Comfort women

Comfort women
Japanese name
Kanji 慰安婦
Rōmaji ianfu
Alternate Japanese name
Kanji 従軍慰安婦
Rōmaji jūgun-ianfu
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 慰安婦
Simplified Chinese 慰安妇
Hanyu Pinyin Wèiān Fù
Wade-Giles Wei-An Fu
Korean name
Hangul 위안부
Hanja 慰安婦
Revised Romanization wianbu
McCune-Reischauer wianbu
Alternate Korean name
Hangul 일본군 성노예
Hanja 日本軍 性奴隸
Revised Romanization ilbongun seongnoye
McCune-Reischauer ilbon'gun sŏngnoye

The term "comfort women" was a euphemism used to describe women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.[1][2]

Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars[3] to as high as 410,000 from some Chinese scholars,[4] but the exact numbers are still being researched and debated. A majority of the women were from Korea, China, Japan and the Philippines,[5] although women from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and other Japanese-occupied territories were used for military "comfort stations". Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then Malaya, Thailand, then Burma, then New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and what was then French Indochina.[6]

Young women from countries under Japanese Imperial control were abducted from their homes. In many cases, women were also lured with promises of work in factories or restaurants. Once recruited, the women were incarcerated in "comfort stations" in foreign lands. Other women were rounded up at gunpoint, some being raped before being herded into "comfort stations".[2][7] It has been documented that the Japanese military itself recruited women by force.[8] Some "comfort stations" were run by private agents supervised by the Japanese Army or run directly by the Japanese Army.[1][2]

Some Japanese, such as historian Ikuhiko Hata, deny that there was organized forced recruitment of comfort women by the Japanese government or military.[9] Other Japanese historians, using the testimony of ex-comfort women and surviving Japanese soldiers have argued that the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were either directly or indirectly involved in coercing, deceiving, luring, and sometimes kidnapping young women throughout Japan's occupied territories.[10]

Contents

Establishment of the Comfort Women System

Japanese military prostitution

Military correspondence of the Japanese Imperial Army shows that the aim of facilitating comfort stations was the prevention of rape crimes committed by Japanese army personnel and thus preventing the rise of hostility among people in occupied areas.[3]

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.[11] The Japanese Army established the comfort stations to prevent venereal diseases and rape by Japanese soldiers, to provide comfort to soldiers and head off espionage. The comfort stations were not actual solutions to the first two problems, however. According to Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, they aggravated the problems. Yoshimi has asserted, "The Japanese Imperial Army feared most that the simmering discontentment of the soldiers could explode into a riot and revolt. That is why it provided women."[12]

Recruitment

Outline

The first "comfort station" was established in the Japanese concession in Shanghai in 1932. Earlier comfort women were Japanese prostitutes who volunteered for such service. However, as Japan continued military expansion, the military found itself short of Japanese volunteers, and turned to the local population to coerce women into serving in these stations.[15] Many women responded to calls for work as factory workers or nurses, and did not know that they were being pressed into sexual slavery.[16]

In the early stages of the war, Japanese authorities recruited prostitutes through conventional means. In urban areas, conventional advertising through middlemen was used alongside kidnapping. Middlemen advertised in newspapers circulating in Japan and the Japanese colonies of Korea, Taiwan, Manchukuo, and China. These sources soon dried up, especially from Japan.[17] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs resisted further issuance of travel visas for Japanese prostitutes, feeling it tarnished the image of the Japanese Empire.[18] 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.[19]

The 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. 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. When the locals, especially Chinese, were considered hostile, Japanese soldiers carried out the "Three Alls Policy", which included indiscriminately kidnapping and raping local civilians.[20]

The United States Office of War Information report of interviews with 20 comfort women in Burma found that the girls were induced by the offer of plenty of money, an opportunity to pay off family debts, easy work, and the prospect of a new life in a new land, Singapore. On the basis of these false representations many girls enlisted for overseas duty and were rewarded with an advance of a few hundred yen.[21]

