Investigation urged as less comfort women still alive in China

The number of Chinese who identified themselves as comfort women of Japanese troops during WWII has reduced to only 20, underscoring the urgency for timely investigation of their suffering and providing aids, a researcher urged on Sunday.

Another comfort woman died on July 1 in north China's Shanxi Province,leaving the number of surviving comfort women on the Chinese mainland to 20, according to Su Zhiliang, director of a research center of comfort women under the Humanities and Communication College of Shanghai Normal University.

"It's no doubt that the best time for systematically investigating about the suffering of comfort women has passed, but there is still hope for obtaining more clues and materials if we act now," Su said on Sunday at a museum in eastern city of Nanjing, which is turned from the former site of a Japanese military brothel during WWII.

The museum on Sunday received the donation of the original copy of a documentary, Twenty Two, which tells about the suffering and life of all 22 surviving comfort women in China.

The documentary began shooting in 2014 and premiered Busan, the Republic of Korea, in October 2015.

Su said the center he heads has produced hand and foot mould for some of the comfort women and maintained records.

Su adds that the investigation of comfort women's suffering spans 22 provinces in China and requires coordination to ensure timely research and aids.

Some 400,000 women in Asian were made into comfort women for the Japanese army during WWII, nearly half of which are Chinese, according to the center.

Some NGOs from China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the Philippines and other countries and regions are working together to nominate documentation on comfort women to be included on the Memory of the World Register, established by the UNESCO in the 1990s to preserve the world's most important documents

Since 1990, some 100 surviving comfort women began to speak publicly about the atrocities they suffered from the Japanese invaders during the war and sought legal actions. They have continued to push for the cause despite being in old age and suffering from poverty and disease. Endi