Chinese Comfort Women (22 page)

The other girls and I were taken to “Jade Star House” (Cuixing-lou) in the Town of Zhuliang-qiao. Dozens of women were already in the house when I was taken in. We were locked together at first and then sent to separate rooms. For two days I was unable to eat anything; I was too frightened.

Zhuliang-qiao used to have a lot of shops: grocers, cloth shops, drapers’ shops, and so on. The shop owners all escaped when the Japanese troops came, abandoning everything to run for their lives. The Japanese soldiers occupied those empty houses and confined the abducted women in them. Jade Star House used to be a house of entertainment that looked like a hotel,
but it had in fact been a brothel. When the Japanese army came, they occupied this and the other shops in the neighbourhood. This house had two stories and was a wooden building; its walls were made of two layers of wooden boards. I was locked in a room on the lower level where there were two or three rooms altogether. They forced me to have sexual intercourse with a Japanese military man. I was so young at the time but was brutally raped. The Japanese man spoke a lot, but I didn’t understand what he was saying, and I didn’t want to listen either. He beat me if I did not follow his orders.

The room in which I was confined was very small and had no furniture except for a bed. The Japanese military man came to my room every night and left in the morning. He sometimes came during the day as well, bringing several Japanese officers with him; they talked about something I didn’t understand. No other Japanese soldiers came to my room. I guess I was assigned to this military officer. I don’t remember his face, but I remember that he was neither tall nor particularly fat and was always wearing a military uniform.

A Japanese soldier hit the soft spot on my side with his gun when the troops abducted me. The internal injury it caused became increasingly painful, although there was no scar on my skin. I still suffer from the sharp pain in my side today; it radiates through my entire lower back. At the time no doctor examined me, and they didn’t give me any medication either.

I was kept by the Japanese troops for about a month. Only a small number of officers who seemed to be of high rank in the army came to the Jade Star House. Women in the house didn’t know their names and called them
taijun
.
¹¹
Many Japanese soldiers were stationed in the stronghold on Shizishan Mountain, and those soldiers carried rifles. Our meals were prepared in the military cookhouse in the stronghold and sent down from Shizi-shan Mountain. We ate with the soldiers.

We were not allowed to go out. An armed guard always stood at the entrance of the house watching the women. He would catch and beat anyone who attempted to escape. I was completely listless at this time, unable to think or speak properly. The only thing in my mind was going home, but there was no way for me to leave the house. I saw some other women in the house and chatted with one who washed dishes there. She was as listless as I. We knew we would end up dying if we remained there, and we wanted so badly to get out of the place and return home, but we neither dared to talk about this nor did we dare to cry out loud. We could only keep our sorrow deep in our hearts; the only thing we could do was sigh and quietly shed tears together. We lived in constant anxiety, worrying about what would happen to us the
next day. We missed home so much, but we dared not run away. I heard that one woman was captured after an attempted escape and was buried alive. We had no freedom and no way to break out.

I was finally bailed out by Yao Jufeng, head of the local Association for Maintaining Order. He was a relative of my mother’s, so my parents begged him to help obtain my release. Yao Jufeng obtained the Japanese officer’s permission to let me return home briefly by telling them that there was an emergency in my family and that he would send me back to the comfort station afterwards. The officer gave me a small towel when I left the Jade Star House. He had never given me any money, and the towel was the only thing I received from him.

[Tan Yuhua hid at her relative’s house after she left the comfort station and didn’t go back. Yao Jufeng’s wife was arrested as a punishment for Yao’s helping Tan escape.]

