Anne & Ama

I recently visited an exhibition called Anne and Ama in the museum of Taiwanese Literature. Anne Frank is a well-known little girl who is a victim of Nazi during World War II. She had been keeping journals during her life time, and her diaries were found after she was dead in a secret room in Amsterdam where she hid from Nazi. The room she lived is now a museum to memorize her. 

 

Ama is a Taiwanese word means grandmother. In this exhibition, Ama refers to a group of women who are also victims of Wold War II. They were re-crewed by Japanese government during war time into Japanese armies. They were told to do some house keeping works in the first place, but ended up being sex slaves in the army, which is known as comfort women. They had been forced having sex, and being tortured physically and mentally. Some of them couldn't survived and died in the army, some of them lived but couldn’t be accepted by their family because of the experience they had been through, making them even more misery than they already were. Ama had been suffered in their life time and they couldn’t get the justice they deserved.

These Ama were mostly teenagers when they were re-crewed, and having those experience made themselves losing confidence in humans, and hard to go back to normal lives no matter how hard they tried. Taipei women’s rescue foundation started help those women asking Japanese government to take full responsibility and compensate to those comfort women. In addition the foundation also help them finding themselves again and make their lives have different meanings. This exhibition shows the records of the foundation have been achieved. The pictures of these women smile so happy that I can’t see the scarves behind the faces. Most of Ama mentioned in the exhibition passed away few years ago. Reading stories of theirs is inspiring, and makes me feel thankful that I weren’t living in a war zone.

I find it interesting that this exhibition presents the stories of Anne and Ama in the same spot. Anne Frank is famous. Her story attracts so many people which make them willing to go to Netherlands and pay tickets to visit Anne’s house.

Ama’s stories are also meaningful and memorable, however, it seems not may people are attracted by it. That’s a shame.

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