Comfort women

Comfort women (Japanese: 慰安婦, ianfu) or military comfort women (Japanese: 従軍慰安婦, jūgun-ianfu) is a euphemism for around 200,000 sex slaves, mostly from Korea and China, conscripted into military brothels in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II.

Rangoon, Burma. August 8, 1945. An ethnic Chinese woman who was in one of the Imperial Japanese Army's "comfort battalions" is interviewed by an Allied officer.

Number of comfort women

Estimates vary from 50,000 to 300,000, but most sources indicate about 200,000 young women were recruited to serve in Japanese military brothels. It is generally recognized that most of them were from Korea.

However, according to Kanto Gakuin University professor Hirofumi Hayashi, the majority of the women were from Japan, Korea, and China. Others came from the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Dutch East Indies, and other Japanese-occupied countries and regions. Chuo University professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi states there were about 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Taiwanese, Burmese, Indonesian, Dutch and Australian women were interned. Nihon University professor Ikuhiko Hata states the number of women working in the licensed pleasure quarter was fewer than 20,000. They were 40% Japanese, 20% Koreans, 10% Chinese, with others making up the remaining 30%.

Establishment of comfort women system

Given the well-organized and open nature of prostitution in Japan, it was seen as logical that there should be organized prostitution to serve the Japanese Armed Forces. Japanese authorities hoped that by providing easily accessible prostitutes. the morale and ultimately the military effectiveness of Japanese soldiers would be improved. Also, by institutionalizing brothels and placing them under official scrutiny, the government hoped to control the spread of STDs. Lastly, creating brothels in military bases directly on the front line removed the perceived need to grant leave to soldiers.

In the early stages of the war, Japanese authorities recruited prostitutes through conventional means. Middlemen advertised in newspapers circulating in Japan and the Japanese colonies of Korea, Taiwan, Manchukuo, and mainland China. Many who answered the advertisements were already prostitutes and offered their services voluntarily. Others were sold by their families to the military due to economic hardship. However, these sources soon dried up, especially from Japan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs resisted further issuance of travel visas for Japanese prostitutes, feeling it tarnished the image of the Japanese Empire. The military turned to acquiring comfort women outside mainland Japan, especially from Korea and occupied China. Many women were tricked or defrauded into joining the military brothels. The US Army Force Office report of interview with 20 comfort women in Burma found that the girls were induced by the offer of plenty of money, an opportunity to pay off the family debts, and on the basis of these false representations many girls enlisted for overseas duty and were rewarded with an advance of a few hundred yen.

In urban areas, conventional advertising through middlemen was used alongside kidnapping. However, along the front lines, especially in the countryside where middlemen were rare, the military often directly demanded that local leaders procure women for the brothels. This situation became worse as the war progressed. Under the strain of the war effort, the military became unable to provide enough supplies to Japanese units; in response, the units made up the difference by demanding or looting supplies from the locals. Moreover, when the locals, especially Chinese, were considered hostile, Japanese soldiers carried out the "Three Alls Policy", which included indiscriminately kidnapping and raping local civilians.

Several former comfort women testified that they were kidnapped by Japanese soldiers. According to veteran showa soldier Yasuji Kaneko, the women "cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctances."

There are many evidences of organized serial rapes by Japanse Imperial Army officers and doctors. According to Dutch archives, 10 Dutch women were taken from prison camps in Java by officers of the Japanese Imperial Army to become prostitutes in February 1944. Although they were returned to the prison camps within three months upon protest of the Dutch prisoners against the Imperial Army, the officers were not punished until the end of the war; 11 officers were declared guilty with one sentenced to death by the Batavia War Criminal Court.

As a of the victim of the incident, Jan Ruff-O'Hearn testimonied to the U.S. House of Congress, "Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women”, the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army. In the so-called “Comfort Station” I was systematically beaten and raped day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me each time he visited the brothel to examine us for veneral disease."

It is also claimed that beatings and physical torture were not uncommon. A single woman could expect to have sex a dozen to forty times a day, often resulting in injury to the genitals. Women were divided into three or four categories, depending on their length of service.

