China inaugurated its first archives on comfort women on
Thursday at Shanghai Normal University.
Fomer comfort women attend the opening
ceremony of China's first archives on comfort women in Shanghai on
Thursday.
Forty-eight display boards and 80 exhibits were shown in the
archives, including wooden sculptures of Mount Fuji taken from the
Daiichi Salon in Shanghai - the world's first comfort station set
up by the Japanese invading army, audio recordings and written
accounts by Chinese comfort women, disinfectants that Lei Guiying,
a former comfort woman in Nanjing, took when she fled the brothel
where she was forced to be a sex slave, boxes of condoms, and
pictures of Japanese soldiers.
The archives also contain documents on 158 comfort stations in
Shanghai and 67 stations in southern Hainan Province.
"This is the third set of archives on comfort women in the world
- the other two were established in Tokyo and Seoul," said Su
Zhiliang, professor and director of the Chinese Comfort Women
Research Center at Shanghai Normal University.
Su said their research shows there were 200,000 comfort women in
China, but only 47 are still alive and have said publicly that they
are comfort women. It is believed there may be many more who have
remained silent.
Lei Guiying, one of the few remaining known comfort women who
survived the war, died of a brain hemorrhage on April 25 at the age
of 79. In an interview in March with the Times newspaper,
Lei said that she was ready to file a case against the Japanese
government for its war crimes.
"We have set up the archives so people are aware of the victims
who are still alive and to?remind the Chinese people that
although years have passed, the comfort women have not become part
of the past," Su said.
Three former comfort women, Wan Aihua from Shanxi, Lin Yajin from Hainan, and Wei Shaolan
from Guangxi, attended the opening ceremony. Wei
was accompanied by her son Luo Shanxue, born as a result of forced
relations with a Japanese soldier.
?
Former comfort woman Wei Shaolan from
Guangxi at the archives
?
?
Former comfort woman Lin Yajin
from Hainan at the archives
"I want to redress the injustice for me and for all my sisters
who suffered, which was why I came forward and admitted that I was
once a sex slave for the Japanese military," 79-year-old Wan
said.
"The exhibits tell us how beauty was ruined and lives
devastated, and how these women have endured so much but are still
fighting for their lives and dignity," said Wang Xuan, a Chinese
woman who heads the delegation of plaintiffs demanding an apology
and compensation from the Japanese government over the germ
warfare.
Wan Aihua told her horrible
experiences as a former comfort woman to Wang Xuan, head of a
delegation of plaintiffs demanding an apology and compensation from
the Japanese government over the germ warfare.
The plaintiffs' appeal was dismissed in May by the Japanese
Supreme Court, which upheld the rulings that the current Japanese
government is not liable for compensation demands from foreign
citizens for wartime actions.
Wang said they would continue the lawsuit and appeal to the UN
Commission on Human Rights.
The exhibition was opened two days before the 70th anniversary
of the "July 7 Incident," which marked the beginning of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression
in China, and will be open to the public from 9:00?A.M. to
4:00?P.M. from July 5 to 12, August 10 to 15, and August 31 to
September 5.
On Tuesday, a group of Chinese researchers investigating the
comfort women issue released a report saying one comfort station
was still being used by the Japanese military in China in 1947, two
years after Japan surrendered.
On June 28, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang urged
the Japanese government "to seriously and properly resolve" the
issues of comfort women and forced Chinese laborers during World
War II.
Qin made the comments in response to a bill passed by a US House
panel on June 26, urging Japan to acknowledge formally and accept
responsibility for the sexual exploitation of "comfort women" by
the Japanese military during World War II.?
Cheng Fei (right), adopted daughter of
deceased former comfort woman Yuan Zhulin, shows things?left
behind by her foster mother, with her eyes full of
tears.
A visitor looks at
exhibits at the archives.
?
(Xinhua News Agency July 6, 2007)
