Subject: The Review: The Nightmare of History Is this a plea for historians to be granted some of the moral authority of the traumatized, of the survivor? That s Michael Roth, a historian and president of Wesleyan University, commenting on Can Historians Be Traumatized by History?, an article recently published in
The New Republic. Based on that headline, I was initially sympathetic to Roth s skepticism. But the article, by James Robins, moved me. It begins with the story of Iris Chang, the historian whose book
The Rape of Nanking (1997) Robins credits with resurrecting for a new generation the half-forgotten savagery unleashed on Chinese citizens by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1937. Chang s research required numberless hours absorbed in accounts of murder, rape, torture, mutilation. Especially crucial were her videotaped interviews with traumatized survivors.
<p>One of the last survivors among the Korean "comfort women" of World War II has denounced a recent paper characterizing the trafficking of women by the Imperial Japanese Army as ordinary prostitution. </p>
New York Times Service
February 26, 2021
SEOUL, South Korea The students and the survivor were divided by two generations and 7,000 miles, but they met on Zoom to discuss a common goal: turning a Harvard professor’s widely disputed claims about sexual slavery during World War II into a teachable moment.
A recent academic journal article by the professor in which he described as “prostitutes” the Korean and other women forced to serve Japan’s troops prompted an outcry in South Korea and among scholars in the United States.
It also offered a chance, on the Zoom call last week, for the aging survivor of the Japanese Imperial Army’s brothels to tell her story to a group of Harvard students, including her case for why Japan should issue a full apology and face international prosecution.
As a young woman, pregnant and HIV-positive, Maurine Murenga did not have easy access to drugs that could save her life. Today she is an activist for equitable health-care. The global distribution of coronavirus vaccines is an issue of concern. Image: Victor Chavez/Getty Images
In 2001, Maurine Murenga was pregnant and HIV-positive. She was living in Kenya, and a counselor encouraged her to fill out a memory book. She wrote directions to her village, details about her family so that when she died, someone would know where to bury her and where to send her child. It was nothing like preparing, says Murenga. It was actually preparing us for death.