Give Me the Sun (2019)

• 82%
• 2019
• Documentary
• Zhongyi Ban

IntroductionThe film "Give Me The Sun" has recorded the cruel life of 7 women who were subjected to sexual violence by the Japanese Army during World War II. Six of them lived in mountain villages of Shanxi Province and one in Wuhan, a large city on the Yangtze River. They are all deceased now as I continued to follow and support them for over 20 years. The Chinese Communist Army fought guerrilla warfare against the Japanese in mountain villages. In response, the Japanese built many fortified bunkers to repel their enemy. Thus those women victimized by the Japanese Army were called the "bunker women" with contempt by local people while those who were locked up in the so-called "comfort women" stations in the city were treated contemptuously as prostitutes. It is estimated that nearly 100 thousand women were forcibly taken to comfort stations by the Japanese Army in China. In the period covered by this film, the number of women raped in the fortified bunkers, farmhouses and fields was much greater than that of comfort women. To clarify what had happened, seven ex-Japanese Army soldiers testify in the film. Three of them stationed in Shanxi, two in Shandong and one in a town on the Yangtze. They included a foot soldier, medic, army surgeon, corporal and company commander. The film consists of two parts additionally introducing a school teacher, two Chinese who worked for the Japanese, two Japanese scholars, a lawyer and former Japanese comfort woman.1. Actual Situation of the Chinese Women Victims of Sexual Violence The film starts with the scenes of the international hearing in 1992. It was the first conference held in Japan after the War on war damages. Those who had experienced forced labor in Europe and the victims of poison gas and germ attacks participated along with dozens of women from the Philippines, Netherlands and Korean Peninsula who were kept to serve as comfort women. Wan Aihua was only one former comfort woman from Shanxi who testified at the conference. After shouting "I hate the Japanese!" she was overcome with rage and grief and fainted. The conference had to be temporarily suspended. Three years later, I went to Shanxi from Japan and visited Ms. Wan, who was living in a slum of Taiyuan City, the capital of the province to investigate the persecution suffered by comfort women. When I met her, Wan showed me the scars that remained on her body. Her earlobes were cut off and she could not raise her arms. She took off her clothes and showed me her armpits. There was no hair. Wan told me that the Japanese soldiers pulled off her armpit hair one by one to check that she was still alive. She said "I'm not a comfort woman because I have never been at a comfort station." The scars on her body appeared to be more than the damages caused by sexual violence. In fact, these were the evidence of atrocities inflicted on and the destruction of humanity. To find the truth about the alleged sexual violence, a researcher visited a remote village located 100 kilometers to the north from Taiyuan in a deep valley in the mountains. There was only one mud road along the river to the village. It was difficult to believe that Japanese troops stationed for a long time. However the guide took the researcher to the fortified bunker near the village and the houses where the women who survived the War lived. There was a woman who could not speak in terror whenever she heard about the Japanese. Another woman was confined in bed in sickness. Only the scars on the mind and body of these women bore witness to the crimes to them. Since it was a remote village, no one cared to find what happened to the village women. They asked the research, who was the first visitor from the outside world, to take them to a hospital. In those days, the Chinese Government was indifferent to the plight of victimized women and did not permit private citizens groups to support them. There were 21 Japanese Army fortified bunkers in this area during the War and dozens of women were forcibly taken as comfort women to each fortified bunker indicating that a substantial number of village women were subjected to sexual violence.2. In Search of Comfort Women Tong Zeng, a young civic group leader, investigated the issue of Chinese comfort women, including those who were living in Beijing. He was appealing to the Japanese people for aid for these women. I went to China to see him. At that time, the 4th World Conference on Women was held in Beijing. I could not meet him because, regarding Tong as an antisocial element, the government authorities placed him under house arrest outside Beijing. After returning to Japan, I appealed to the general public the need for medical aid to the victims of sexual violence in Japan. As a result, many people responded to my appeal and a substantial sum of funds was donated by more than 200 citizens. In 1996, I expanded the scope of my search with donated funds for medical aid and found dozens of victimized women in less than a week. All of them were ordinary farm women. In my investigation, there were four types of women who were forcibly taken as comfort women: daughters of Communist Party leaders, young girls, pretty women and daughters of affluent families. Most of these women were captured and held for a week to a few months and some women were locked up for more than six months. When they were returned home, affluent families were required to pay ransom to the Japanese Army and its Chinese lackeys. There were no housing facilities or supervisors. They had no idea how long they would be incarcerated and how they would be treated. Many women were locked up in cave houses