Late archives inquiries and trials

On April 17, 2007 Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Hirofumi Hayashi announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokeitai (Naval military police), forced women whose fathers attacked the Kempeitai (Army military police), to work in front line brothels in China, Indochina and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing to having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.[22]

On 12 May 2007 journalist Taichiro Kajimura announced the discovery of 30 Dutch government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced mass prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang.[23]

The South Korean government designated Bae Jeong-ja as a pro-Japan collaborator (chinilpa) in September 2007 for recruiting comfort women.[24][25]

Number of comfort women

Lack of official documentation has made estimates of the total number of comfort women difficult, as vast amounts of material pertaining to matters related to war crimes and the war responsibility of the nation's highest leaders were destroyed on the orders of the Japanese government at the end of the war.[26] Historians have arrived at various estimates by looking at surviving documentation which indicate the ratio of the number of soldiers in a particular area to the number of women, as well as looking at replacement rates of the women.[27] Historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, who conducted the first academic study on the topic which brought the issue out into the open, estimated the number to be between 50,000 and 200,000.[3]

Based on these estimates, most international media sources quote about 200,000 young women were recruited or kidnapped by soldiers to serve in Japanese military brothels. The BBC quotes "200,000 to 300,000" and the International Commission of Jurists quotes "estimates of historians of 100,000 to 200,000 women."[28]

Country of origin

Internationally, it is generally thought that most of the women were from Korea and China.[29] According to State University of New York at Buffalo professor Yoshiko Nozaki and other sources, the majority of the women were from Korea and China.[30] 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.[31] Ikuhiko Hata, a professor of Nihon University, estimated the number of women working in the licensed pleasure quarter was fewer than 20,000 and that they were 40% Japanese, 20% Koreans, 10% Chinese, with others making up the remaining 30%. According to Hata, the total number of government-regulated prostitutes in Japan was only 170,000 during World War II.[32] Others came from the Philippines, Taiwan, Dutch East Indies, and other Japanese-occupied countries and regions.[33] Some Dutch women, captured in Dutch colonies in Asia, were also forced into sexual slavery.[34]

In further analysis of the Imperial Army medical records for venereal disease treatment from 1940, Yoshimi concluded that if the percentages of women treated reflected the general makeup of the total comfort women population, Korean women comprised 51.8 percent, Chinese 36 percent and Japanese 12.2 percent.[12]

According to the Kono Statement in 1993, of those comfort women who were transferred to the war areas, excluding those from Japan, those from the Korean Peninsula accounted for a large part.[35]

To date, only one Japanese woman has published her testimony. This was done in 1971, when a former "comfort woman" forced to work for showa soldiers in Taiwan, published her memoirs under the pseudonym of Suzuko Shirota.[36]

Treatment of comfort women

Approximately three quarters of comfort women died, and most survivors were left infertile due to sexual trauma or sexually-transmitted disease.[37] According to Japanese soldier Yasuji Kaneko[38] "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 reluctance."[39] Beatings and physical torture were said to be common.[40]

Ten 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 a so called "Comfort Station".[10][40] As a victim of the incident, in 1990, Jan Ruff-O'Herne testified to a U.S. House of Representatives committee:

"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 venereal disease."[10][40]

In their first morning at the brothel, photographs of Jan Ruff-O'Herne and the others were taken and placed on the veranda which was used as a reception area for the Japanese personnel who would choose from these photographs. Over the following four months the girls were raped and beaten day and night, with those who became pregnant forced to have abortions. After four harrowing months, the girls were moved to a camp at Bogor, in West Java, where they were reunited with their families. This camp was exclusively for women who had been put into military brothels, and the Japanese warned the inmates that if anyone told what had happened to them, they and their family members would be killed. Several months later the O’Hernes were transferred to a camp at Batavia, which was liberated on 15 August 1945.[41][42][43]

