By Teng Pei-ju, staff reporter
Taiwan’s last known “comfort woman”- a euphemistic term for those forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II – died in early May at the age of 92.
The woman was the final living link to a chapter in Taiwan’s history that has gradually faded from public consciousness following fruitless attempts to seek justice from the Japanese authorities and a desire from those affected to steer clear of painful memories.
Her death, as well as the tragedy of Taiwanese comfort women as a whole, may have gone unrecorded if not for the efforts of the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation (TWRF), which has spent over three decades advocating for victims and preserving their stories.
In an interview with CNA, TWRF Chief Executive Officer Tu Ying-chiu (???) said that the organization’s work has shifted in recent years toward “finding ways to make sure there is a place for the stories of comfort women in Taiwan’s history.”
Countering the perception of comfort women’s suffering as “wartime stories” that bear no relevance to the present day, Tu compared the plight of comfort women 80 years ago to that of thousands of Taiwanese trafficked to Cambodia and forced to work for criminal gangs.
These two groups of people faced “very similar situations,” Tu argued, as both were conned by fake job offers and forced into illicit work, as well as subjected to torture, starvation and other forms of mistreatment.
In addition, Tu maintained that the former comfort women the TWRF had worked with – nicknamed “Amas” (??; literally “grandmas”) – were also the “forerunners” of the #MeToo movement, an apparent reference to the recent storm of sexual misconduct accusations in Taiwan.
Tu said the difficulty of keeping the memory of Taiwanese victims alive was compounded by the closure of the foundation’s AMA Museum, the first such institute in Taiwan dedicated to comfort women, nearly two years ago due to huge operating losses.
Speaking with CNA in the much smaller space opened in 2021 to continue displaying photos, documents and objects from the museum, Tu said the comfort women issue ought to be “embedded in Taiwan’s education.”
In an effort to achieve this, the TWRF has been calling on the Ministry of Education to include it in the latest version of “curriculum guidelines,” which outline topics and materials required for school textbooks, Tu added.
According to Tu, it is currently left to the discretion of history teachers at junior and senior high schools to touch upon the issue as supplements in class.
She added that the absence of the issue in history courses had resulted in a gradual decline in studies of Taiwanese comfort women and subsequent publication.
“If you don’t even put it [the comfort women issue] in textbooks, how can you expect people to know and remember it?”
However, the MOE told CNA the purpose of the guidelines was to lay out the “competencies” that students should be able to acquire through different fields of subjects and at various stages of learning rather than list all teaching materials.
According to the ministry, this arrangement gives greater reflexibility to publishing houses designing textbooks as well as individual schools and teachers when determining the content of their courses.
The TWRF’s investigation into comfort women in Taiwan commenced in 1992, shortly after the disclosure of three classified telegrams sent by the Japanese Empire corroborated the forced sexual slavery of young women in Taiwan – then a Japanese colony – in wartime.
An estimated 2,000 Taiwanese women, many of whom were deceived into going overseas, were forced by the Japanese into military brothels in the Philippines, Indonesia, China, and neighboring countries, according to the TWRF.
In 1999, nine former comfort women from Taiwan, with the support of the TWRF and NGOs, traveled to Tokyo to protest at the Japanese government and file a lawsuit against it over forced sexual slavery.
Their main aim, according to Tu, was for Japan to “acknowledge” what it has done and make amends for their suffering from sexual abuse during the war and carrying the weight of stigma for several decades thereafter.
“Many of the Amas no long bore resentment towards Japan and they held no grudge against the people of Japan,” Tu went on, “but they need some form of justice.”
However, the lawsuit ended in 2005, when the supreme court in Tokyo upheld the ruling that denied those women’s requests for apologies and damages from the Japanese government.
These developments, as well as the dwindling number of survivors, has seen the TWRF to pivot its advocacy toward promoting the history of comfort women in Taiwan in recent years, rather than focusing on protests, which had been held annually on International Comfort Women Day outside the de-facto Japanese embassy in Taipei until 2020.
The change of the strategy, especially the suspension of protests, is also the result of the continued reluctance shown by the Japanese government to handle the matter properly.
“[We] have advocated for [Tokyo to assume accountability] for so many years without much success… it remains difficult if there is no shift of power in Japan,” Tu added.
Enditem/ASG
