Chinese Comfort Women by Peipei Qiu & Su Zhiliang & Chen Lifei

Author:Peipei Qiu & Su Zhiliang & Chen Lifei [Qiu, Peipei & Zhiliang, Su & Lifei, Chen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War II, Modern, 20th Century, Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780199373895
Google: HDyFAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0199373892
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-06-01T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 19 Li Lianchun, in 2001, being interviewed in her daughter’s house.

I was born in the Ninth Lunar Month [1924], but I don’t know the exact date. My birth name was Yuxiu, and my nickname was Yaodi. Yaodi means “wanting a little brother.” I was born in Bai’nitang Village, Lameng Township, Longling County. When the Japanese attacked this place, I was eighteen years old. I had a younger sister named Guodi. My father smoked opium and didn’t care about the family, so everything fell on my mother’s shoulders. However, my mother became ill and died, so my father’s younger brother took my sister and me to his house. Every day my sister and I went to the mountains to collect hay and sold it in the market, earning some money to help support the family.

On a market day in the summer around the Lunar Eighth Month [of 1942] we went to sell the hay as usual. All of a sudden a group of Japanese soldiers appeared. People at the market tried to hide anywhere they could. I hid in a shop nearby, but the Japanese soldiers found me and jerked me out. They tied my hands and feet with their puttees and stuffed cloth in my mouth to prevent me from crying out … I was then raped by the Japanese soldiers right at the side of the road … [Li Lianchun could not continue talking; she tried hard to control her emotions.] About twenty girls were raped that day. My younger sister barely escaped being raped. She was very small at the time and was not found. I had tried to hide behind the counter in the shop, but the Japanese soldiers found me … [Field investigation indicates that the Japanese troops raped a large number of the local women that day and then moved to Changqing Village before returning to the Songshan stronghold. Soon after, the troops ordered the local collaborators to round up women for the Japanese military comfort stations.]

Around this time my father was drafted for hard labour. A man from the local Association for Maintaining Order said to him: “Send your two daughters to do laundry and to cook for the Imperial Army, then you don’t have to do the hard labour. Your tax can be waived, too.” My father didn’t agree, so he was taken to perform hard labour. The Japanese troops beat him badly. He fell sick upon returning and died soon after. My uncle was unable to support my sister and me. After laying my father to rest, he married me off to a man of the Su family in Shashui Village deep in the mountains. The Su family was very poor and we barely had anything to eat or wear. As I nearly starved to death, I ran away from the mountain village. A team of Japanese soldiers caught me at Bai’nitang when I was almost home and took me to the comfort station at Songshan.

In the comfort station we were given two meals a day while the Japanese had three meals.

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