Jan Ruff O Herne: Comfort Women During The Vietnam War

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Jan Ruff O’Herne is a Dutch Australian comfort woman, who campaigns for comfort woman and protection for woman during wars. A comfort woman is a woman forced to be a sex slaves to the military men. In O’Herne’s case, she, along with several women, were forced sex slaves to Japanese military men during the Second World War. Born in 1923, she grew up in the Dutch East Indies. In March 1942, war broke out in the pacific. The Japanese invaded her home, then chaos happened. All women, children, and men were sent to Japanese prison camps. O’Herne was held in the camps for three years. Starvation, torture, punishment, illness, and death occurred every day. During her two years in camp, all women age 17 and up, were hoarded into a truck and was sent …show more content…

During their early married life, she was still scarred from her rape and didn’t have sexual intimacy with Tom for a while. When she did, she had four miscarriages, until she gave birth to her two daughters. Then they all moved to Sidney, Australia. While O’Herne was watching the news in 1992, Korean comfort women were speaking out about their rape stories that occurred during the Bosnian War. It was at that moment that she knew that she wanted to campaign for protection for women. In December 1992, as a witness, she went to Tokyo, Japan, to an international hearing and told her story. In February 2007, the 84 year old went to Washington DC and testified to the Congress. It was the pinnacle of her 15 year global campaign for justice for comfort women. John Howard, now prime minister of Australia, went to Tokyo, Japan to raise awareness about the catastrophe. In 2007, Shinzo Abe, Japanese prime minister, expressed sympathy for what happened to the women, but did not admit they were forced into sexual slavery and that they all volunteered. All O’Herne wanted was a formal apology from the Japanese government and for them to admit the women were forced. Abe said the United States calling for an unambiguous apology is ‘full of

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