The Japanese officers involved received some punishment by Japanese authorities at the end of the war.[44] After the end of the war, 11 Japanese officers were found guilty with one soldier being sentenced to death by the Batavia War Criminal Court.[44] The court decision found that the charges those who raped violated were the Army’s order to hire only voluntary women.[44] Victims from East Timor testified they were forced into slavery even when they were not old enough to have started menstruating. The court testimonies state that these prepubescent girls were repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers[45] while those who refused to comply were executed.[46][47]

Hank Nelson, emeritus professor at the Australian National University’s Asia Pacific Research Division, has written about the brothels run by the Japanese military in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea during WWII. He quotes from the diary of Gordon Thomas, a POW in Rabaul. Thomas writes that the women working at the brothels “most likely served 25 to 35 men a day” and that they were “victims of the yellow slave trade.”[48]

Nelson also quotes from Kentaro Igusa, a Japanese naval surgeon who was stationed in Rabaul. Igusa wrote in his memoirs that the women continued to work through infection and severe discomfort, though they “cried and begged for help.”[48]

Occupied territories

During World War II, the Shōwa regime implemented in Korea, a prostitution system similar to the one established in other parts of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Korean agents, Korean Kempeitai (military police) and military auxiliaries were involved in the procurement and organization of comfort women, and made use of their services.[49] Chong-song Pak found that "Koreans under Japanese rule became fully acculturated as main actors in the licensed prostitution system that was transplanted in their country by the colonial state".[50]

Evidence

After its defeat, the Japanese military destroyed many documents for fear of war crimes prosecution.[51]

Historians have searched for evidence of the Army and Navy's coercion, and some written proof has been discovered, such as documents found in 2007 by Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Hirofumi Hayashi.[22] The surviving sex slaves wanted an apology from the Japanese government. Shinzō Abe, the prime minister at the time, stated that there was no evidence that the Japanese government had kept sex slaves, but later had to issue an official apology because the Japanese government had already admitted the use of brothels in 1993.[52]

Criticism

Japanese historian and Nihon University professor, Ikuhiko Hata estimates the number of comfort women to be more likely between 10,000 and 20,000.[3] Hata writes that none of the comfort women were forcibly recruited.[53]

Some Japanese politicians have argued that the former comfort women's testimony is inconsistent and unreliable, making it invalid.[54]

A comic book, Neo Gomanism Manifesto Special - On Taiwan by Japanese author Yoshinori Kobayashi, depicts kimono-clad women lining up to sign up for duty before a Japanese soldier. Kobayashi's book contains an interview with Taiwanese industrialist Shi Wen-long who stated that no women were forced to serve, and that they worked in more hygienic conditions compared to regular prostitutes because the use of condoms was mandatory.[55]

