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October 10, 2015

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‘Before they are lost to history ...’

THERE is only one way 89-year-old Zhang Xiantu can cope with the horrors that haunt her from the time she spent in sexual slavery during the Japanese occupation of China.

“When I start to remember,” says Zhang, “I force myself to forget.”

Zhang is one of the subjects of “Twenty Two,” a documentary by Chinese filmmaker Guo Ke that sets out to tell the story of what were the last 22 surviving “comfort women” living in China. Three have died since filming finished in mid-2014.

An estimated 200,000 women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military from 1931 to 1945.

“Twenty Two” made its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, where it is in competition for the event’s main Wide Angle documentary competition.

“I did not want these women lost to history,” Guo said on the sidelines of the festival. “No one can fully understand what they must have gone through but I wanted to put their stories down before they are lost to history and I wanted the world to see that these women are heroes.”

With the help of the Shanghai-based Research Center for Chinese Comfort Women, Guo took two years to track down the survivors and film them in their rural Chinese villages.

Some were willing to talk about the past and some refused, while age and infirmity rendered some unable to respond at all.

Among their numbers are those kidnapped from other territories occupied by Japan at the time, including the Korean Peninsula.

“These women were often brought to China from other parts of Asia and then when the war ended they just didn’t want to go home to face their families again after what they had lived through,” said Guo.

The documentary shows the remains of the cells and caves in which the women were held, some of which are in walking distance from the homes in which they still live.

Among the women who tell their stories is 90-year-old Lin Ailan who lives in a small village in China’s southern Hainan Province.

She recalls how the Japanese suggested she marry one of them and she had thought: “If I did I could cut his throat.”

Guo set his cameras up to follow the women as they got on with their everyday lives, and often simply focused on their faces as they sat in silent contemplation.

The director said at such times he wants his audience to think about what these women must still be carrying around inside.

“Some of them talk but there is always a time when the memories become too much,” he said.

Guo first turned to the topic with the short film “Thirty Two” in 2013 after hearing of the plight of Wei Shaolan, who was enslaved at 24 and escaped captivity while pregnant and went on to raise a son fathered by a Japanese soldier.

“These women could be our grandmothers — yours and mine. I think it is wrong for history to forget them,” he said.

In “Twenty Two,” Guo also interviews some of the people who have over the years taken on the women’s cause, from a Korean photographer to a Japanese student nurse to a farmer-turned lawyer who has fought on their behalf for some sort of financial compensation.

That fight, Guo said, is now over as the women have collectively decided it is no longer worth the effort.

“They now want to be left with their dignity as they try to find peace,” he said.

The winner of the film festival’s documentary section is due to be announced today.




 

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