As time went on, the comfort women were downgraded as the likelihood of their acquiring STDs became more certain. Any others who were suspected with pregnancy were forced to undergo crude methods of abortion, more often than not killing the women through over-bleeding during surgical removals. When they were considered likely to be too diseased to be of any further use, they were abandoned, often far from home, or even in a different country, as the comfort women were shipped wherever deemed necessary. Sometimes to conceal the existence of their use of comfort women, retreating Japanese battalions would stash these women in secret caves and blast the entrance, causing landslides that sealed the cave. Many women reported having their uteruses rot from the diseases acquired from being raped by thousands of men over several years, at times requiring surgical removal.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone stated in his memoir that he set up a comfort house for his troops of about 3,000 when he was a navy lieutenant in charge of accounting. When criticised, he claimed that he was unaware that the women were forced into service.

Responsibility and compensation

In 1983, Seiji Yoshida published Watashino sensō hanzai - Chōsenjin Kyōsei Renkō (My War Crimes: The Impressment of Koreans), in which the author confesses to forcibly procuring women from Jeju Island in Korea under the direct order from the Japanese military. In 1991, Asahi Shimbun, one of the major newspapers of Japan, ran a series on comfort women for a year. This is often regarded as the trigger of the on-going controversy over comfort women in Japan. In this series the Asahi Shimbun repeatedly published excerpts of his book. Consequently, it was regarded as evidence of "forced comfort women" and cited in the U.N. report by Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy as well.

Initially the Japanese government denied any official connection to the wartime brothels; in June 1990, the Japanese government declared that all brothels were run by private contractors. In 1990, the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery filed suit, demanding compensation. Several surviving comfort women also independently filed suit in the Tokyo District Court. The court rejected these claims on grounds such as statute of limitations, the immunity of the State at the time of the act concerned, and non-subjectivity of the individual of international law. [6].

However, in 1992, the historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi discovered incriminating documents in the archives of Japan's Defense Agency indicating that the military was directly involved in running the brothels (by, for example, selecting the agents who recruited). When Yoshimi's findings were published in the Japanese media on January 12, 1993, they caused a sensation and forced the government, represented by Chief Cabinet Secretary, Koichi Kato, to acknowledge some of the facts the same day. On January 17, Prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented formal apologies for the suffering of the victims during a trip to South Korea.

On August 4 in 1993, the Japanese governments issued a statement by which it recognized that "Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military of the day", that "The Japanese military was directly or indirectly involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of the women" and that the women "were recruited in many cases against their own will through coaxing and coercion". The Government of Japan "sincerely apologizes and (expresses its] remorse to all those, irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable psychological wounds". In that statement, the Government of Japan expressed its "firm determination never to repeat the same mistake and that they would engrave such issue. through the study and teaching of history".[7]

In 1995, Japan set up an "Asia Women's Fund" for atonement in the form of material compensation and to provide each surviving comfort woman with a signed apology from the prime minister, stating "As Prime Minister of Japan, I thus extend anew my most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women." The fund is funded by private donations and not government money, and has been criticized as a way to avoid admitting government abuse. But because of the unofficial nature of the fund, many comfort women have rejected these payments and continue to seek an official apology and compensation.

Although there is no evidence of official order by Japanese Army, there are many evidences of sexual abuse by soldiers. 10 Dutch women were taken by force from prison camps in Java by officers of the Japanese Imperial Army to become forced sex slaves in February 1944. They were systematically beaten and raped day and night in so called "Comfort Station". Even the Japanese doctor visiting the brothel "Comfort Station" to examine for veneral disease participated in the rape. Although they were returned to the prison camps within three months upon protest of the Dutch prisoners against the Imperial Army, the officers were not punished by Japanese authorities until the end of the war. After the end of the war 11 Japanese officers were declared guilty with one sentenced to death by the Batavia War Criminal Court. It decided that the case was not crime organized by the Army and that the ones who raped violated the Army’s order to hire only voluntary women.

