I think this is one of those writing assignments that actually made me think. Like Dr. McCormick said, we often take things for granted. We often look at what we don’t have instead of what we have. I am grateful to have my mom and my two brothers. Everybody heard the phrase “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone” and probably tired of hearing it but its true. Plenty of people lose their loved ones or don’t even know their parents. I lost my dad but I have my mom, even though she would get mad at times for no reason at the end of the day she is still my mom and she is the only person that I know is there for me. My brothers might be annoying but I love them. My little brother always lightens up my day. I am grateful to have a roof over my head and place I can call home because a lot of people are homeless. I am thankful for being healthy because there are a lot of deadly diseases and sick people. I am grateful to have good caring friends because they are always there for me. Sometimes people always want to be listened to but they don’t want to listen to other people. When a person listens to you and cares about you, that person is a true friend. I am thankful for having entertainment options because I can never be bored. I am grateful for having a computer because I don’t have time to go to the library sometimes to do my homework. I’m thankful to have freedom because people in the past weren’t able to go to school or do anything, especially women. I am thankful to have an education and good professors because without it I would go nowhere in life. I have the opportunity to do something with my life, an opportunity that people didn't have in the past. I am thankful for having four seasons because I get to enjoy sunshine and the snow. I am grateful for electricity because it’s really hard to live without it. The blackout is a good example of why one should appreciate electricity. This is not the end of my list but I think they are one of the most important things i should be grateful for. This assignment wasn't so hard after all :).
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
My Editing Experience
When I was told that I had to some editing for two 101 students I was really worried. Even though I have noticed that my writing skills have improved since ENG 101, I still feel like I’m not a strong writer. I thought “how am I supposed to edit a person’s paper when I’m not a good writer myself”. As I started reading the blogs that I was assigned to do, I was really into them. I found them very interesting and could tell they did some research. I also learned a few stuff, for example I learned about core self and that one should approach a situation with a positive emotions then the outcome will perhaps be good. When I started writing the feedback I was scared. I didn’t want to write anything that might offend the person who wrote the blog or write a comment that sound like an accusation. I wanted to be helpful but not hurt the person’s feelings. I tried to look for things that make me think “I like this” or “this is well done”, because I didn’t want to just point to things that they did wrong because they put great effort on their writing. Then I try to just point to things that I thought they need to work on. When I wrote a suggestion on what they need to work on, I tried to start with “I think” just because I thought it sounded nicer and I also added smiley facesJ.
After editing the two blogs I learned that I should work more on my paper. I usually write a paper and put it away for a few days and then I read it again with fresher, more critical eyes. I learned that I don’t always have to do that. I should proof read my work because I usually make common mistakes. Also, I’m horrible when it comes to grammar but when reading over my draft, if anything makes me stop and go back or if I don’t immediately understand means I should revise it. Basically I should be able to tell if my paper reads smoothly and easy to understand. In addition, I will try to make sure I don’t repeat myself in my paper. Furthermore, I find my introduction and conclusion interesting but I think I might have to work on them. I am also going to look at the quotes I used. I think I should take some out or introduce them better. The most important thing I learned though is that when I proof read I should print out a hard copy and not to proofread on the computer screen.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Blog #7- w/ more quotes & essay map
Comfort Women in World War II
When veterans return home families, friends and the government are aware of the impact that war has on them and take the steps needed to help them. “Comfort women” who were subjected to military sexual slavery weren’t given the same treatment that veterans were given. Comfort women suffered while they were kept in comfort stations and after the war. Japan is obligated to pay compensation and give a formal apology to the comfort women for the mistreatment during the World War II by the Japanese soldiers. First, I’m going to state the reasons why comfort stations were established. Second, I’m going to tell the different ways women were captured and forced into comfort stations. After that I’m going to describe the different ways comfort women were mistreated while they were captured. Next, I’m going to describe how survivors were rejected by their communities including their families and friends. Furthermore, I’ll be talking about the psychological and physical effects the comfort women had when they returned home after the war or when they escaped. Finally, I will describe the actions taken by the Japanese Government to cover up the past meaning the comfort system and how he refuses to take a responsibility and pay compensation to the comfort women.
