Around January 1944, a number of young women were forcibly removed from our concentration camp in central Java, Camp Moentilan (Muntilan), to serve as comfort women / sex slaves. This was all hush-hush as far as we children were concerned and nobody used the word “sex”, but we had a good inkling of what was happening.

Jan Ruff – O’Herne was in another concentration camp in central Java, Ambarawa, very near our last camp, and she also was forcibly seized. She was barely 21 at that time.

Her photo must have been taken just before the Japanese Army invaded Java. She would have been 19.

This is a summary of the testimony of Jan Ruff – O’Herne before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U. S. House of Representatives in February 2007:

“Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women,” the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army. In the so-called “Comfort Station” I was systematically beaten and raped day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me each time he visited the brothel to examine us for venereal disease.”