A talk by Professor Peipei Qiu, Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Professor of Chinese and Japanese, and Director of Asian Studies Program, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY. Professor Qiu is the primary author (with Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei) of new book Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves – Oxford Oral History Series (2014)
“This book is heart-rending and courageous. It gives voice, for the first time in English, to the Chinese women enslaved by the Japanese armies during the invasion and occupation of China. I finished it with a great respect for the victims whose stories are told here and for the historians who have brought them to light.” – Review by Diana Lary, author of The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945.”
“The individual histories documented in this book are very moving, particularly because they include discussion of the family backgrounds of these women before the war and of their experiences in later life.” – Review by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, author of Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era.
“The stories/illustrations used are very moving and will yield heart-wrenching response from the reader. This book rebuts the deniers’ arguments with facts and figures as well as survivors’ testimonies, but not in a Japan bashing way. This is the first English book on this subject matter using Chinese, Japanese, and English sources.” – Review by Thekla Lit, President of British Columbia ALPHA in Canada
The event is sponsored by the NJ Alliance for Learning & Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (NJ-ALPHA) and the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Princeton University (ACSSPU).