In Memoriam Jan Ruff-O'Herne

Mrs. Jan Ruff-O'Herne died on Monday, August 19, 2019.

Jan was the Dutch Comfort Woman who traveled from her home in Australia to testify to a subcommittee of House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in February 2007 about how she was taken from her internment camp in 1944 on Java by Imperial Japanese Army officers for one of their brothels. Current research estimates that more than 1,000 Dutch, Indo-Dutch, and missionary women in the Japanese occupied Dutch East Indies were forced to be sex slaves to the Japanese military. This number does not include indigenous girls and women forced to become Comfort Women.

Jan was an extraordinarily brave and determined woman who was a civil rights icon and inspiration to women worldwide. Her daughter said that "a warrior has passed." Interview with Jan Ruff-O'Herne.

The 96-year-old International Peace Prize winner and decorated peace activist passed away peacefully surrounded by her family.

In 1992, after seeing on CNN the Bosnia rape victims and the Korean Comfort Women--sex slaves to the Japanese military--come forward to appeal for justice, Jan decided to finally tell her story of rape and survival.

She worked with the UN Human Rights Commission, International Red Cross, and Amnesty International, speaking in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the US and UK, the Netherlands and many other countries, sharing her incredible story.

Jan’s autobiography, Fifty Years of Silence, published by Random House has been translated into six different languages, including Japanese, Indonesia, Indian, Chinese and Korean.

A documentary film about Mrs Ruff O’Herne, "50 Years of Silence" won numerous accolades, including the 1995 Most Outstanding Documentary TV Logie, winner of the Australian Film Institute Awards, Best Documentary, winner of the 1995 EAC Dendy Awards, winner of the Best Film Non-Fiction, Asia Pacific Film Festival and winner World Film and TV Festival in Japan. Jan's granddaughter, Ruby Challenger, produced a short film, "Daily Bread," on her grandmother's internment.

Jan never believed that Japan had adequately apologized to the Comfort Women and refused to accept the "medical payments" offered by a private Japanese fund in the late-1990s. Of the hundreds of the then-recognized Comfort Women, only 78 men and women accepted these payments. Jan wanted an unequivocal government apology and atonement payment. She was disappointed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's backtracking on Japan's limited apology.

Jan received an Order of Australia in 2002, a papal honour from Pope John Paul II, Dame Commander of the Order of Saint Sylvester in the same year and in 2004 received a Centenary medal from Prime Minister John Howard for contributions made to Australian society.

Requiescet in pace

The funeral is on Tuesday, August 27th at 11:00am at Our Lady of Dolours Church, Kingswood,  South Australia, Australia.

Our grief shared with Squirrel Hill

Thanatos created by Karl Bitter

Green Mount Cemetery at Montpelier, Vermont

Dear Leader's passing

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il reportedly died on December 17th. His death was announced on Monday morning (Asian time) November 19. South Korea President Lee Myun-bak was in Japan and it just so happens to also be his birthday.

Washington's think tankers have also sprung into actions with comments, essays, and programs. However, the only certainty is uncertainty. Japan's Foreign Ministry, however, seems to have a handle on "it." As do the reporters at The Onion.

APP members have been among the first to comment with Kim Jong-un’s Shaky Hold on Power in North Korea by Richard Bush at Brookings and Morning Bell: The Death of Kim Jong-il by Bruce Klingner at Heritage.

North Korea Economy Watch blog is your best source for aggregating all the information and analysis of Kim's death. 

The Wall Street Journal put together an excellent list of The Best of Kim Jong-Il on the Web. Not to be missed is the ad parody of Kim on eHarmony.

Best analysis: Kim Jong Il’s Death Suggests Continuity Plus Opportunity to Engage By Peter Hayes, Scott Bruce, and David von Hippel, Natulius Institute, 12/19/11.

Ironically, Kim Jong Il’s death may make Korea the land of the morning calm for at least a year, during which political transitions will also occur in China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the United States... Unless Kim Jong Un throws the nuclear strategy out the window and starts again, the outlines of the engagement agenda are already clear—send the North Koreans energy and food aid to meet both short-term humanitarian and medium/long-term development needs, help them build a safe small light water reactor, and bring them into an international enrichment consortium that would lead them to reveal the sum total of their enrichment program.

We will try to list here the various Washington programs on the Dear Leader's death as they come in. Please return for updates:

NORTH KOREA IN TRANSITION: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 12/2, 6:30-8:00pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: US-Korea Institute, SAIS, Johns Hopkins. Speakers: Thomas Hubbard, chairman of the Korea Society and former U.S. ambassador to South Korea; Jae Ku, director of the U.S.-Korea Institute (USKI) at SAIS; and Jonathan Pollack, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Thornton Center.


THE KOREAN PENINSULA AFTER KIM JONG-IL: UNCERTAINTIES, CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES. 12/20, Noon-2:00pm, Lunch, Washington, DC. Sponsors: Korea Economic Institute, CSIS, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Speakers: Ambassador Jack Pritchard, President, Korea Economic Institute; Dr. Victor Cha, Korea Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Scott Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy, Council on Foreign Relations. LIVE STREAM


A VIEW FROM INSIDE NORTH KOREA POWER. 12/20, Noon-1:00pm, Lunch, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Center for National Policy. Speaker: Jeff Baron, Retired Foreign Service Officer who has traveled many times to North Korea.

He will be missed.