The 'comfort women' of World War Two
Witness History
BBC
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Between 1932 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of women and girls across Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army.
Referred to as "comfort women", they were taken from countries including Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia to be raped by Japanese soldiers.
Today, the issue remains a source of tension between Japan and its neighbours, with continuing campaigns to compensate the few surviving victims.
Dan Hardoon speaks to Chinese survivor Peng Zhuying who, along with her elder sister, was captured and taken to a "comfort station" in central China.
This programme contains disturbing content.
(Photo: People visit a museum dedicated to the victims, on the site of a former comfort station in China. Credit: Yang Bo/China News Service/VCG/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan |
| 0:05.2 | I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy |
| 0:10.1 | podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really. Comedy is a bit of a dream job really. |
| 0:13.0 | Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh, |
| 0:18.0 | making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things. |
| 0:22.0 | But you know, I also know that comedy is really |
| 0:24.3 | subjective and everyone has different tastes. So we've got a huge range of comedy on offer from |
| 0:29.8 | satire to silly, shocking to soothing, profound to just general pratting about. |
| 0:35.0 | So if you fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Dan Hardoon. |
| 0:50.4 | I'm taking you back to World War II and the rape and sexual abuse of the so-called |
| 0:55.6 | comfort women. The phrase refers to the hundreds and thousands of women and girls |
| 1:01.4 | across Asia who were forced to become sex slaves |
| 1:04.1 | for the Imperial Japanese forces between 1932 and 1945. Korean and Chinese |
| 1:11.0 | women made up a large proportion of the victims. |
| 1:14.0 | I've been speaking to one of the very few Chinese survivors who is still alive. |
| 1:19.0 | 94 year old Pung Ju Ying. |
| 1:21.0 | She describes in detail what happened to her. |
| 1:25.0 | My worst fear at the time was that I would be killed by the Japanese. |
| 1:31.0 | I was in constant fear. I cried the whole day. |
| 1:35.0 | Pung Juying was born in 1929 in Uuyang, a city in Central China. |
| 1:41.0 | She was the middle child of five siblings from a poor family. |
| 1:45.2 | Her father sold rice and beans to make a living. |
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