Five houses in which women were forced to serve as sex slaves for invading Japanese troops in 1930s will not be knocked down, but conservation will be costly and difficult to implement, a city official said yesterday. "The houses are too old to be renovated but we are aware of their historic value," Li Kongsan, an official from the Shanghai Cultural Relics Management Commission, said yesterday.Li said the city has decided to keep the houses, but turning it into a memorial site - as some city historians are urging - would be problematic because 260 people still live in the two-storied houses. 
Insiders said the government is hesitant about putting the buildings under the protection of the city's "excellent historic buildings" scheme because of the potential cost of relocating the families. Houses under the scheme can claim government funds for renovation. The insiders estimate that according to Shanghai's real estate price, the government would have to pay 100 million yuan (US$12.5 million) in compensation to the 53 families living in the houses.The Japanese-style buildings, known as "Daiyi Saloon" in Japanese, are at No. 123 to No. 125 Baoxing Road E. in Hongkou District. They were "comfort women houses" - a Japanese term for brothels during its army invasion of China and other Asian countries during World War II."As a historic proof of war, the site is as important as the Auschwitz concentration camp," said Su Zhiliang, a historian with Shanghai Normal University who has spent 13 years studying the Daiyi Saloon and is an ardent supporter of conserving it. He said the Daiyi Saloon houses were built by the Japanese navy in the early 1930s. A carved picture of Mount Fuji can still be seen on the upper wall of one of the houses. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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