A shorter Japanese version of this article appeared in the September 13, 2019 issue of the weekly journal, Shukan Kinyobi (Weekly Friday) in Japan.

On August 19, 2019, Jan Ruff-O'Herne, a Dutch “ianfu” (Japanese military sex slave during the Asia-Pacific War), died in Adelaide, South Australia, aged 96. She was born in 1923 to a wealthy family who owned a sugar-cane plantation and sugar factory near Semarang in central Java in the Dutch East Indies (presently Indonesia). She had spent happy times there up until her late teens, raised by cultured parents and a grandfather who had a rich knowledge of art, music and literature. The sudden invasion of Japanese military forces in March 1942, however, changed everything. At the time, Jan was a student at a Teachers' College in Semarang.