in the Loess Plateau. There was no sunshine in the house since it had the door and windows only on one side. The women imprisoned in such a house became ill in a few weeks. Liu Mianhuan, who was kidnapped at age 15, was swollen all over the body and could not walk after 40 days. She was allowed to get outside only when she went to the bathroom. So, even when she did not need to use the bathroom, she asked the farmer who guarded the door to let her out. When she got outside, she crawled to the bathroom and when she reached there, she stretched herself in the sunshine. I got the idea for the title of this film from her testimony. I could meet Tong Zeng for the first time in 1996. He was trying to find former comfort women living in Beijing. I was introduced to him by Yuan Zhulin, the only former comfort woman who had publicly revealed her past. She was living in a tenement house with shared kitchens and bathrooms. For a long time, she had shut herself out from the outside world with mental and physical illnesses. In the postwar years, she had lived alone discriminated and disparaged as a former comfort woman and accomplice of Japan. While Korean comfort women have been attracting much attention, Chinese comfort women have remained largely ignored. Why? According to Tong, this has to do with the history of China in postwar years characterized by censorship, dictatorship and disregard for human rights under the rule of the Communist Party. A civil war erupted in China soon after the end of WWII. The Chinese Government took part in the Korean War and persecuted those associated with the former leadership. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, the former comfort women were ostracized as part of the old guard who had exploited the poor. When the economy was disrupted as a result of political turmoil, the Chinese Government placed greater importance on reconciliation with Japan at the expense of war reparations to the people. Tong Zeng and Zhang Shuangbing were kept under surveillance and restrained. Zhang shuangbing and Tong Zeng tried in Beijing to appeal to Japan for compensation in 1992, but the government authorities regarded them as trouble-makers. When Zhang returned his home in Shanxi from Beijing, the Superintendent of Education visited him all of a sudden with the police and threatened him not to damage friendly relationship between China and Japan. His wife, who was convalescing after childbirth, was shocked and as a result of this incident, her psychosis was worsened again. Even though most of the former comfort women are deceased, Zhang's wife still continue to suffer from mental disorder. It was three years after the Tiananmen massacre of the students who protested for democracy. While Europe and America continued economic sanctions against China, the Japanese Prime Minister and Emperor paid a visit to the country. Thus maintaining amicable relationship with Japan was very important for the Chinese Government in this year.3. Chronicling the Trials and the Facts Even though lawsuits for damages were filed in 1996 by and Liu Mianhusn and three other former comfort women and in 1998 by Wan Aihua and nine other with the aid of Japanese lawyers, all were rejected or lost in 2000. In December of the same year, the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery was hosted as an event by private sector organizations as part of efforts at solving the issue of postwar settlements undertaken by Japanese citizens' groups. Wan Aihua visited Japan again to testify at the Tribunal. She fainted and fell sick when she took off her clothes to show her scars. When Wan was carried on an ambulance, right wing groups waited outside and protested. At the Tribunal, Yoshio Suzuki, an ex-Japanese Army soldier confessed in detail that he had raped a woman in Shanxi. Suzuki testified the fact that when the woman covered all over herself with feces in a pigsty to prevent rape, his lust for her intensified by this act and he raped her. In the film, three other Japanese soldiers also testified about their rapes in comfort stations and bunkers. Hajime Kondo, a former medic, confessed that he gang-raped a local woman with four other soldiers in the bunker in 1943. Matsumoto said that he captured seven local women, locked them up in a room for a week and raped them. Yasuji Kaneko told that he saw nearly 30 women in a comfort station in Shanxi. Suzuko Shirota, a former Japanese comfort woman, testified about other comfort women who lost their lives on the South Sea Islands. With the advent of the Abe Administration, however, the wrong perception of comfort women has spread starting with a statement made by Mayor Hashimoto of Osaka City that gave rise to a social controversy. The confessions of a few ex-soldiers have been sealed from Japanese society not heard by the younger generation. As they have been repeatedly told the stories of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the air raids on Tokyo, many of them feel that Japan was victimized by the War and know little about Japan's aggression and criminal acts. After losing one lawsuit after another, many victimized and aged Chinese women are now deceased without support facilities that are available in South Korea and Taiwan. One of them died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the winter and another died of heart disease after suffering years of persecution. Before her death, Wan Aihua, who twice visited Japan and fell sick on the witness stand, said on bed in the hospital, "Why did I lose the lawsuit? Where is the truth? Why the Japanese Government doesn't apologize and compensate?" The truth she sought and the sun Liu wanted could be the same thing.