Jan Ruff O'Herne

Jan Ruff O’Herne (born January 18, 1923)^[1] is a Dutch Australian human rights activist known for her vocal campaigns and speeches against war rape. During World War II, O’Herne was among young women enslaved into prostitution by the Japanese Imperial Army. Fifty years after the end of the war, O’Herne decided to speak out publicly to demand a formal apology from the Japanese government and to highlight the plight of other "comfort women".^[2]

Biography

Portrait of O'Herne taken at Bandoeng, Java, shortly before the Japanese invasion in March 1942.

O’Herne was born in 1923 in the Dutch East Indies, a former Southeast Asian colony of the Dutch Empire.^[3] During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, O’Herne and thousands of Dutch women were interned at a disused army barracks in Ambarawa, Indonesia.^[3] On 26 February 1944, O’Herne and six young women were taken by Japanese officers to an old Dutch colonial house at Selarang, which was converted to a military brothel.^[3] On their first day, photographs of the women were taken and displayed at the reception area.^[3] Over the following four months, the women were repeatedly raped and beaten.^[3] Shortly before the end of World War II, the women were moved to a camp in West Java, where they were reunited with their families. The Japanese warned them that if they told anyone about what happened to them, they and their family members would be killed.^[3] In 1946 O’Herne married Tom Ruff, a former member of the British military.^[3] In 1960 the couple emigrated to Australia.^[3]

Political activism

In the decades after the war, O’Herne did not speak about her experience until 1992, when three Korean comfort women demanded an apology and a compensation from the Japanese government. Inspired by the actions of these women, O’Herne decided to speak out as well. In 1994 O'Herne published a personal memoir titled "Fifty Years of Silence", which documents the struggles that she faced while secretly living the life of a war rape survivor. In September 2001 she was awarded the Order of Orange-Nassau by the Government of the Netherlands in recognition of her work as a spokeswoman about the plight of comfort women.^[2]

United States congressional hearing

On February 15, 2007 O’Herne appeared before the United States House of Representatives as part of a congressional hearing on "Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women":

Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women”, the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army...

...I have forgiven the Japanese for what they did to me, but I can never forget. For fifty years, the “Comfort Women” maintained silence; they lived with a terrible shame, of feeling soiled and dirty. It has taken 50 years for these women’s ruined lives to become a human rights issue.

— Statement by Jan Ruff O’Herne at a 2007 United States congressional hearing^[4]

Selected publications

• 1994: Fifty Years of Silence

References