The Comfort Women

The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War by George L. Hicks, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. 

Slave Labor

The Japanese employed millions of slave laborers during their attempted conquest of Asia. The men worked in the mines, and built roads and bridges for the Japanese army. The women worked as prostitutes to service the Japanese army. Several tens of thousands of women were enslaved as prostitutes for the Japanese army during World War II. Most of them (80%) were Korean, but there were also many Chinese, Taiwanese, Burmese, Thais, Malays, Indonesians and Filipinos. Japanese men favored lighter-skinned women over southeast Asians and Filipinas. 

Taiwan and Korea

Taiwan became part of the Japanese empire in 1895, after the First Sino-Japanese war. Korea became part of the Japanese empire in 1905 after the Russo-Japanese War

Japanese Motivations for Employing Military Prostitutes:

To prevent their troops from raping the local women of the conquered territories. To prevent homosexuality in the Navy. To prevent the spread of venereal disease. During the Japanese involvement in the Russian Civil War (1918-1922), one division in seven had been incapacitated by venereal disease.

Military Comfort Stations

The Japanese opened their first military comfort stations in China in Manchuria in 1931 and Shanghai in 1932. At first, the Japanese army used voluntary Japanese prostitutes, who serviced the officers. For the enlisted men, the Japanese military obtained ethnic Korean women from northern Kyushu Island in Japan.   

Local Women

As the war expanded, the Japanese obtained local women from the Asian mainland, mainly Korea and China. Young women were recruited into the Women’s Voluntary Service Corps. They were told that they would do cooking, laundry and sewing. But they were forced into prostitution. Later, deception was augmented by overt kidnapping. The young women were taken from the poorer levels of society. 

Hygiene

Men were required to wear condoms. Men washed genitals with permanganic acid disinfectant afterwards. Women douched afterwards. No alcohol was allowed in the room. Developing an emotional relationship with a soldier was prohibited. 

Siam-Burma Railway

Comfort stations were built along the Siam-Burma railway. A train of comfort women travelled from station to station, servicing the men.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, the Japanese forced many Indonesia, Indian, Chinese and Dutch women into prostitution. The Japanese told the young women that if they did not cooperate, their families would suffer.

Comfort Stations in the Philippines:

• Manila (Luzon Island).

• Tacloban (Leyte Province).

• Santa Cruz (Laguna Province).

• Masbate City (Masbate Province).

• Cagayan Province (Luzon Island)

American Soldiers

When American soldiers occupied Japan after the war, they also made use of these comfort stations. Venereal disease became a problem because the comfort station staff did not have the authority to force American men to use condoms.

Infertility

After spending years being raped on a daily basis, the comfort women who survived the war often became infertile.

Hiding the Crime

Japanese destroyed their records of their forced prostitution at the end of the war. Because the United States needed Japan’s support for the Cold War against the Soviet Union, it was reluctant to prosecute Imperial Japan for its war crimes. The Dutch were the only country to prosecute the Japanese for their system of forced prostitution, and even then only regarding Dutch victims. Korea not a participant to the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, where the United States forgave many of the Japanese war crimes. The Japanese have not come to terms with their war crimes. Even now, the Japanese discriminate against their minority populations, such as the Koreans, Okinawans, and Burakumin.

Supporters of Justice for Comfort Women

• Professor Yun Chung-Ok of Ehwa Women’s University in Seoul.

• Professor Lee Hyo-Jae of Ehwa Women’s University in Seoul.

• Motooka Shoji (Japanese Diet).

• Sumiko Shimizu (Japanese Diet).

• Kako Senda (Japanese journalist, author in 1973 of the first book about the subject).

• Yuko Suzuki (Japanese author).

• Kikue Takahashi (Japan Anti-Prostitution Association).

• Nelia Sancho (political prisoner in the Philippines during the Marcos martial law period)

• Seiji Yoshida

In Seiji Yoshida's 1983 book, My War Crimes: The Forced Draft of Koreans, he describes how during the war he led slave raids in Korea which captured thousands of men for labor and about a thousand women for prostitution..