To our beloved community, we have sad news. We learned with great pain, on December 29, 2020, that one of the few remaining survivors of Japan’s “comfort women” system, Pian Huanying, passed away.
We’d like to share with you Pian’s story:
Pian Huanying, born in 1928, was a native of Qin County, Shanxi. In the autumn of 1942, the Japanese military suddenly surrounded the village where Pian Huanying lived. They seized healthy strong young men. They also kidnapped young and beautiful women. The 14-year-old Pian Huanying was among them.
After arriving at the bunker where the Japanese troops were stationed, the captured women hugged each other and shivered. They were unwilling to “serve ” these Japanese soldiers. So the Japanese soldiers beat them with rifle butts. Pian Huanying still remembered being beaten so badly that she hugged herself and shrank into a corner. Piao Huanying and her sisters eventually became sex slaves, part of the “comfort women” system. She endured rapes, sexual abuse and torture.
After more than 20 days, relatives who worked for the Japanese army were able to help ransom Piao Huanying with money given by her parents. She returned home briefly. However, within a few days, the Japanese soldiers came to the village again, and Pian Huanying once again fell back into the “hell’s cave.”
About seven or eight days later, Pian’s family again paid ransom money to the Japanese military from money Pian Huanying’s parents borrowed to release her. However, not long after, she was taken away again.
In this way, in less than a year, Pian Huanying became a “comfort woman” four times. This experience made the underage Pian carry the stigma of having been a person of “bad reputation” that stayed with her all her life.
In this coming year, we will continue to honor the legacies of “comfort women” like Pian in our work. Thank you for being with us.
