| Their Story
Account of Madam XSome time in January 1942, the Japanese occupied Kuala Lumpur -- but all that seemed remote to us. We were safe in our little village. No Japanese would bother us there. Then one day in February 1942, two lorries full of Japanese soldiers came into our village. I remember it was February because it was on my mother's birthday. How did the Japanese find our village? They were led there by a thirty-year-old traitor. How could he do such a thing, directing the Japanese soldiers to our village? I was cooking at the time and was unable to escape. The armed soldiers moved quickly through our village, cutting all hopes of esacpe. Three soldiers with rifles came to our houses while the rest fanned out through the village. They burst in and grabbed me. My parents tried to rescue me but my father was kicked in the head. Blood went everywhere. I struggled as hard as I could, but I got kicked in the head too. Until now, I still have the scar. Then my panties were ripped off and one of the soldiers undid the front of his trousers. While the others held me down, he stuck his thing into me. I had no idea what he was trying to do. I knew nothing about the facts of life. I was only fifteen and hadn't even had my first period. It was agonizing as blood kept flowing out. They did it on the kitchen floor, right in front of my parents and brother. Three soldiers did it to me in turns, and then they took me out and put me in one of the lorries along with some other girls from my village. My brother was put in the other lorry and taken away and we never saw him again. As I was being put in the truck, my parents rushed out to try ad resuce me. My father was trailing blood from his wound. For the next three years, I was constantly haunted by that last vision of my parents, especially my father's blood on the ground. Then I was taken away to a big two-storey bungalow in Jalan Ampang. Six Japanese officers who were living there raped me again. I was crying for my parents and bleeding from my head wound and also from down below. But the officers there did the same thing to me again. I couldn't sleep or eat and thought all the time of my parents and brother. After a short while in the bungalow, they took me to the Great Eastern Dance Hall, which I think was also in Jalan Ampang. The dance hostesses had all become comfort girls. Those girls could speak fluent English. The same thing happened to me in the Dance Hall as in the bungalow. Then a month later, they took me to the Tai Sun Hotel opposite the Pudu Jail in Jalan Pudu. There I had a big room with a double bed. I got two simple meals a day and there was a cleaner who changed the sheets daily. I was forced to have sex with ten to twenty men a day. As a result, I was continuously raw. Red raw. Sex was excruciating. You would have no idea how painful it was. You couldn't imagine it! But I had to be gentle and serve every soldier well. If I couldn't perform well, I would get beate. Some of the men would be drunk and beat me anyway. One man, although drunk stayed inside me his whole allotted hour. It was unbearable -- but I had to bear it.
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