Tears Of A Teen-Age Comfort Woman

This is the true account of the courage and suffering of a young woman who called herself ‘Swee Lian’ who, like thousands of other women who were forced into Japanese army brothels during World War II, had withheld their real identities because of the shame their stories would have brought to themselves and their families. Swee Lian was 16 when she was imprisoned and raped by a Japanese Kempeitai (military/secret police) officer and sent to an army brothel in British North Borneo in 1942. Her parents who were also arrested by the Kempeitai died as a result of torture while in prison. She made an incredible escape to Japanese-occupied Singapore in 1943 where she took refuge in a Buddhist nunnery until the surrender of the Japanese in 1945. In 1948 she married her sweetheart Choon. They moved and settled in Australia the following year, where he died in 1969, and she in 1981. This story is based on Swee Lian’s extensive and mostly handwritten notes.