Keiji Hirano, Tokyo — Human right groups in Japan
and East Timor have launched a campaign to donate
history teaching materials to the newly
independent nation that focus on the struggles of
women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese
soldiers during World War II.

Based on interviews with 15 former “comfort women”
and others in East Timor, the groups have set up
50 panels bearing their pictures and testimonies
for an exhibition at the Women’s Active Museum on
War and Peace in Tokyo through May 27.

Under the ongoing campaign, they plan to translate
the explanations on the panels into the official
East Timorese language, Tetun, so people there
will be able to learn about wartime history.

"People in East Timor do not have enough materials
to learn their own history," said Akihisa Matsuno,
a member of the East Timor Japan Coalition. "We
hope we can raise 2 million yen in order to
complete the translation and creation of the
panels by the summer."

They plan to show the panels to junior and senior
high school teachers in East Timor at seminars for
use in their history classes, according to
Matsuno, also professor at Osaka University of
Foreign Studies.

As part of their efforts to promote the campaign,
the Japanese groups recently invited Angelina de
Araujo from East Timor, a member of the HAK
Association, or the association for human rights
and justice, so she could talk to people in Japan
about her interviews with the former sex slaves.

"I did not know anything about the wartime sex
slavery before the interviews, and I felt sad, as
a woman, about what they told me," Araujo, 27,
said. "Sometimes I was unwilling to listen to
their stories, but I continued the interviews as I
believed their history would be terminated if we
did not record them."

According to the study by Araujo and other
researchers, the Japanese military established
wartime brothels all over East Timor after
invading the region in 1942, and intimidated the
local people into providing young women for the
soldiers.

Some interviewees testified that they had been
repeatedly raped by the soldiers, even though they
had not yet started menstruating, while one woman
said that young girls were afraid of condoms as
they did not know what they were and felt afraid
to have something unknown entering their bodies.

Another woman said she had been kept at the house
of a high-ranking officer. "My parents sometimes
brought me food, but they never entered the
house,“she said.”They just stood at the door and
stared at me while I was inside the house."

Araujo, who held talk sessions in five Japanese
cities, including Sendai, Tokyo and Osaka, said,
"Some of them were initially hesitant to speak out
as they felt embarrassed with their past
hardships, while some started crying while telling
me their stories.“”But now they have allowed us to display the
panels on their testimonies,“she said.”Now that
I have come to know their tough lives, I expect
the Japanese government to compensate them." The
interviews also covered 85 other people who went
through the era of Japanese occupation and were
aware of the damage caused by the Japanese
military.

A former village chief said he had been ordered to
find and offer young girls, while another man
testified he had made the “comfort women” —
called “sweet girls” in the local language —
bathe every day to ensure that they would not
become dirty.

"The women were unpaid, and they were given
neither food nor clothes, so their parents brought
them food,“he said.”As for me, I was ordered at
the end of every day to clean up the women’s
rooms, in which condoms were scattered over the
floor."

Kiyoko Furusawa, another member of the East Timor
Japan Coalition, said, "Many high-ranking Japanese
government officials have visited East Timor so
far, but none of them has apologized for Japan’s
wartime acts or referred to compensation."

Furusawa, also associate professor at Tokyo
Woman’s Christian University, called on the
government to acknowledge the wartime history of
East Timor sincerely.

East Timor officially gained independence in 2002
after two-and-a-half years under UN administration
following a vote for independence from Indonesia
in 1999.