Soon after I got out of the Jade Star House the Japanese troops arrested Yao Jufeng’s wife; perhaps they found out that Yao Jufeng had deceived them. Yao’s wife, named Jiang Yulan, was a tall woman. The Japanese soldiers ripped off her clothes and dragged her naked body over the snowy ground. The weather was very cold and she was dragged through the snow. Her skin was badly blistered from the dragging, and the bloody blisters on her body became infected and didn’t heal for a long time. That was in the winter of the Thirty Third Year of the Republic of China [1944], when the Eleventh Lunar Month was already over. I didn’t dare to stay at home so I hid in my relative’s house and only went back home occasionally. Luckily, the Japanese soldiers didn’t capture me; since I didn’t stay at home I didn’t know if they had come to look for me or not. I couldn’t return home until all the Japanese troops left my hometown after Japan’s surrender.

I was married twice. My first husband was named Gao Fengsheng, and I had a son with him when I was twenty years old. My son was named Gao Qiaoliang; he died in 1998 of an illness. After my first husband died I married Tan Guifu in 1965 in Yiyang and moved to Mulun Village, Xinkang District, Wangcheng County, Changsha City. My second husband was one year younger than I; he died in 1978 at the age of fifty-two. Tan Guifu’s ex-wife was also named Chunxiu, so he wanted me to change my name from Yao Chunxiu to Tan Yuhua, using his family name.

Even today I often have nightmares in which I relive the torture of the Japanese troops and wake up crying. In the nightmares I remain extremely frightened, seeing the Japanese soldiers marching towards me as I run desperately in fear, crying. Looking back, after that experience, I hate the
Japanese troops! I feel so helpless in my old age. If I had the resources I would sue them and demand that they restore my dignity. I hate the Japanese troops so much that I don’t know what I might do if I saw them in front of me.

The Research Center for Chinese “Comfort Women” invited Tan Yuhua to come to Shanghai in July 2008 to talk about her wartime experience to history teachers from Canada and the United States. Her health has been rapidly declining in recent years
.

(Interviewed by Su Zhiliang in 2001 and by Chen Lifei in 2008, with the assistance of Yin Chuming)

Yin Yulin

The Japanese army entered Shanxi Province in northern China in September 1937 soon after the beginning of full-fledged warfare and occupied the provincial capital Taiyuan on 9 November
.
¹²
From 1937 to 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army operated a series of “mop-up” campaigns to wipe out the resistance activities led by the Chinese Communist Party in Shanxi and the nearby provinces. Japanese soldiers’ sexual violence escalated during these operations; they frequently killed women who dared to resist rape and kidnapped a large number of local women, taking them to randomly placed comfort facilities
.
¹³
A 1938 newspaper article reported that, after the Japanese army left the Yuanqu County Seat, the resistance forces found the blood-soaked clothing of over sixty Chinese women in the Japanese-occupied county hall
.
¹⁴
In August 1940, the communist forces launched a large-scale campaign called the Hundred Regiments Offensive, which significantly damaged Japan’s strategic position in the area
.
¹⁵
The Japanese military retaliated with genocidal operations against the resistance forces and local civilians
.
¹⁶
Yu County, lying at the border between the Japanese-occupied area and the resistance bases, was within the region of fierce fighting. Yin Yuling was one of the women abducted by the Japanese troops stationed near her village in Yu County during this period
.

Figure 14
Yin Yulin, in 2001, praying in her cave dwelling.

I grew up in Wuer-zhuang Village, Xiyan Town, Yu County. My parents were poor peasants and I had an older brother and two older sisters. I was born in the Year of the Snake. At fifteen I was married to a man named Yang Yudong of Hou-Hedong Village. Yang Yudong was sixteen years older than I and had been married before. He was an ugly-looking man, but his family was quite rich. Life was comfortable in the family. I gave birth to a boy when I was nineteen, but the boy became ill and died at one year of age.

In the Tenth Lunar Month of that year [1941], when the weather was cold and we were wearing cotton-padded jackets, Japanese soldiers dashed into Hou-Hedong Village. I remember the time because that was the day my husband died. He died of typhoid before my son reached age one. When the Japanese soldiers saw the coffin and heard that my husband had died of typhoid, they feared being infected and left. However, later the soldiers came again after the coffin was carried away. I was in deep grief for my husband at the time and too weak to resist them. The Japanese soldiers easily caught and raped me.

