Ruth Hallo

The Comfort Women Ruth Hallo

"The Comfort Women" is about Meian Ling, a former Chinese comfort woman. It begins in with her village childhood and its abrupt end on the day she, and her family, were deceived by a Chinese woman. The woman cooperated with the Japanese army, supplying it with young comfort women for their 'stations'. The story intertwines her adopted daughter talks with the old Meian, slipping into her earlier life and flashing into the subsequent legal action she and others took against the Japanese government. Young Meian suffered terrible experiences in this hell, raped daily by queues of Japanese soldiers. Years later, in her twenties and against the odds, she escapes her 'station' and returns home to find out rejection and hatred for what she went through. Already an older woman, having suffered so much for so long, Meian starts a new life in the city of Nanjing.