ジャン・ラフ・オハーンさん追悼文
オランダ人の日本軍性奴隷であったジャン・ラフ・オハーンさんが、８月１９日にオーストラリアのアデレードで、９６歳で亡くなられました。以下は私の英語の追悼文です。この追悼文の日本語訳の短縮版が『週間金曜日』９月１３日号に掲載される予定です。
A shorter Japanese version of
this article will appear in the September 13 Issue of the weekly journal, Shukan Kinyobi (Weekly Friday) in Japan.
On August 19, 2019, Jan Ruff-O’Herne, a Dutch “ianfu (Japanese
military sex slave during the Asia-Pacific War), died in Adelaide, South
Australia, aged 96. She was born in 1923 to a wealthy family who owned a
sugar-cane plantation and sugar factory near Semarang in central Java in the
Dutch East Indies (presently Indonesia). She had spent happy times there up until
her late teens, raised by cultured parents and a
grandfather who had a rich knowledge of art, music and literature. The sudden
invasion of Japanese military forces in March 1942, however, changed
everything. At the time, Jan was a student at a Teachers’ College in
Semarang.
Her father was drafted into the Dutch military forces in the Dutch East
Indies several months before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
On Java Island, however, the Dutch forces soon surrendered to the Japanese and
on March 8 about 100,000 Dutch people were detained in either POW camps or
civil internment camps. About 47,000 women and children were separated from the
rest of the people and interned in several different camps set up outside
Semarang. Jan was sent to one of these - Ambarawa No. 6 Camp - together with
her mother and two younger sisters. From then on until the end of the war in
August 1945, these internees were forced to live in difficult conditions, with
insufficient food and medicine in an extremely unhygienic environment.
One morning in February 1944, when the internees were struggling to
survive starvation and illness, a small group of Japanese military officers
together with a few civilians suddenly arrived at Ambarawa No. 6 Camp. They
selected 16 young women between the ages of 17 and 28 and took them away
ignoring the fierce protests of their mothers and other internees.
Twenty-year-old Jan was amongst them. They were put on a truck and taken to
Semarang. Seven, including Jan, were sent to a “comfort station” called
Nanakai-Tei (the House of Seven Seas) and detained. The following day, they
were told to sign a contract, written in Japanese and Indonesian, which
included the sentence “I volunteer to become a comfort woman.” Although all
seven refused to sign, that evening they were all raped by Japanese officers.
Jan desperately tried to refuse the officer, who became angry and
threatened her with his Japanese sword. Despite her continued resistance, he
eventually pinned her down and raped her. From then on, every evening the girls
were repeatedly the victims of horrific violent actions by Japanese men. One
day when a Japanese medical doctor came to check if any of the girls had
contracted VD, Jan told him that they had been taken from the camp by force,
and that it was against the Geneva Convention. She asked him to report this
criminal act to higher authorities, naively thinking that a medical doctor
would have compassion for them. Instead, he raped her.
In fact, the victims were not only girls from Ambarawa No. 6 Camp. In
October 1943, some teaching staff from the South Army Cadet School in Semarang
contemplated setting up comfort stations in Semarang by procuring seemingly VD
free young women from the internment camps in the area. The main reason for the
establishment of comfort stations in the area was the high VD rates among the
cadets at the school. They obtained permission from the 16th Army
Headquarters on the condition that the Dutch women had to be “volunteers” in
order to avoid any possible legal problems. Upon obtaining permission, in
February 1944, many young women were selected and taken from a number of
different camps near Semarang and sent to four newly established “comfort
stations” for the exclusive use by officer class men. The girls were all
required to sign a similar contract, claiming that they were “volunteers.” Like
Jan, when they refused to do so, they were raped and detained as “comfort
women.”
In April that year, Colonel Odajima Kaoru, a senior officer in the POW
Management Bureau in the Ministry of Army in Tokyo visited Java to inspect the
internment camps in the Dutch East Indies. During his inspection tour of Java,
he was told of the fate of these Dutch girls by one of the camp leaders from
the Ambarawa No. 9 Camp. Odajima immediately arranged for the girls’ release,
believing that if the Allied nations were to learn that many Dutch girls,
including minors, were used as “comfort women” against their will, it could
cause a serious international problem. As a result, the Dutch girls were
transferred to the Bogor Camp near Jakarta far away from Semarang and reunited
with their families. However, they were ordered never to tell anyone of what
had happened to them. They were threatened that if they did, they and their
families would be killed. Throughout this time, many other comfort stations
staffed by Indonesian “comfort women” continued to operate until the end of the
war.
In 1948, the Dutch military forces prosecuted 12 Japanese men for this
crime and tried them at the War Crimes Tribunal conducted by the Dutch Forces
in Batavia. One officer committed suicide in 1947 before the court hearing actually
started. Eventually Major Okada Keiji, who was most responsible for setting up
the comfort stations, was sentenced to death, and 10 others were sentenced to
between 5-20 years imprisonment. Japan’s current Prime Minister, Abe Shinzo,
once claimed in Parliament that the Japanese military forces never forcibly
took women into comfort stations using threats or direct violence. This Dutch
War Crimes Tribunal report in Batavia, however, clearly contradicts this
statement. It is not surprising that many nations including Korea do not trust
the Japanese government headed by a Prime Minister, who boldly and unashamedly
tells such lies in parliament.
Shortly after the war Jan met a British soldier, Tom Ruff, and fell in
love with him. They married in England a year later in August 1946. Tom was
gentle and patient, understanding Jan’s traumatic wartime experience well. Her
body had suffered severe damage and was unable to sustain a pregnancy.
