Lanhua Grandma was tricked into the battlefield when she was young and she was a comfort woman
was born in Taipei Xizhi . She has grandparents, parents and seven sisters at home. I was sent to the house of Chen as my adopted daughter more than four months after I was born. When I was seven years old, I entered the public school. I wrapped my books in a cloth towel every day and walked barefoot to school for a long time. Because of my poverty and poor academic performance, I dropped out of school and helped at home for two years. In 1944, I was nineteen years old and worked as a female worker in a straw rope factory in Nangang. I used hand-kneading straw ropes. Although my income was low, I could still supplement my family's income.
One day, a Japanese man went to the factory to find the boss and said he wanted to recruit a woman to be a nursing assistant in the Philippines. The next day, he brought a document to my house and told my adoptive father that because I was under 20 years old, I needed the consent form of the household chief to go abroad, but his adoptive father did not agree to me going abroad. The Japanese did not give up and ran three times in a row. They must agree to my adoptive father to go abroad. The adoptive father refused and said that this daughter had never studied nursing and did not know how to be a nurse. The Japanese quickly said that the work was simple and just helped tie the bandage. The Japanese also repeatedly emphasized that many nurses are not afraid of death to go to the battlefield, and we should also do something for the country and soldiers. The adoptive father had no choice but to stamp the seal almost in a semi-forced situation.
I got on the boat in Keelung, and there were more than 20 people walking with me. When I arrived in the Philippines, the interpreter who was in charge of the name at the dock was Taiwanese, and the Japanese called him Hidaka. He asked me in Minnan, "Why are you here too?" I replied, "I am here to be a caregiver." The man told me, "I am not a caregiver, but a comfort woman!" At this time, I didn't understand what a comfort woman was. When we arrived at the military camp, the Japanese couple who brought us told us that our job was to receive Japanese soldiers. We burst into tears when we heard this. However, we could not escape from the vast sea and had to surrender. The working hours here are from 9 am to 12 noon, after a meal, they continue until 10 pm. They are all Japanese soldiers, and there is another comfort center nearby where Japanese women and Korean women work, mainly Japanese officers.
Lotus Grandma
1945 was the most intense moment of the war. The US military launched a strong counterattack. The Philippines became the area with the strongest attack firepower of the US military. Japan then asked all the troops in Cebu to retreat with the "comfort women" and flee to the mountains. The girls' haste can be imagined. Mitue, who lives next to me in a comfort center, cut off a bunch of hair and nails, put them in an iron box, and told her teammates that if she unfortunately dies, she doesn't believe that the Japanese soldiers will bury her well. she should not become a lonely ghost overseas. She asks her teammates to hand over the iron box to someone she knows and bring it back to Taiwan so that her soul can return to her hometown .
Mitue died during the escape. When the Japanese soldier held the iron box and asked who knew her, I silently took the box, took it with me, and took it back to Taiwan. During the long escape, many soldiers and "comfort women" died, and the survivors learned to cherish and take care of each other. The tragic days did not end until the Japanese army announced their surrender. The top 20 comfort women in set out. After such trouble, only I and another woman were left to survive.
After surrendering, I stayed in the US military concentration camp with others and waited for the ship to return to Taiwan. Surprisingly, he met Hidaka in the concentration camp. When they met, they asked each other at the same time, "You are still alive, not dead!" The feeling at that time was really like a dream. We cherish the days we got together after the war. An American woman in the concentration camp saw that we were in love and wanted to act as a matchmaker to promote our marriage.
At the end of 1945, we took a boat back to Taiwan together. I returned to my hometown after the club, told my family about my experiences overseas, and hugged and cried with my family. Two years after returning to Taiwan, Hidaka, who was thirteen years older than me, got married and moved to a rented house in Tamsui. Because I didn't know where Mitue's house lived, I put the iron box containing her hair and nails into the temple and prayed that her soul would rest.
