Cheng Chen Tao (鄭陳桃), one of Taiwan’s few surviving “comfort women,” died of pneumonia in a hospital in Pingtung County on Monday. She was 93.
Due to her ailing physical state, on Oct. 21 last year, Cheng Chen moved to the Southern Region Senior Citizens’ Home in Pingtung City from her previous residence in Linluo Township (麟洛), about 10km east of the city. She weighed only 23kg when she moved into the nursing home.
Cheng Chen had been hospitalized at the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Pingtung Hospital twice after her move to the nursing care facility.
Cheng Chen married twice and is survived by an adopted daughter and an adopted son.
The term “comfort women” euphemistically describes women from East Asia, including several thousand Taiwanese, who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.
Cheng Chen was forced to work at a Japanese military brothel in the Andaman Islands, an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, in the early 1940s.
She and three other former comfort women sued the Japanese government for an apology and compensation in 1999. However, they lost the case.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) expressed his sorrow about Cheng Chen’s death and regret she did not receive a formal apology from the Japanese government, Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) said.
Ma also said all those concerned about former Taiwanese comfort women would also lament Cheng Chen’s death, especially as it leaves only three Taiwanese survivors after her passing, Chen said on Thursday.
Chen said Ma would attend a memorial service for Cheng Chen next week.
Of the three surviving comfort women, two are 92 years old and the third is 87, said Kang Shu-hua (康淑華), executive director of the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, which has long offered assistance to Taiwanese comfort women.
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
A sharp rise in compensation to be paid by air force officers who leave before completing their required service could indicate an increase in pilots leaving the military early, an analyst said on Friday, warning that the trend could worsen a shortage of experienced personnel. Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Association for Strategic Foresight, issued the warning even though the number of volunteer military personnel is expected to increase next year. The planned headcount for volunteer military personnel, covering officers, noncommissioned officers (NCO) and enlisted soldiers, is 158,223 for next year, up 4,258 from 153,965 this year, Chieh said. The increase
Potential improvements to munitions used by China’s long-range rocket-artillery units could extend their range to cover the entire Miyako Strait, which might give the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the ability to secure the strategic waterway, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in a report. The PLA’s long-range rocket-artillery units deployed along the Taiwan Strait are concentrated along the coast of Fujian Province, including Changle, Pingtan and Shishi, the quarterly report on China said. The artillery brigades of the PLA’s 71st, 72nd and 73rd group armies have been deployed, with preparations for potential battlefield operations under way since August 2022, the report
RSS