Comfort women

A Chinese girl from one of the Japanese Army's 'comfort battalions' during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Comfort women (Japanese: 慰安婦, ianfu) or military comfort women (Japanese: 従軍慰安婦, jūgun-ianfu) is a euphemism for women who provided (or were forced to provide) sex in military brothels in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II.

Around 200,000 girls and women, mostly from Korea and China, were conscripted as sex slaves.

Number of comfort women

There are different theories on the breakdown of the comfort women's place of origin. 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.

According to Chuo University professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi, there were about 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipino, Taiwanese, Burmese, Indonesian, Dutch[5], Australian and some Japanese women were forced to engage in sexual activity with Imperial military personnel.

However, for Nihon University professor Ikuhiko Hata, linked to the negationnist society Tsukurukai, the women working in the licensed pleasure quarter were 40% Japanese, 20% Koreans, 10% Chinese, with others making up the remaining 30%.

The Japanese government does not fully recognize allegations of large scale forced prostitution and, as such, does not additionally compensate the participants beyond what they earned during their period of service (As for the salary that a Japanese army had paid them, the half was deprived by their "master". ). However, the Japanese government has repeatedly offered verbal "expressions of regret" for any wounds they have caused, written apology; and it has established the private Asian Women's Fund.

Brothels as part of Japanese military policy

Historical research into Japanese government records documents several reasons given for the establishment of military brothels. First, Japanese authorities hoped that by providing easily accessible prostitutes and sexual slaves, the morale and ultimately the military effectiveness of Japanese soldiers would be improved. Second, 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 for prostitutes 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 military also sought comfort women from local sources. 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.

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. The "freshest" women were the least likely to suffer from STDs and were placed in the highest category. Virgins were usually given to officers for first sex. 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.

Responsibility and compensation

Japan regards all World War II compensation claims to be settled.

Both South Korea and Japan mutually confirm that all claims between the countries and their people have been settled completely and finally by the Treaty on Basic Relations and Agreement of Economic Cooperation and Property Claims between Japan and the Republic of Korea in 1965. Both countries confirmed that the treaty includes all claims from South Korea on a government to government basis, but private or corporate compensations are still not settled. The female victims more than anything would like an official apology by the Japanese government. Many women have declined offers of money for compensation and would prefer acknowledgement of their ordeal.

Despite this, in 1990, the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery filed suit, demanding official apologies and crimes against humanity compensation. Several surviving comfort women also independently filed suit in the Tokyo District Court. More suits followed in the ensuing years. It was widely expected that the court would reject all of these claims on the basis of the statutes of limitation or on the basis that the state is immune from civil suits in court on the matter of war time conduct. However, these suits have helped to revive and sustain the issue of comfort women in Japan as well as in the international media.

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. However, in 1992, the historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki 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 governement, represented by Chief Cabinet Secretary, Kato Koichi, 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 July 6 and August 4, the Japanese governments issued two statements 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 establishement and management of the comfort stations and the transfert of the women" and that the women "were recruited in many cases against their own will through coaxing and coercion". Since then, Japan's official position has been one of admitting "moral but not legal" responsibility.

Following official admission of a military connection to the brothels in 1992, the debate has shifted to consideration of evidence and testimony of coercive recruitment of comfort women during the war. In a number of mock trials (without cross-examination), surviving women have testified of being subjected to coercion and rape. 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 an unofficial signed apology from the prime minister. 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.

However, on 17 January 2005, additional documents detailing the minutes of Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and South 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 as compensation for its 1910-1945 occupation, and to take all responsibility for individual cases in place of the Japanese government. This further reduces the likelihood of legal proceedings resulting in any formal admission of responsibility.

Clearly time is on the side of the Japanese government. The number of surviving comfort women has dwindled from many thousands to a mere handful, all of whom will have died in another few years.

The ongoing debate over comfort women

Comfort women as victims of "slave-hunting"

The popular conception of "comfort women" is that many comfort women were kidnapped by Japanese soldiers to serve as sex slaves under orders from the Japanese authorities. It is commonly believed among peoples in many countries, including Japan, and especially in China, North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S. where a large number of Chinese and Korean people have immigrated.

In 1983, Kiyosada(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, also coinciding with re-examinations of other war crimes such as the Nanking Massacre and the activities of Unit 731. In this series the Asahi Shimbun repeatedly published excerpts of his book. Consequently, it was once regarded as an absolute evidence of "forced comfort women" and cited in the U.N. report by Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy as well.

However, Prof. Hata showed that the events portrayed in the book was a fabrication. Later, Yoshida admitted that he had included fictional elements in it, but refused to retract it 'due to his own pride'. Moreover, Prof. Yoshimi, a famous Japanese pursuer of Japanese government's responsibilities for comfort women, said in his book entitled Jūgun ianfu wo meguru 30 no uso to shinjitsu (30 Lies And Truths On Military Comfort Women) and a Japanese TV program Asa made nama TV!, it has not been verified that there were abductions of comfort women like slave-hunting by Japanese authorities in Korea and Taiwan (in TV: Japanese colonies), ignoring Yoshida's accusation.

It must be noted that several former comfort women testified that they were actually kidnapped by Japanese soldiers.

Controversy over Japan's responsibilities for comfort women

Prostitution and bonded labour were both legal in Japan when the events of World War II unfolded. Some assert that if the middlemen were coercing women, then much of the blame, whether legal or moral, can be shifted to them. Others maintain that even if legal, the system was morally opprobrious, should not have been legal and that the exploitation was on such a large scale that the government could not be absolved of complicity. While there is no dispute that the sexual slaves were acquired at the behest of the Japanese, they argue that these middlemen were not Japanese government officials, that women were sold to middlemen by their parents out of financial privation, and that many local community leaders used trickery or coercion to provide their own local women to the Japanese. Since forcible procurement by direct action occurred alongside procurement by private middlemen, it is often difficult to separate the two. Also, the issue of who caused the financial hardship on these families needs to be evaluated.

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: Rear-echelon...Comfort...[unreadable]. 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., ...[unreadable]. [Contact at] [Address(unreadable)] Imai [Employment] Registry

Pointing to the complicity of locals allows those who have an incentive to absolve Japan of its war guilt and to defeat compensation claims to deflect the responsibility away from the Japanese military. They claim that Japan had merely taken advantage of an already accepted local practice. The issue is extremely controversial, especially in regard to Korean comfort women. Subsequent research strongly suggests that Japanese soldiers on the frontline did indeed force women into military brothels. However, apologists for the Japanese government suggest that somehow the context in which such acts were carried out changes the nuance of the moral responsibility for the rapes. Moreover, the existence of middlemen makes it difficult for ex-comfort women to pursue compensation claims.(See Fig.1.)

There is debate over how much blame should be placed on the military hierarchy, or for that matter, the Japanese government. Common defenses of the Japanese government at the time are the lack of a document proving that the Japanese military ordered middlemen to procure comfort women by force, that the purpose of military brothel system was to prevent rape, and that the military issued the directive to select agents carefully in order that these agents would not get involved in illegal methods of procurement. Those who deny official responsibility admit that abuse at a local level might have occurred, but this is often blamed on failure of oversight, confused policy in regard to a suspected guerilla force, and a lack of resources at the front line. Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone (in)famously 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.

See also

• Japanese war crimes
• Japanese war crimes in mainland Asia
• List of Japanese War Atrocities
• List of War Apology Statements Issued by Japan
• Sexual slavery
• Trafficking in human beings
• Joy Division (World War II)
• Historical revisionism
• History of Korea
• Recreation and Amusement Association
• German Soldier's House
• Mike Honda

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. 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