'Comfort women' tell their story

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-12-15  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

A BOOK recording 67 survivors of Japan's sexual slavery during World War II has just been published.

The book, with more than 400 photos of survivors and more than 100,000 words of text, documents the painful memories of 67 "comfort women" in China, the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Li Jinyu, 79, who was forced into sexual slavery when she was only 14, was at a press conference in Nanjing to announce the book's publication last week. She was kidnapped by the Japanese while playing with her sisters and forced to provide sex for soldiers until her parents rescued her. "I was tortured for two months. I thought I would die there," she said. "My life was ruined by the Japanese."

An estimated 200,000 women were forced to serve as sex slaves for invading Japanese soldiers.

Author Li Xiaofang, who works in the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Press and Publication, spent three years researching the book.

"I have the responsibility to report these survivors' pains to the world," he said. "They are still suffering. If we fail to record their experience, the history would fade from our memory forever."