My mother was a 'comfort woman'

By 2017, it had been 72 years since the end of World War II. In 1944, Japan’s 11th army surrounded Guilin, a city in southern China's Guangxi Province, now an autonomous region.

Chinese woman Wei Shaolan was in terraced fields with her child.

Protected by the villagers’ self-defense forces, villagers are less vigilant. That was so good a chance for the invading Japanese soldiers that they captured Wei and some other women, together with Wei's young daughter.

In a Japanese military camp, Wei was forced to serve as a "comfort woman," while her kid was bayoneted to death by Japanese soldiers.

Every day Japanese soldiers would flock to rape those Chinese women. Until one day she escaped long a path in the morning while Japanese guards relaxed their vigilance.

When she returned home, her husband said she was “dirty” for being raped, while her mother-in-law explained that the Japanese soldiers had taken her by force.

Wei Shaolan is living a hard life.

When Wei ran away, she was pregnant with a Japanese soldier’s baby.

After she gave birth to her son, Wei's husband and mother-in-law died in succession.

After the war of resistance against the Japanese aggression ended in 1945, she lived a hard life with her son, being a former "comfort woman". She had never been married again and her child was maliciously called “Japanese kid” by others.

Wei Shaolan’s son, Luo Shan Xue, has not yet been married.

Wei Shaolan, together with the rest of the 21 "comfort women" existing in China, have not yet received proper apology and redress for their misery until now.

The “comfort women” system was established by the Japanese Imperial Army before and during World War II. Under this system, the Japanese government and its army abducted women from occupied countries and forced them to serve their troops as sex slaves.

Wei Shaolan has not yet received proper apology and redress for their misery until now.

The first so-called "comfort station" was established in the Japanese concession in Shanghai in 1932. At first, "comfort women" were Japanese women or prostitutes who volunteered for such service.

However, as Japan continued military expansion, the military found itself short of Japanese volunteers and turned to the local population to coerce or abduct women into serving in these stations.

(CGTN)