Japanese officer followed me all the way to my home. He stopped me at the door, carried me into my bedroom, and ripped off my shirt and skirt … He left afterwards. I cried alone and tried to keep it to myself. By the afternoon, I could not bear it any longer, so I told my mother what had happened. My mother cried her heart out.

The following day, more Japanese soldiers came to look for me. I was frightened and hid. Unable to find me, the Japanese soldiers knocked my parents to the ground and beat them up. They made them crawl over the ground on their hands and feet doing what we called a “four-hoofed cow.” When I heard what happened to my parents, I hurried home to see them, so the Japanese soldiers caught me and raped me again. From that time on I was forced to wash the Japanese soldiers’ clothes during the day and at night the Japanese soldiers would come … [Huang Youliang stopped talking. Her face had been expressionless while she was speaking; she looked down and fell into silence.]

That Japanese officer could speak a little Chinese; it sounded like Hainan dialect. People called him “Jiuzhuang.” [Huang Youliang said the name in the local dialect. This is perhaps a nickname, but its meaning is unclear because Huang Youliang did not know how to write the name.] Because he was an
officer, whenever he came soldiers followed him. Since “Jiuzhuang” knew where I lived, he came every day, and I was forced to wash his clothes in addition to submitting to rape. If I hid he would torture my parents. This situation continued until the spring of the following year when I was taken away to Tengqiao City of Ya County.

It was the Third or the Fourth Lunar Month when I was kidnapped by a group of Japanese soldiers. They put me in a military vehicle, drove to Tengqiao, and locked me in a house. I was locked in a room with a woman who had been abducted at the same time. Later I found out that there were other women locked in different rooms who had been abducted before us.

There were always soldiers guarding the gate and they didn’t let us go anywhere. We laboured during the day, mopping the floor, washing clothes, and so on. At night the Japanese soldiers came to our rooms, usually three to five of them arrived together, but some days there were more than others. Sometimes one of them spent the whole night in the comfort station, but I didn’t know if he was an officer. If I didn’t do as they said, they beat me. I was very frightened and was forced to do whatever they asked … sometimes they forced me to assume various positions … [Huang Youliang could not continue. The interview was stopped to let her take a break and drink some tea. When the interview resumed, the interviewers changed the topic and asked her about her family.]

There were only three people in my family: my father, my mother, and I. My mother was blind. My father was a peasant and I helped him with the farm work. I missed my parents very much in that place [Tengqiao Comfort Station] and wanted to escape. My body felt as if it were falling apart due to the torments every night. Many times I looked for an opportunity to run away and secretly discussed it with the other girls there. But Japanese soldiers strictly guarded the house, and we didn’t know any of the roads outside the house, so it was impossible to escape. Once one of my friends there, a girl of Han ethnicity,
⁴
escaped from the place, but she was captured by the Japanese soldiers and almost beaten to death. Then she was locked up, most likely killed. After that incident, I gave up my hope for escape and submitted myself to fate.