On 17 January 2005, additional documents detailing the minutes of the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea were released by South Korean government. They suggest that the South Korean government agreed not to demand further compensation, either at the government or individual level against the Japanese government, after receiving $800 million in grants and soft loans from Japan .

On 2 March 2007, the issue was raised again by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, in which he denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II in an orchestrated way. He stated, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion." Before he spoke, a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers also sought to revise Yohei Kono's 1993 apology to former comfort women. Abe's statement provoked a negative reaction from Asian and Western countries. The New York Times editorial said “These were not commercial brothels. Force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women. What went on in them was serial rape, not prostitution. The Japanese Army’s involvement is documented in the government’s own defense files.” An unidentified official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan said unofficially that this editorial was inaccurate and would demand the NYT to publish its rebuttal.[8] Abe stopped "unproductive argument" because his statement is always mistaken.[9] On 11 March 2007 Abe said on NHK broadcast that he would succeed Kono's 1993 apology to former comfort women .

Fig.1. Recruitment advertising for Comfort women in newspapers in Korea.
(Right: Keijō nippō, July 26, 1944) "Comfort Women Wanted, Urgent!" Age: 17-30. Place of Employment: entertainment for non-frontline unit [obscured]. Monthly Salary: More than 300 yen. (You can receive an advance on salary up to 3000 yen.) From 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., ...[obscured]. [Contact at] [Address(unreadable)] Imai [Employment] Registry

See also

• Japanese war crimes
• List of War Apology Statements Issued by Japan
• Sexual slavery
• Trafficking in human beings
• Joy Division (World War II)
• Historical revisionism
• History of Korea
• Mike Honda
• Anti-Japanese sentiment
• Korean nationalism

References

Some recent work on the comfort women issue include:

• Tanaka, Yuki Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the US Occupation, London, Routledge: 2002. ISBN 0-415-19401-6.
• Yoshimi, Yoshiaki Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, Columbia University Press, 2001. (mentioned RAA too) ISBN 0-231-12032-X.
• Molasky, Michael S. American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa, Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0-415-19194-7, ISBN 0-415-26044-2.
• D. Kim-Gibson, Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women, 1999. ISBN 0-931209-88-9.
• Hicks, George L. The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, 1997. ISBN 0-393-31694-7.
• Schellstede, Sangmie Choi. Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military, 2000. ISBN 0-8419-1413-3.

A review of the Tanaka text can be found in the academic journal Intersections, Issue 9:

• Morris, Narrelle. Review of Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the US Occupation. Warwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue9/morris_review.html

A review of some of these books and a history and historiography of the issue, from a critical viewpoint, can be found in issue 58:2 of Monumenta Nipponica:

• Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashii "Comfort Women: Beyond Litigious Feminism"

A work of literature on the issue was created by Korean American writer Nora Okja Keller:

• Nora Okja Keller "Comfort Woman", London, Penguin: 1998. ISBN 0-14-026335-7.

External links

Asian Women's Fund web site Comfort-Women.org "The Victims" (from the South Korean Ministry of Gender and Family Equality) Photo gallery at the Seoul Times. A Public Betrayed - How the Japanese Media Betrays its Own People Coop, Stephanie (December 23, 2006). "Sex slave exhibition exposes darkness in East Timor" (Newspaper article). The Japan Times. Retrieved 2006-12-23. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |accessyear=, |coauthors=, and |month= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) Academic research The Comfort Women project Hayashi Hirofumi's papers on comfort women Responsibility Toward Comfort Women Survivors: Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper 77. Japan's Comfort Women, Theirs and Ours: Book review, Japan Policy Research Institute Critique 9:2. Journal of Asian American Studies 6:1, Feb 2003, issue on American studies of comfort women, Kandice Chuh, ed. Japanese official statements Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on the occasion of the establishment of the "Asian Women's Fund" (1995, Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs) Letter from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the former comfort women (2001, Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs) United States historical documents House Concurrent Resolution 226 (June 23, 2003, 108th United States Congress), introduced by Rep. Lane Evans (Illinois 17), referred to House Committee on International Relations; not passed. Japanese Comfort Women (1944, United States Office of War Information) Footnotes