This summer, I was able to have the honor to assist Professor Peipei Qiu as a Ford Scholar student in documenting the testimony videos of the witnesses and victims of Imperial Japan’s military sexual slavery from Sanzao Island, Zhuhai, China that she collected in 2019 with the assistance of Liu Changyan, a Senior Instructor of Zhuhai Golden Coast Middle School, who helped her translate the local dialect in real time for some of the testimonies. 

The Asian-Pacifica War (1931–1945) was a theatre of World War II that fought in Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Within this, the full invasion of China was ignited by the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937. To occupy southern China and cut off the military resource supply line, Imperial Japanese troops occupied Sanzao Island in 1938 for over 7 years to use it as a military air base. During the Asian-Pacifica War, Imperial Japan had coerced a tremendous number of women from different countries into comfort stations to service the Japanese soldiers in occupied areas. Sanzao Island was just the same. 

We have testimonies from five Sanzao Island natives recorded in video and audio clips. The purpose of our project is to document these testimonies by assembling and adding English subtitles to them, so that these primary sources that are in native languages can reach the greater English-speaking audience population. The core of my work was to transcribe and translate the records with the assistance of Professor Qiu, Liu Changyan, and Huang Yuxia,a native of Zhuhai, to confirm accuracy and create a cohesive English-subtitled video of each individual’s testimonies. Professor Qiu and I would meet weekly and maintain close communication to discuss our work. I received a great amount of help from Professor Qiu in learning about the background of our project and proofreading the works.