The Japanese Military established comfort stations for several reasons. Comfort stations have existed since 1932 to 1945; it was planned and designed by the Supreme Commander of the Japanese Army. The comfort stations were located wherever the Japanese army was based. It was established after Japanese soldiers raped very young girls, elderly women, pregnant women and even corpses in Nanjing, China which became known as the Rape of Nanking. Japanese didn’t want reports of Japanese soldiers committing rape because that would bring shame to Japan. Another reason was provide “comfort” to the soldiers to keep them on the battlefield for a long time. Not all soldiers behaved in this manner. Some went to comfort station camps when they had a chance but others avoided them. Aniko Vargas has pointed out that, “It is particularly ironic that, according to the official justification, systematic rape of woman from other occupies territories was instituted in order to avoid random rape” (Vargas 290). Also, they worried about the diseases the soldiers might get infected with by raping unknowns or used common prostitutes. For that reason the women were forced to submit to medical exams to make sure they didn’t have any disease or infection. The last reason was that since comfort women were isolated then they weren’t able to communicate any military secrets and prevent dangerous spies. In short, according to the Japanese military comfort stations were established to stop the soldiers from raping women but the comfort women issue is one of the most serious war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Japanese used tricked comfort women and their families in several different way because they needed enough women to provide sexual services to millions of Japanese soldiers. Japanese soldiers forced around 200,000 women into protected facilities known as comfort stations. Most of the women were from Korea and other Eastern Asian countries like China, Burma, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Thailand islands in the Pacific. For the most part the women were between the ages of 12 and 30. According to Carmen M. Argibay the colonies Taiwan and Korea were very poor and she pointed out that women were promised better jobs as nurses, waitresses or maids with a good salary that could help their families. When recruiters did mention the comfort stations, they changed the nature of it. For that reason women assumed that comfort service consisted of visiting sick or injured soldiers and making them happy. There were also advertisements in the Chinese newspaper that called for women between seventeen and twenty eight. The women were promised payment of more than $150. Women were sometimes purchased from their families if they family owned some kind of debt. Some were even sold by their families for 300 to 1000 yen each depending on the girls’ appearance and age. Others were kidnapped on their way to school for example. Some were taken from their own homes and family members were killed if they tried to stop Japanese soldiers from taking the women. According to Kelly D. Askin, “Families who did refuse to turn over their daughters were killed and the girls were taken away anyway. Indeed, before being abducted many girls saw their fathers beheaded or parents otherwise horribly abused” (Askin 17). Local leaders were ordered to get girls from ages 12 to 22 and deliver them to the Japanese forces for “work”. If the women refused, the Japanese threatened to destroy their village and everyone living in it. Police forces also contributed by arresting women and girls in the streets and forcing them into comfort stations. Women were also taken away forcibly when they were at camps. A few licensed prostitutes were brought to the comfort stations but the living conditions in the facilities and the mistreatment were so harsh that they too became sexual slaves. Furthermore, not only did they tricked them and forced them into comfort stations but they were treated even more ruthlessly when they were forced to give sexual service to the Japanese Military.
The Japanese military mistreated comfort women and their living conditions were horrible. Kelly D. Askin points out that, “Referring to the institution as a comfort system, naming the venue brothel, or linking the activity to prostitution attempts to transform the crime into something which may have some form of legitimacy by inferring that choice was involved” (Askin 15). Women held in comfort stations were forced to provide sex to twelve to 70 men a day and were subjected to different forms and means of sexual violence like oral, vaginal, and anal rape, sexual humiliation, and nudity. According to Laura Hein, one Koran woman described the conditions in a comfort station in Shanghai, “…from 9 o’clock the soldiers began to arrive and from orderly lines. From 6 o’clock in the evening high-ranking officers came, some whom stayed over night” (Hein 339). If they refused to provide sexual services they were tortured, stabbed with swords or bayonets, beaten into a coma or killed. Victims often became pregnant and they usually miscarriage because of beatings or were forced to abort. The conditions of where they were being held were horrible. They were placed in a small space where there was only a bed, mattress or mat on the floor. There was little food, water, sanitary conditions and medical care. Many died from diseases, infections, abortions, starvation or because of the violence. They were treated badly treated for numerous reasons like if they didn’t satisfy the soldier, caught diseases or got pregnant, tried to escape or to make an example of them when new women arrived. When the women caught a disease or suffered from malnutrition, the soldiers threw them into the sea or soaked them with gasoline and burned them alive. They were murdered sexualized for instance by being rape with a broken glass, bottles or fire crackers inserted in their vaginas. When the soldier considered a woman useless he would insert a gun into her vagina and blow her apart. In addition, the ones that tried to escape and were captured were badly treated. In one case when soldiers captured a woman that tried to escape, they broke all ten of her fingers and then sent her back to work. There was another case when a woman’s breast was sliced off. Also, since comfort women followed the armed forces into all areas of the battle, a lot of comfort women were killed in the fighting. At the end of the war, a lot of comfort women were abandoned and left to on their own even if they nowhere near their home country. According to Chea Wui Ling, “At the end of war, many “comfort women” found themselves abandoned in strange countries, killed by retreating Japanese army; or forced to commit suicide alongside Japanese soldiers.” (Ling 69). In addition, around twenty-five percent of the comfort women survived at the end of war but war was not over for them.
