Sad News today that reminds us of an uplifting person who was a champion for all the comfort women under the Japanese during World War II. Jan Ruff – O’Herne died at the age of 96 on Monday August 19, 2019 in Adelaide, Australia. This photo of her as a young woman was taken when […]
Tag Archives: World War II
WRECKS OF DUTCH WWII SHIPS MYSTERIOUSLY VANISH FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE JAVA SEA
The remains of these 3 Dutch ships are from the Battle of the Java Sea which was fought on February 27, 1942 between a hastily assembled battle group of Dutch, British, American and Australian ships led by the Dutch Admiral Karel Doorman and the overwhelming Japanese fleet steaming towards the Island of Java. It was […]
WORLD WAR II ENDS ON SEPTEMBER 2, 1945
World War II ended on September 2, 1945 as Japan formally surrendered to the Allied Forces by signing the rigid terms of the Articles of Capitulation aboard the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. In addition to the United States, the Articles were signed by China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, France, […]
Delivery of key components of Hiroshima atomic bomb
On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Only 316 out of 1,196 men survived the sinking in shark-infested waters. This “On This Day” item in The New York Times today brought my […]
WILL THEY EVER LEARN? – Comfort Women / Sex Slaves
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 […]
WILL THEY EVER LEARN? – The comfort women issue
The subject of the use of “comfort women” by the Japanese military during World War II has popped up in the news repeatedly starting in 2007 when Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minister at that time, denied that the Japanese military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II in an orchestrated way. […]