CRI听力:Shanghai Exhibition Draws Attention to "Comfort Women" Issue

An exhibition displaying the plight of "comfort women" during World War II is being held in Shanghai.

Among the pictures being shown are those of 20 former "comfort women" who are still alive in China.

Su Zhiliang, head of the Center for Chinese Comfort Women which has organized the exhibition, says they are hoping to remind people of the suffering "comfort women" endured.

"Based on a large amount of facts, including records of these wartime victims and their lifetime of suffering, everyone can understand that comfort women are victims of a kind of military slavery system, which was a crime against humanity."

Research is suggesting around 400-thousand women were forced into sexual slavery during World War II by Japanese forces.

Around half of them were Chinese women.

Meanwhile, a photo exhibition detailing the stories of Japanese children orphaned in China has opened in Tokyo.

Sumie Ikeda, head of the China-Japan Friendship Association, is one of the Japanese children who was left behind in China after the war ended.

"I was ten months old then. If I had been killed or had starved to death during the war, I would not be here today. Because of my Chinese foster parents and the Chinese people, I am alive today. So I am grateful. I will never forget it."

It's estimated around 4-thousand Japanese children were taken in by Chinese foster parents after the war ended.

The events in Shanghai and Tokyo are being held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the war in China.