By Professor Akihisa Matsuno Timor-Leste Timor-Leste was a Portuguese colony with the population of only half a million when Japan invaded it in February 1942. Portugal was a neutral country, but Japan claimed that her neutrality had been breached by the landing of the Australian and Dutch forces in December 1941. The Japanese military occupied the whole island for three and a half years in order to drive out the Australian force from there. Japan sent Portuguese residents to internment and forced Timorese to work for the Japanese. If they refused, they were severely punished or even executed. The Japanese military set up numerous comfort stations across the country and ordered traditional chiefs to collect young girls. They also brought Korean and Indonesian women to Timor as “comfort women”. Officers often had their own girl in their respective residence. After the war, the survivors continued to suffer physically and psychologically. They were often hurt by inconsiderate remarks of others. Some could not marry or get a child. Others never told their experiences to their husband and family. Indonesia Indonesia was a Dutch colony and was called the Netherlands East Indies. Japan invaded Indonesia in 1942 and occupied her for three and a half years. The purpose was to obtain petroleum that Japan desperately needed to continue its war against the Allies. The Netherlands was a member of the Allies, and the Japanese military interned Dutch citizens in camps. Meanwhile Japan promised with Indonesian nationalists to grant independence, and mobilized Indonesians for its war efforts under its imperialist slogan of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Millions were recruited as romusha or forced laborers and were sent to various places in Asia occupied by Japan for hard work. Many died overseas. The military also set up comfort stations wherever its troops were stationed. Korean, Indonesian and Dutch women were confined in those comfort stations. After the war, when they returned to the community that was patriarchal and religiously strict, they were sometimes not admitted. In such a case, they had to live a lonely life in poverty throughout their life. Akihisa Matsuno, East Timor Japan Coalition. He researches wartime sexual violence in Timor-Leste and Indonesia. He authored Luta ba Lia Loos no Justisa, a Tetun report of the joint research by the HAK Association and the East Timor Japan Coalition on the Japan’s sexual slavery system in Timor-Leste, in 2016. Interviewer Koichi Kimura was born in 1947 in Tokyo. He is a pastor, political theologian, peace activist, and researcher of the “comfort Women” issue of Indonesia. He lives in Fukuoka, Japan.