When survivors returned to their village they were rejected by their own people. Some comfort women that escaped or were saved and sent back home by the Allied forces returned to their villages and the villagers spat on their faces for being comfort women to the Japanese and were despised as a disgrace to the family. Their culture and their families saw them responsible for their tragedies and forced them to suffer in shame and silence. Aniko Varga says, “..for nationalist, the very existence of surviving “comfort women”, defying the traditional female virtue of chastity, proves somewhat embarrassing and shameful” (Varga 288). Even criminal justice system treats victims of sex crimes different from victims of other crimes. They treat the victim as if her clothing, behavior or body language provoked the attack. Kelly D. Askin says, “Since time immemorial, survivors of sexual violence have been forced to endure misplaced shame, stigma, ostracism, and other injustices simply because the crime committed against them is of a sexual nature” (Askin 8). In other words, society attaches shame on the victims instead of placing shame on the ones responsible for the crime. Comfort women didn’t have no one’s support when they returned home and found themselves without an education or job experience and many had no choice but to enter prostitution to survive. As a result of the cruel experiences the comfort women went through a lot of them couldn’t move on with their live and continued to suffer.
Even though the war was over the pain didn’t leave the survivors that made it out of the comfort stations alive. Many suffered pain from psychological and physical pain by the rapes. Some suffered from debilitating diseases because of repeated sexual and physical abuse. Others suffered from trauma or were sterile because of the drugs they were forced to take by the Japanese Military. Many survivors couldn’t make love and didn’t want to be touch by any man or even their husbands and most of them were not able to have babies as a result of the violence caused upon their bodies and some could never get marry. The memories stayed with them and a lot of comfort women couldn’t move on with their lives. They had feelings of having sinned which was the reason why they kept silence. For these reasons some committed suicide and others became insane. Kelly D. Askin quoted one of the stories of a survivor which is:
Three soldiers with rifles came to our house while the rest fanned out through the village. They burst in and grabbed me. My parents tried to rescue me but my father was kicked in the head. Blood went everywhere. I struggled as hard as I could, but I got kicked in the head too. I still have that scar…Then my panties were ripped off and one of the soldiers undid the front of his trousers. While the others held me down, he stuck his thing into me. I had no idea what he was trying to do. I knew nothing about the facts of life. I was only fifteen and hadn’t even had my first period.
It was agonizing. Blood came out. They did it on the kitchen floor, right in front of y parents and brother. Three soldiers did it to me in turns, and then they took me out and put me in one of the lorries along with some other girls from village… (Askin 18)
This memory will stay with this survivor for the rest of her life and the experience she had in the comfort station. Instead of the Japanese government encouraging and helping the comfort women he refuses to take responsibility.
