Blind at 9, sex slave at 14: She carried a dead fetus for years

During World War II, Peng Zhuying's childhood was stolen twice. At just 9 years old, she was blinded by Japanese mustard gas. Five years later, soldiers shattered her toes and forced her into a military "comfort station." She is the only survivor in China's official records known to have endured both Japan's biological weapons and its wartime system of sexual slavery.

In her dim alleyway home in Hunan, a single bulb burns for visitors – a symbol of resilience that has outlasted imperial brutality. In 2025, when a Japanese journalist visited her, she asked the question that has haunted her for eight decades, "Can your government apologize?"

He left without a word.

Her body still bears witness to war's cruelty: In 2024, doctors found a calcified fetus inside her – a pregnancy conceived during enslavement at 15, preserved like a fossil of trauma.

This history enslaved 400,000 women, half of them Chinese. Today, only seven survive in China. As her light continues to defy the darkness, we ask: Will Japan break its silence before hers falls forever?