There was a controversy involving NHK in early 2001. What was supposed to be coverage of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery was extremely edited to reflect revisionist views.[56]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Tessa Morris-Suzuki (March 8, 2007), Japan's 'Comfort Women': It's time for the truth (in the ordinary, everyday sense of the word), The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tessa-Morris_Suzuki/2373, retrieved 2011-08-04 
  2. ^ a b c WCCW 2004.
  3. ^ a b c d Asian Women'sFund, p. 10.
  4. ^ Rose 2005, p. 88.
  5. ^ http://womenshistory.about.com/od/warwwii/a/comfort_women.htm
  6. ^ Reuters 2007-03-05.
  7. ^ Yoshimi 2000, pp. 100–101, 105–106, 110–111;
    Fackler 2007-03-06;
    BBC 2007-03-02;
    BBC 2007-03-08.
  8. ^ Ministerie van Buitenlandse zaken 1994, pp. 6–9, 11, 13–14.
  9. ^ Hata Ikuhiko (PDF), NO ORGANIZED OR FORCED RECRUITMENT: MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT COMFORT WOMEN AND THE JAPANESE MILITARY, hassin.sejp.net, http://hassin.sejp.net/Hata-Ianfu_text.pdf, retrieved 2008-12-15  (First published in Shokun May, 2007 issue in Japanese. Translated by Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact).
  10. ^ a b c Onishi 2007-03-08.
  11. ^ Hicks 1995.
  12. ^ a b korea.net 2007-11-30.
  13. ^ On the right: Keijō nippō (Newspaper published by Japanese government, Governor-General of Korea) July 26, 1944: Big recruitment for comfort women. Age: 17 to 23 year old women... Monthly salary: 300 yen or higher and a prepayment of 3000 yen... On the left: Mainichi shinpō October 27, 1944: Urgent recruitment for [Military] comfort women... Age: 18 to 30 year old women of good health/constitution. Recruitment period: October 27 to November 8... Number of recruitment positions: Several dozen (tens)...
  14. ^ Jeong Hye-gyeong (정혜경) (2002) (in Korean), Research on the History Before and After the Liberation 1 (해방 전후사 사료 연구 1), Seonin (선인), ISBN 8989205441, "매일신보 1944년 10월 27일자의 광고와 같이 '위안부 모집 광고'를 게재한 경우도 있다. 어떠한 경우에도 일본군위안부가 무엇인지, 무슨 일을 하는지에 대해..." 
  15. ^ Mitchell 1997.
  16. ^ "[...] Pak (her surname) was about 17, living in Hamun, Korea, when local Korean officials, acting on orders from the Japanese, began recruiting women for factory work. Someone from Pak's house had to go. In April of 1942, turned Pak and other young women over to the Japanese, who took them into China, not into factories [...]", Horn 1997.
  17. ^ Yoshimi 2000, pp. 100–101, 105–106, 110–111;
    Hicks 1997, pp. 66–67, 119, 131, 142–143;
    Ministerie van Buitenlandse zaken 1994, pp. 6–9, 11, 13–14.
  18. ^ Yoshimi 2000, pp. 82–83;
    Hicks 1997, pp. 223–228.
  19. ^ Yoshimi 2000, pp. 101–105, 113, 116–117;
    Hicks 1997, pp. 8–9, 14;
    Clancey 1948, p. 1135.
  20. ^ Fujiwara 1998;
    Himeta 1996;
    Bix 2000.
  21. ^ Yorichi 1944.
  22. ^ a b Yoshida 2007-04-18.
  23. ^ Japan Times 2007-05-12.
  24. ^ Bae 2007-09-17.
  25. ^ (Japanese) "宋秉畯ら第２期親日反民族行為者２０２人を選定", JoongAng Ilbo, 2007.09.17. "日本軍慰安婦を募集したことで悪名高いベ・ジョンジャ"
  26. ^ Burning of Confidential Documents by Japanese Government, case no.43, serial 2, International Prosecution Section vol. 8;
    "When it became apparent that Japan would be forced to surrender, an organized effort was made to burn or otherwise destroy all documents and other evidence of ill-treatment of prisoners of war and civilian internees. The Japanese Minister of War issued an order on 14 August 1945 to all Army headquarters that confidential documents should be destroyed by fire immediately. On the same day, the Commandant of the Kempetai sent out instructions to the various Kempetai Headquarters detailing the methods of burning large quantities of documents efficiently.", Clancey 1948, p. 1135;
    "[...] , the actual number of comfort women remains unclear because the Japanese army incinerated many crucial documents right after the defeat for fear of war crimes prosecution, [...]", Yoshimi 2000, p. 91;
    Bix 2000, p. 528;