The problem remained unsolved because comfort women kept silence and also because of Japan’s ignorance. After Japan surrender, the Japanese Government and the army destroy all documents relating to the comfort system. Documents that were not destroyed were stored away were they were not unreachable. Women were instructed to be disguised as nurses, or were hidden in mental institutions. The only military tribunal concerning the issue of comfort women was in Batavia in 1948. Under the Dutch law, the Batavia trial convicted several Japanese officers for forcing 35 Dutch women into comfort stations but the other women were ignored. . In the late 1980s and 1990s, Korean and Japanese historians offered proof of both the existence of the comfort women system and the military’s involvement. In 1992 a Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi revealed the documents found. As a result, the Japanese Government was faced to pay compensation to the comfort women. Japan argued that the “comfort system” does not fall within the definition of slavery. In July 1992 the Japanese government was forced to admit his involvement in the issue but said that the comfort women were voluntary prostitutes and were there on their own free will. After people protested against the report the Japanese government made another report on 1993 saying that comfort women was somewhat forced. Chih Chih Chou says that, “On April 27 the Yamaguchi District Court in southern Japan ruled that Japanese government should pay compensation 930,000 yen [2,272 dollars]) to the comfort women from South Korea…The Japanese government has refused to pay direct compensation to any woman” (Chou 162). Also, since comfort women were ashamed they kept silent until feminist explained their experience as a violation of their human rights. Many of them wanted to be left alone until activist would explain to them to them that they had the right to claim an apology and compensation from the Japanese State. When they understood this some started to speak up and tell their stories around 1990s, Kim Hakson was the first woman. According to Laura Hein, Kim Hakson explained that “she only felt free to say so because her entire family, including both her children, had died. No one was left who might be hurt by association with her” (Hein 348). However, the Japanese Government did one thing; in 1996 he permitted textbook authors to include brief mention of the military comfort women in middle school social studies textbooks. This is because back in the late 1940s, people thought the women were the ones that sinned and were the ones that did wrong but now people think the government and military did wrong. In 1995 the Japanese Government announced its plan to establish a fund for comfort women, which is named the Asian Peace and Friendship Foundation of Women’s Fund (AWF). But this fund is was private which consisted of donations from Japanese civil society and gives the expression of moral rather than legal responsibility. Therefore, a lot of survivors refused to accept any money from that fund. Japanese judges claimed that comfort women did not file their cases within the required time limits and that survivors can’t claim based on internal law, as internal law does not recognize the right of individuals to bring claims directly against a state. Furthermore, the first World Conference on Japanese Sexual Slavery kicked off on October 2007 where comfort women went to tell the stories. Cheah Wui Ling explains that the Japanese Government responded to the comfort women movement by saying that “it has conclusively met all of its WWII responsibilities as set out in post-WWII treaties, and posits that the movement’s claims are unfounded in international law.” (Ling 24). In short, the Japanese government has done absolutely nothing to solve this issue; he has not even offered a formal apology or memorial for the comfort women.
Through these nearly fifty years one only heard whispers of the issue “comfort women” or it was unknown to many but now they are speaking up and telling their stories to the world to try to prevent these crimes again. A lot of women were raped repeatedly for a lot of years by the Japanese military until the Japanese surrendered. Their freedom was taken once they were forced to be comfort women and were forced to perform against their will. A comfort woman is not the correct name to this issue, this is sexual slavery, and the correct term is military sex slave. Many died because they were physically abused, some were killed, other committed suicide and for others for other reasons. When they returned home they were the ones that sinned and were the disgrace of their families according to their culture and religion. To this day Japan continues to deny any legal responsibility to the comfort women. The Japanese government is required to compensate and give a formal apology because this crime ruined and killed a lot of comfort women. He seems to just want the old ladies to go away quietly. “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it”-Edmund Burke.
Outline
Topic: Comfort Women in WWII
Thesis: Japan is obligated to pay compensation and give a formal apology to the comfort women for the mistreatment during the World War II by the Japanese soldiers.
Paragraph #1: Reasons why comfort stations were established
Paragraph #2: Different ways comfort women were captured
Paragraph #3: How comfort women were mistreated in comfort stations
Paragraph #4: How survivors were rejected when they returned home
Paragraph #5: How comfort women were affected
Paragraph #6: Japan’s ignorance and Japanese government refusing to take responsibility.
