A Korean woman, outraged by Japanese claims that the wartime brothels were run not by the government but by private entrepreneurs, came forward in protest, claiming she was kidnapped from her home by Japanese soldiers and forced into a life of sexual slavery. Others have since followed and Japanese historians dug up documents indisputably proving government complicity. Tokyo came forth with the 1993 apology.

But years before, in 1984, Shirota had dealt with her own demons.

Tortured by nightmares of the cries of the women who worked with her, she wrote a letter to Rev. Fumio Fukatsu, the Protestant minister who ran the shelter.

"Forty years have passed since the end of the war, but no voices have been raised anywhere in Japan. There are monuments to soldiers and civilians, but the girls who were offered for sex in China, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and the Aleutians, after being used freely, were just thrown away to wander in the freezing cold or become the food of dogs and wolves.

"Wherever the military went, there were comfort stations. ... They lined up, we had no time to clean ourselves before they had us again, we felt the pain of death. How many times did I want to strangle them? I was half crazy.... If you died you were just thrown into a pit in the jungle. No one would tell your family. I saw this with my own eyes, this hell for women."

Fukatsu helped Shirota realize a long-held wish - that a monument be built to the women.

At first, it was just a simple wooden marker erected on the hill near the chapel. Later, that was replaced by a proper stone monument, which, covered with lichens, remains there today, surrounded by weeds and a vegetable patch.

Sister Amaha, now in her 80s, makes the trip up the hill once a year for a small gathering on the anniversary of the day Japan surrendered.

Amaha, who was with Shirota when she died, said she doesn't expect others to come forward.

"There is an unspoken pressure not to come forward and bring shame on the nation," she said. "I think that is why none have spoken out. But she was the first to tell her story. It is proof, it is a challenge to the government.

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