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COMFORT WOMEN
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Portraitsuze
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Paini 1930, Semarang, Central-Java
From age 13, Paini performed forced labour at the local barracks. First she had to gather food with a group of Japanese servicemen in the surrounding villages, later she dug ditches and worked in the kitchen. In the evening, after work, she was taken from home to the barracks and raped repeatedly. Paini’s husband in an arranged marriage would have nothing to with her after the war. Her second arranged marriage, with an old widower, failed after only five months. After that she worked for a while as a maid, before she started a family with her third husband. “I told him I had been “used”, but he liked me anyway. We enjoyed each others company a lot. That’s why I have a lot of children now and grandchildren.” |
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Dominggas 1928, Babar, South Moluccas
A Japanese retaliatory action on October 5, 1944, in the village of Emplawas resulted in a mass slaughtering. In the process, about 800 villagers were murdered, including Dominggas’ parents and four younger brothers and sisters. She was taken as part of the spoils of war and as a 16-year-old girl forced into prostitution for almost a year in a military brothel, along with 12 other village girls. “They called me Mikori. During the day we had to thresh corn and talked among ourselves about who had been killed and possibly was alive still. At night in the room I was forced. I didn’t want to. It was always the same Japanese guy.” After the Japanese surrender, she returned to the kampong and was taken in by an uncle who had survived the slaughter. Later she married another survivor from the village. She lost her first child soon after giving birth and never got pregnant again. She adopted two children and now has 10 grandchildren and a few great-grandchildren. “The family is starting to grow again.” |
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Icih 1926, Sukabumi, West Java
After her first husband was shot to death, the young widow Icih was locked up in the nearby Japanese barracks and raped and battered almost daily for three years by the barracks commander and another serviceman. At first she was still allowed every now and then to walk around the barracks under surveillance. Later she stayed locked up permanently. She was beaten often and as punishment regularly didn’t get food. At the end of the war she went home very thin and sick. “My mother used traditional herbs to heal my wounds, rubbed me with crushed leaves and massaged my body. I wasn’t able to walk anymore, not even capable of pronouncing my name.” Icih didn’t remarry until eight years after the war, when she was fully recovered and could work again. “My husband knew I was taken by the Japanese, I told him myself, but he didn’t care.” The marriage ended in divorce after a few years, as did her next 10 marriages. She was never able to bear children; her womb was damaged by internal injuries sustained at the barracks. The rapes continue to haunt her. “It hurt so much, it was as if heaven crashed onto earth. My body can’t forget it.” |
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Emah 1926, Kuningan, West Java
Emah was taken from home and for three years forced into prostitution in several barracks brothels in Cimahi. She received the Japanese name Miyoko and daily had to service at least ten men, common soldiers and officers. In the office where the servicemen had to buy a ticket, there were pictures of the girls they could choose from. “Everyone wanted me. They kept on coming, one after the other.” She resented her beauty. “I so much wanted to be ugly, because the ugly girls they quickly sent home again. But the beautiful ones had to stay.” She stayed at the brothel until the end of the war. When she returned home, it turned out both her parents had died of sadness. With her brother, she moved to the city and later married an older man of Javanese nobility. “I really didn’t want to, but I took pity on him. After he died four years later, I never married again, even though I had many admirers.” She never was able to have children and adopted two of her brother’s children. Up to old age, she made a living giving medicinal massages.
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Wainem 1925, Karang Anyar, Central Java
Wainem was taken from home and forced into prostitution, first in Solo for a year and then for two years in Yogyakarta. During the day in a warehouse, she had to weave mats with other women and cook her own food. Sometimes she was raped right then and there, but most of the time was taken by soldiers to their rooms in the barracks compound. “An Indonesian doctor tested us every week for pregnancy while a Japanese doctor observed. I never became pregnant then.” After the war, with a group of women, she walked some 60 miles to get home. “Our people chased off the Japanese with bamboo spears. They confiscated everything: our rice, our money, our gold. When at night the air-raid sirens sounded and we had to hide, the Japanese entered our homes and emptied them.” She would rather not be reminded of what happened in that warehouse. “It’s been so long ago. My son, who wasn’t born then, already has grandchildren now.” |
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Niyem 1933, Yogyakarta, Central Java
As a 10-year-old child, Niyem was kidnapped while playing and taken in a truck full of women to a military tent camp in Banten, West Java. Once there, the prettiest women were locked up as live-ins by officers in their residences. Niyem had to share a small tent with two other girls, where soldiers raped them in the presence of others. She didn’t get much to eat and had to drink water from a ditch. “I was still so young, within two months my body was completely destroyed. I was nothing but a toy, as a human being I meant nothing, that’s how it felt during the Japanese era.” After two months, Niyem managed to escape with a small group when the guards weren’t paying attention. “I didn’t dare tell anyone that I had been raped, I didn’t want to hurt my parents. I was afraid that no one would want me, that I would be left out. But people still abused me by calling me a “Japanese hand-me-down”. They suspected what had happened. It hurt me tremendously.” She managed to get married only at an older age, to an old widower. She’s very grateful that as an old spinster, she nevertheless got a man and had five children: “Without children, you have no history.” |
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