Following three miscarriages, she had major surgery, which eventually enabled
her to have two daughters. In 1960 the family migrated to Adelaide in
Australia. There, her neighbours and friends regarded her as a happy housewife.
She had decided never to speak of her three-month wartime experiences, although
in fact she often had flashbacks, nightmares and other symptoms of PTSD. What
she really needed was people with whom she could share her story.
In August 1991, after almost 50 years of silence, Jan was most surprised
to hear of a Korean woman by the name of Kim Hak-Sun, who came forward as one
of Japan’s military sex slaves. Kim’s brave action encouraged many other women
not only from Korea but also from China and the Philippines to speak of their
wartime ordeals for the first time. This sudden development led Jan to reveal
her own past as a victim of sexual violence committed by Japanese soldiers.
Unable to speak directly of her past trauma, Jan initially, wrote a long letter
to her daughters, describing her suffering at the hands of the Japanese
military and her 50 year-long post-war tribulation. She also told them of her
decision to testify at the coming International Hearing Concerning Japan’s
Post-War Reparation in Tokyo scheduled for December 9 and 10, 1992. It is
impossible to imagine how shocking and heartbreaking it was for Jan’s daughters
to learn that their mother was a victim of brutal Japanese sexual violence and
that she had kept silent about it for almost half a century. Yet, both
daughters expressed their strong moral support for their mother’s decision. In
particular, Jan’s younger daughter, Carol, an artist, and her husband, Ned, a
film-producer, showed their firm determination to assist Jan, saying they would
accompany her on the trip to Tokyo in December.
Unquestionably, the testimonies given by the victims of Japan’s military
sex slavery from Korea, North Korea, China, the Philippines and Holland at the
International Hearing played an important role in forcing the Japanese
government of the Miyazawa administration to acknowledge Japan’s responsibility
for enforced military sex slavery and to express apologies and remorse to the
victims in the form of an official statement issued by the Cabinet Secretary in
August 1993. Jan’s courageous act inspired other Dutch victims to come forward
as well.
From early 1993, both in Australia and elsewhere, Jan became active in
testifying about her horrific wartime experience as a sex slave for the
Japanese forces. Around the same time, I, as a lecturer in Japanese Studies at
Melbourne University, also started conducting research on this topic. I became
acquainted with Jan through correspondence and occasional telephone
conversations.
In March 1997, the United Nations University organized an international
conference “Men, Women and War” at Ulster University in Londonderry, Northern
Ireland. Together with Jan, I was invited to this conference as a researcher on
the topic of Japan’s military sex slaves. At the conference, following Jan’s
testimony, I presented a paper on the history of sexual violence committed by
Japanese forces during the Asia-Pacific War including the military sex slave
system. Many female lawyers and medical specialists from the U.S., U.K., and
other Western nations, who were then conducting surveys on the victims of
mass-rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Bosnian War, also participated at
this conference.
During the three-day conference, I became aware that Jan’s testimony – i.e.,
that of a white woman among predominantly Asian victims – on Japan’s military
sex slavery in the Asia-Pacific, far from Europe and more than 50 years ago,
had a stronger message than expected. It was clear to many conference
participants that military violence against women is a universal problem that
continues to this day. At the same time, Jan herself clearly realized that the
military violence against women that she had experienced has been repeated and
is still recurring in many places of armed conflict. This realization made her
even more determined to speak out against any form of violence against women.
Her resolve is clear from the many subsequent testimonies she gave, such as at
the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual
Slavery in Tokyo in 2000, and that at the congressional hearing on “Protecting
the Human Rights of Comfort Women” in the U.S. House of Representatives in
February 2007.
We Japanese, in particular Japanese politicians, should consider the
issue of Japan’s military sex slavery, which victimized a large number of women
from various ethnic backgrounds, as “a crime against humanity,” and not as a
bilateral political issue between Japan and Korea. Regrettably, the Japanese
government under the Abe administration now gravely distorts this human rights
issue and treats it simply as a matter for political negotiation with the
Korean government, completely ignoring Japan’s responsibility for this war
crime committed by the Japanese Imperial Forces.
Despite her horrific encounter with the Japanese in the past, Jan was
always cheerful and had a good sense of humour. Perhaps her jovial and positive
attitude came from her strong confidence that many people were wholeheartedly
supporting her activities to protect the human rights of women victims of war.
Members of her family have been stalwart supports. In 1994 Carol and Ned
produced a documentary film based on Jan’s autobiography, 50 Years of Silence and in 2018 granddaughter, Ruby, made a short
feature film based on her grandmother’s war-time experience, titled Daily Bread. That her dark experiences
had metamorphosed into an art form that would continue to impact audiences for
years to come undoubtedly brought tremendous joy and relief.
I sincerely hope that Japanese people will be inspired to invite Carol
and Ruby to Japan to screen these films there in many places in the near
future.
Yuki Tanaka (Historian)
Further Information:
Jan Ruff O’Herne, Fifty Years of Silence (Edition Tom Thomson, Sydney, 1994).
Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War
II and the US Occupation (Routledge, London & New York, 2002), in
particular, Chapter 3 “Comfort Women in the Dutch East Indies.”
Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II, Second Edition
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), in particular Chapter 3 “Rape and War: The
Japanese Experience.”
DVD Fifty
Years of Silence (Ronin Films)
Film “Daily Bread” (Challenger
Production)
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