Interview: Voices of comfort women should be remembered -- Chinese scholar

The voices of comfort women - or sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II - should be remembered and that tragic period in history should not repeated, a Chinese scholar has said.

Su Zhiliang, director of the Research Center for Chinese Comfort Women at Shanghai Normal University, said in a recent interview with Xinhua that what he hopes now is to protect the files of the sex slaves, remember history and learn lessons from it as well as condemn the Japanese army's atrocities.

"Another comfort women victim passed away in (central China's) Shanxi Province on July 1, leaving only 20 surviving comfort women in China," Su told Xinhua.

Su has devoted more than two decades to studying the comfort women issue. According to his research, the Japanese army built large numbers of comfort houses from 1937 until Japan's surrender in 1945. At least 400,000 Asian women were forced to become sex slaves to Japanese soldiers.

"Japan's comfort women system is a sex slave system mainly aimed at foreign women and carried out by state force and compulsory means," Su said. "Such a crime committed by a country is unprecedented in human history."

Many survivors, who suffered excruciating torture, lost their fertility and lived a lonely and miserable life in old age, Su said, adding that he heard stories of mental disorders and suicide.

More than 70 years after the end of World War II, Japan has not sincerely apologized for its crime. The Japanese government and right-wing groups have not only suppressed scholars at home, but also had distorted reaction to the historical facts on the global stage.

In May, non-governmental organizations from eight countries and regions including China, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia jointly put forth records on comfort women to the Memory of the World Register. The Memory of the World Program, established in 1992 by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), preserves the world's most important documents.

Su, who participated in the nomination, said there were two objectives. "One is to draw public attention and raise concerns to preserve the valuable files; the other is to learn lessons from history and criticize the atrocities and Japan's attitude."

The nomination took place after the comfort women documents were not added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2015.

The Japanese government resorted to every means possible to obstruct the nomination launched by China in 2014, Su said, adding that he hoped Japan would not repeat its unscrupulousness this time.

Japan's act of obstructing the nomination will run against the Kono Statement offering apologies to wartime sexual slavery and a deal reached last year with South Korea aimed at ending a long-standing rift between the countries over the issue, Su said. "It will show that Japan has no sincerity to apologize and admit its mistakes."

A total of 2,744 documents have been submitted for the UNESCO Memory of the World Program. Every single witness record is a testimony to the cruelty of the sex slave system.

There are fewer and fewer surviving comfort women and the average age of the surviving is 90.5, Su said. "We have no room for retreat now," said Su. "We should not let down those victims in the war." Endi