Verda Majo, whose original name was Hasegawa Teruko, was born on March 7, 1912 into a civil engineer's family in Japan. She graduated from the No. 3 Girls School in Tokyo in 1929, and later was admitted to Nara Women's Normal School.
Verda Majo met a Chinese student named Liu Ren in Tokyo in 1935, and married him the next year despite her family's objections.
In April 1937, with the help of friends, she left her parents and hometown for China. After the Japanese army occupied Shanghai, she wrote reports on the occupation.
At the end of June 1938, she went to Wuhan, then the center of the anti-Japanese resistance. On the recommendation of Guo Moruo, a cultural elite, she became a Japanese presenter with the Central Radio Station run by the Kuomintang, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army.
Speaking into the microphone everyday, she touched the hearts of Japanese soldiers with her words.
Her program, in particular, rattled the morale of the Japanese army.
In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders.
Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. Her husband was so heartbroken that he fell sick and died 100 days later. The couple was buried in the Martyrs' Cemetery in Jiamusi, Heilongjiang Province.
The late Premiere Zhou Enlai called Majo "a faithful daughter of the Japanese people, a true patriot", and "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."
(China.org.cn November 18, 2005)
