Last Daughters: How CGTN tracks the voices of Chinese and Filipina WWII sex slaves

Courtesy of Karena Chen – The Documentary Director at CGTN

They lost their childhood to the flames of war and were forced into sexual slavery.

They lived through decades of silence, carrying their burden alone. And then, they spoke.

CGTN’s original documentary Last Daughters traces the lives of “comfort women” survivors in China and the Philippines during World War II and the enduring impact on their families.

Today, only a handful remain alive – their voices and memories fading into the dust of history.

Through a cross-border lens, the film reveals the deep scars left by war and captures the quiet strength and warmth that endured, even in the darkest depths of human suffering.

Blinded at 9, victimized at 14

“He didn’t answer me.”

Peng Zhuying, aged 96, from central China’s Hunan Province, speaks softly.

A Japanese journalist had visited her home.

“I asked him,” she recalls, “‘Can your government apologize?’ He gave no reply.”

Peng is the last publicly identified survivor of Japan’s wartime “comfort women” system in China.

Six others linger in silence, bedridden by age and trauma. Just a month before the documentary filming began, “Grandma Xiaorui” – who had refused to disclose details of her past – passed away.

Peng lives alone in a narrow alleyway – a humble dwelling with one room and one kitchen. Her door opens directly in front of a refurbished public toilet.

On the first day of filming, she waited for us in her dimly lit corridor, her face serene beneath the single bulb she keeps on for visitors.

When I took her hands, calling her “Grandma,” tears fell. For a generation raised in times of peace, meeting a survivor of war was shattering.

Yet over days of filming, her quiet resilience revealed a woman far more than just a victim.

Born by the Yangtze River, Peng lost her eyesight at the age of nine when Japanese mustard gas bombs fell on Hunan. “The light vanished,” she says, “just vanished.”

In interviews, her laughter rings out only when describing pre-war memories: “The sky’s color and that of the river were the same. When I was a child, I would walk and see the moon following me.”

“The moon walks, and I walk too.”

For a moment, the war dissolves; she is a child again. It was the last time she saw the Yangtze.

In the summer of 1938, Peng’s mother and infant brother died from the gas.

Her 13-year-old sister, Peng Renshou, was betrayed to Japanese soldiers while fleeing.

“A collaborator, a man in his 50s, wanted me as his concubine. I refused. I would rather beg on the streets,” she recounted before her death.

“Enraged, he incited a group of Japanese soldiers to violate me.” She said they threatened to burn down a house with 50 people inside unless she surrendered.

She had no choice.

Gang-raped until unconscious, she survived but became infertile.

Three years later, 14-year-old Peng Zhuying suffered the same fate.

She was imprisoned in a “comfort station.”

They broke her toes when she resisted and violated her regularly.

“I only remember wanting to return home but couldn’t because I was afraid, they would kill me.”

After her release – aided by villagers, when troops marched on Changsha – she bled continuously from gynecological injuries. Like her sister, she never bore children.

After the war, Peng’s father forced his blind daughter to learn fortune-telling.

“I wanted to care for children instead. But he insisted that for a girl to survive, she needed a skill.”

She memorized every incantation.

For 80 years, it was her livelihood. She believed herself childless – until late 2024.

A CT scan revealed a calcified fetus, dead for decades, inside her womb.

Half the victims were Chinese

Japan’s “comfort women” system – a state-sponsored sexual slavery scheme by the military – was unprecedented in modern history.

It enslaved at least 400,000 women across Asia and the Pacific: Chinese, Korean, Filipino and others.

Half of them were Chinese.

The Japanese opened the world’s first “comfort station” in Shanghai, and over 2,100 followed. Girls, deemed “military supplies,” were trafficked like weapons. Many, too young, were left infertile.

The weight of silence

At 43, Peng married a fisherman 20 years her senior. Only after his death did she speak openly.

“Countless survivors stayed hidden,” says her nephew Peng Zifang. “In that era, speaking meant shame, ostracism, abuse.”

Dutch survivor Jan Ruff-O’Herne, author of “50 Years of Silence,” broke her own silence in 1992 – the first Western woman to publicly testify.

In the Dutch East Indies, 200 to 300 women were enslaved.

Marthe, who was 18 when she was taken, escaped after contracting a venereal disease but lived estranged and unmarried.

In the Philippines, 1,000 suffered similarly.

Maria Quistadio Arroyo, enslaved at 12, endured decades of spousal violence.

“My husband mocked me and physically abused me until he died,” she says. “No one punished the real criminals.”

“The closest people hurt you like the enemy did,” notes Zhang Ruyi, deputy director of China’s “Comfort Women” History Museum. “But those who speak rebuild our shared humanity.”

The unanswered question

By 2025, according to the “Comfort Women” Research Center at Shanghai Normal University, only seven registered survivors remain in China, with an average age of 96.

 According to Lila Pilipina, there are six in the Philippines.

Since 1995, victims from the Chinese mainland and the Taiwan region have filed five lawsuits against Japan in Tokyo.

All failed.

Though Japan’s Supreme Court acknowledged the Imperial Army’s sexual violence and its lasting harm, the state refuses reparations.

“The young Japanese aren’t to blame,” Peng tells us. “But can their government apologize?”

Will she live to hear it?

Darkness and light

In Peng’s home, we noticed two porcelain shards in her cooking pot.

“She listens to their sound to judge whether the food is cooked,” her nephew explains.

“She solves problems on her own. … She may be a victim, but she has never thought of herself as weak.”

“These elderly women, once enslaved, have suffered so much. Yet they shine with a certain light,” Zhang Ruyi reflects.

“Do you remember what Grandma Wei Shaolan said in the movie ‘Thirty-Two’?

‘This world is so beautiful. Even if I eat only husks and scraps, I want to keep looking at it.’ That, I think, is women’s power – raw and unfiltered.”

She gestures to Peng’s corridor, which is always lit for visitors.

“What is that if not love? If not confidence in humanity?”