After that initial time, the Japanese soldiers stationed in the blockhouse on top of nearby Mount Yangma came to my house frequently and raped me. Every time my parents heard my screams they rushed over to protect me, but each time they were dragged out to the yard and beaten by the Japanese soldiers. Several times they were beaten until blood covered their faces, and I saw blood gushing out of their mouths. This situation lasted for a long time. Every day two or three Japanese soldiers came down the mountain to rape me at my home, which left me constantly terrified. I remember, among the Japanese troops who came, there was a tall man who had a heavy mustache. He might have been an officer because he always put on an air of grandeur. He often arrived in civilian clothes, and each time he came, the other soldiers would not show up. Another one, who must have been an officer as well, often wore a black top and brownish-yellow trousers; he often came without his gun. Frightened of the rapes while having no place to hide, my body was always trembling with fear. What a horror!

The Japanese soldiers never used any contraceptive devices when they raped me. They would order me to bathe before they raped me. You could never imagine how evil these soldiers were: afterwards they would wash their lower bodies in our cooking bowl! Water in the area was extremely precious; there was no running water or well so I had to carry water from a faraway place. However, the Japanese soldiers didn’t care at all when they used my water. I always felt my body was very dirty after I was raped, so each time after being raped I would scoop water from the container and wash myself repeatedly. Since there was no man in the house who could help me
carry water, I had to save every drop of available water and sometimes even had to reuse the washing water.

The Japanese soldiers also took me by force to their stronghold on Mount Yangma, where they raped me. The first time they took me to the blockhouse it was an evening, before I had my supper. I was taken up the mountain by the head of the village’s Self Guard Corps, traitor Liu Erdan. He forced me to mount a donkey and guarded me. Once we reached the mountain path I had to dismount and walk on foot. Walking on the mountain road was excruciating on my feet, especially as they had been previously bound.

When we arrived at the stronghold on the mountain, the Japanese soldiers forced me into a small blockhouse. It was already dark outside and it was even darker inside the blockhouse. On a heated brick bed there was something whitish, perhaps it was a cotton-padded mattress. The Japanese soldiers ripped off my clothes and an officer held a candle to examine my body. He looked at my lower body very carefully, perhaps checking to see if I had venereal disease, but at that time I didn’t know what he was doing and I was very frightened. I thought I was going to die! I remember that man’s face clearly. It was a dark face, full of hair, and his two eyes were glowing like a wolf’s! The candle drippings fell on my body one by one and scalded my skin, but I dared not cry. My body shook with each drop of hot wax and I kept shaking out of fear. I didn’t dare look at the officer; I only stared at the dripping candle, hoping it would all be over soon.

The officer began to rape me after that. He rose from the bed and returned repeatedly, torturing me almost the entire night. I was shaking in the dark the whole time, and ever since then I have suffered from incurable trembling. Each time when I am nervous my body begins to shake uncontrollably. Look at my hands. They are trembling now. I cannot talk about that horrible experience. Whenever I speak of it, I become nervous and feel tremendous pain in my heart.

The following day I was taken back to the village by Liu Erdan before dawn. A few days later I was again taken to the blockhouse. This time a Japanese soldier and Liu Erdan conducted me there together. They forced me to walk and kept yelling at me for being too slow. I was taken into that small blockhouse again. This time a crowd of Japanese soldiers gang-raped me. I hurt so much that I didn’t even have the strength to cry. The soldiers finally let me leave before daybreak. This was repeated again and again; I don’t remember how many times I was taken to the mountaintop. After the torture in the blockhouse at night, during the day the Japanese soldiers would come to my home to assault me, wearing wooden sandals. They told a Chinese collaborator
to threaten me and to say, “Don’t even think of running away, or your head will be off your shoulders!”