Chinese woman breaks silence on sex slavery horror

Zhou remarried and lives with her son, Jiang, from her second marriage.

Jiang said his mother had been moved to tell her story after learning of the death of Lei Guiying, a well-known former Chinese comfort woman.

Lei died of a brain hemorrhage in April. She had gone public with her experiences last year after hiding the ordeal from her family for 60 years.

Jiang said he was not ashamed of his mother, one of only an estimated 50 former Chinese sex slaves still alive today.

He said her experiences should highlight to the world the extent of the wartime crimes committed by the Japanese.

"When my mother told me about this, as her son, I do not hate her for that. The Japanese are the ones I should be hating. The Japanese are those who committed the crimes. The Japanese are responsible for this, they raped all of the women," he said.

Tokyo has not paid direct compensation to any of the estimated 200,000 mostly Asian women forced to work in brothels for the Japanese military before and during World War Two, saying all claims were settled by peace treaties that ended the war.

Instead, in 1995, Tokyo set up the Asian Women's Fund, a private group with heavy government support, to make cash payments to surviving wartime sex slaves.