A Taipei-based human rights group will release a documentary this year chronicling the painful 20-year fight for an official apology from Japan by local women who were forced into sex slavery during World War II by Japanese forces.
The film will show that the women — known euphemistically as comfort women — are no longer victims of the atrocities of the past, Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation executive director Kang Shu-hua (康淑華) said.
“The filming was completed in December,” Kang said. “We plan to have the premiere in late April or early May.”
With a budget of about NT$2 million (US$67,230), the project documents the lives of six comfort women and their participation in the foundation’s activities designed to help heal their wounds, Kang said.
Those featured in the documentary include Huang Wu Hsiu-mei (黃吳秀妹), the world’s oldest comfort woman from Taiwan, who died from respiratory failure in November at the age of 95 in Taoyuan, the foundation said.
In 1940, at the age of 23, Huang Wu was forced into servitude as a comfort woman for Japanese soldiers in China’s Guangdong Province, the foundation said.
More importantly, the film tells the stories of how the women moved on with their lives despite these painful memories, Kang said.
The film aims to send the message that “their roles as ‘victims’ have changed into those of ‘fighters for life,’” she said.
The foundation is continuing to raise funds from the public to obtain enough financial support to get the documentary screened in cinemas, she said.
This will help remind more people of a past that should not be forgotten, she added.
Beginning in late 2010, the documentary project has been a race against time, as the surviving comfort women were all nearly 90 years old, said the foundation, which has been dedicated for the past two decades to helping the women cope with their mental anguish and seek justice and compensation from Japan.
Only eight Taiwanese women who have spoken openly about their suffering at the hands of Japanese forces are still alive, Kang said.
The women have traveled a bumpy road in their fight for justice, Kang said, adding that a group of Taiwanese comfort women lost a lawsuit against the Japanese government in 2005, but they have not given up.
The foundation is also planning to open a museum dedicated to comfort women and on the violence suffered by women in time of war, Kang said.
More than 2,000 Taiwanese women were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army, the foundation said.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS