Australia 91-year-old former sex slave tells her story
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E-mail CNTV, July 13, 2014
91-year-old Jan Ruff O'Herne has come forward, publicly admitting that she was forced to be a sex slave by the Japanese Army. She says the experience was horrifying and she will never forget what those Japanese soldiers did to her.
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91-year-old Jan Ruff O'Herne has come forward, publicly admitting that she was forced to be a sex slave by the Japanese Army. |
72 years have past, but Jan Raff O'Herne said she would never forget the horrible experience of being a comfort woman.
O'Herne was 19 years old at the time, living with her parents in Dutch colonial Indonesia, when her life was changed forever. On February 26, 1944, O'Herne and other six young women were taken by Japanese officers to an old Dutch colonial house, which was converted to a military brothel. That was when she was forced into the life of a "comfort woman", which meant a life of sexual slavery.
Before the end of the war, O'Herne was moved to a camp in West Java, where she was reunited with her family. She was warned that if she told anyone about what happened, she would be killed along with her family. Trying to bury her tragic past deep inside and live a normal life, O’Herne married in 1946 and moved to Australia in 1960.
But in 2001, after she saw 16 South Korean women tell their stories of their victimhood on television. Inspired by their example, O'Herne went public with her past, asking the Japanese government for a simple apology.
Japanese right wing politicians have long denied the existence of comfort women. O'Herne says she is worried young Japanese citizens will never know what happened, and the number of victims to tell the tale fall every year.
Historians believe more than 400,000 women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during World War Two, but only a handful are left to tell their story.
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