    "Between the announcement of a ceasefire on August 15, 1945, and the arrival of small advance parties of American troops in Japan on August 28, Japanese military and civil authorities systematically destroyed military, naval, and government archives, much of which was from the period 1942–1945. Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo dispatched enciphered messages to field commands throughout the Pacific and East Asia ordering units to burn incriminating evidence of war crimes, especially offenses against prisoners of war. The director of Japan’s Military History Archives of the National Institute for Defense Studies estimated in 2003 that as much as 70 percent of the army’s wartime records were burned or otherwise destroyed.", Drea 2006, p. 9.
  27. ^ Nakamura 2007-03-20.
  28. ^ "An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 women across Asia, predominantly Korean and Chinese, are believed to have been forced to work as sex slaves in Japanese military brothels", BBC 2000-12-08;
    "Historians say thousands of women – as many as 200,000 by some accounts – mostly from Korea, China and Japan worked in the Japanese military brothels", Irish Examiner 2007-03-08;
    AP 2007-03-07;
    CNN 2001-03-29.
  29. ^ "An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 women across Asia, predominantly Korean and Chinese, are believed to have been forced to work as sex slaves in Japanese military brothels", & BBC 2000-12-08;
    "Estimates of the number of comfort women range between 50,000 and 200,000. It is believed that most were Korean", Soh 2001;
    "A majority of the 80,000 to 200,000 comfort women were from Korea, though others were recruited or recruited from China, the Philippines, Burma, and Indonesia. Some Japanese women who worked as prostitutes before the war also became comfort women.", Horn 1997;
    "Approximately 80 percent of the sex slaves were Korean; [...]. By one approximation, 80 percent were between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.", Gamble & Watanabe 2004, p. 309;
    Soh 2001.
  30. ^ Nozaki 2005;
    Dudden 2006.
  31. ^ Yoshimi 1995, pp. 91, 93.
  32. ^ Hata 1999;
    "Hata essentially equates the 'comfort women' system with prostitution and finds similar practices during the war in other countries. He has been criticized by other Japanese scholars for downplaying the hardship of the 'comfort women'.", Drea 2006, p. 41.
  33. ^ Soh 2001.
  34. ^ chosun.com 2007-03-19;
    Moynihan 2007-03-03.
  35. ^ Kono 1993.
  36. ^ China Daily 2007-07-06.
  37. ^ de Brouwer, Anne-Marie (2005) [2005], Supranational Criminal Prosecution of Sexual Violence, Intersentia, pp. 8, ISBN 9050955339, http://books.google.com/?id=JhY8ROsA39kC&dq=war+rape+in+ancient+times 
  38. ^ "７３１部隊「コレラ作戦」" (in Japanese). http://home.att.ne.jp/blue/gendai-shi/yokuryu-sya-syogen/731-cholera.html. Retrieved 2007-03-23. .
  39. ^ Tabuchi 2007-03-01.
  40. ^ a b c O'Herne 2007.
  41. ^ Jan Ruff-O'Herne, "Talking Heads" transcriptabc.net.au
  42. ^ "Comfort women", Australian War Memorial
  43. ^ "Australian sex slave seeks apology", February 13, 2007, The Sydney Morning Herald
  44. ^ a b c (in Japanese) (PDF) 日本占領下インドネシアにおける慰安婦, archived from the original on 2007-06-28, http://web.archive.org/web/20070628152203/http://www.awf.or.jp/program/pdf/p107_141.pdf, retrieved 2007-03-23 , archived from the original on 2007-01-28.
  45. ^ Hirano 2007-04-28
  46. ^ Coop 2006-12-23.
  47. ^ http://www.kbs.co.kr/1tv/sisa/kbsspecial/vod/1383556_11686.html 일본군 위안부 세계가 껴안다-1년간의 기록 February 25, 2006
  48. ^ a b Nelson 2007.
  49. ^ Brook, Tim . Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 1-13, 240-48
  50. ^ Chong-song, Pak. 'Kwollok kwa maech'un [Power and prostitution]' Seoul: In'gansarang, 1996.
  51. ^ Yoshimi 1995, pp. 1135–1136.
  52. ^ Fastenberg, Dan (17 June 2010). "Top 10 National Apologies: Japanese Sex Slavery". Time. http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1997272_1997273_1997286,00.html. Retrieved 29 December 2011. 
  53. ^ "None of them was forcibly recruited.", Hata undated, p. 16.
  54. ^ "Their testimonies have undergone dramatic changes...", Assentors 2007-06-14.
  55. ^ Landler 2001-03-02.
  56. ^ "However, the second night’s programming on January 30 was heavily censored through deletion, interpolations, alterations, dismemberment and even fabrication. This segment was originally supposed to cover the 'Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery' that had been held in Tokyo in December 2000.", Yoneyama 2002.

References

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