Conclusion
When veterans return home families, friends and the government are aware of the impact that war has on them and take the steps needed to help them. “Comfort women” who were subjected to military sexual slavery weren’t given the same treatment that veterans were given. Comfort women suffered while they were kept in comfort stations and after the war. Japan is obligated to pay compensation and give a formal apology to the comfort women for the mistreatment during the World War II by the Japanese soldiers. First, I’m going to state the reasons why comfort stations were established. Second, I’m going to tell the different ways women were captured and forced into comfort stations. After that I’m going to describe the different ways comfort women were mistreated while they were captured. Next, I’m going to describe how survivors were rejected by their communities including their families and friends. Furthermore, I’ll be talking about the psychological and physical effects the comfort women had when they returned home after the war or when they escaped. Finally, I will describe the actions taken by the Japanese Government to cover up the past meaning the comfort system and how he refuses to take a responsibility and pay compensation to the comfort women.
The Japanese Military established comfort stations for several reasons. Comfort stations have existed since 1932 to 1945; it was planned and designed by the Supreme Commander of the Japanese Army. The comfort stations were located wherever the Japanese army was based. It was established after Japanese soldiers raped very young girls, elderly women, pregnant women and even corpses in Nanjing, China which became known as the Rape of Nanking. Japanese didn’t want reports of Japanese soldiers committing rape because that would bring shame to Japan. Another reason was provide “comfort” to the soldiers to keep them on the battlefield for a long time. Not all soldiers behaved in this manner. Some went to comfort station camps when they had a chance but others avoided them. Aniko Vargas has pointed out that, “It is particularly ironic that, according to the official justification, systematic rape of woman from other occupies territories was instituted in order to avoid random rape” (Vargas 290). Also, they worried about the diseases the soldiers might get infected with by raping unknowns or used common prostitutes. For that reason the women were forced to submit to medical exams to make sure they didn’t have any disease or infection. The last reason was that since comfort women were isolated then they weren’t able to communicate any military secrets and prevent dangerous spies. In short, according to the Japanese military comfort stations were established to stop the soldiers from raping women but the comfort women issue is one of the most serious war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Japanese used tricked comfort women and their families in several different way because they needed enough women to provide sexual services to millions of Japanese soldiers. Japanese soldiers forced around 200,000 women into protected facilities known as comfort stations. Most of the women were from Korea and other Eastern Asian countries like China, Burma, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, Thailand islands in the Pacific. For the most part the women were between the ages of 12 and 30. According to Carmen M. Argibay the colonies Taiwan and Korea were very poor and she pointed out that women were promised better jobs as nurses, waitresses or maids with a good salary that could help their families. When recruiters did mention the comfort stations, they changed the nature of it. For that reason women assumed that comfort service consisted of visiting sick or injured soldiers and making them happy. There were also advertisements in the Chinese newspaper that called for women between seventeen and twenty eight. The women were promised payment of more than $150. Women were sometimes purchased from their families if they family owned some kind of debt. Some were even sold by their families for 300 to 1000 yen each depending on the girls’ appearance and age. Others were kidnapped on their way to school for example. Some were taken from their own homes and family members were killed if they tried to stop Japanese soldiers from taking the women. According to Kelly D. Askin, “Families who did refuse to turn over their daughters were killed and the girls were taken away anyway. Indeed, before being abducted many girls saw their fathers beheaded or parents otherwise horribly abused” (Askin 17). Local leaders were ordered to get girls from ages 12 to 22 and deliver them to the Japanese forces for “work”. If the women refused, the Japanese threatened to destroy their village and everyone living in it. Police forces also contributed by arresting women and girls in the streets and forcing them into comfort stations. Women were also taken away forcibly when they were at camps. A few licensed prostitutes were brought to the comfort stations but the living conditions in the facilities and the mistreatment were so harsh that they too became sexual slaves. Furthermore, not only did they tricked them and forced them into comfort stations but they were treated even more ruthlessly when they were forced to give sexual service to the Japanese Military.
The Japanese military mistreated comfort women and their living conditions were horrible. Kelly D. Askin points out that, “Referring to the institution as a comfort system, naming the venue brothel, or linking the activity to prostitution attempts to transform the crime into something which may have some form of legitimacy by inferring that choice was involved” (Askin 15). Women held in comfort stations were forced to provide sex to twelve to 70 men a day and were subjected to different forms and means of sexual violence like oral, vaginal, and anal rape, sexual humiliation, and nudity. According to Laura Hein, one Koran woman described the conditions in a comfort station in Shanghai, “…from 9 o’clock the soldiers began to arrive and from orderly lines. From 6 o’clock in the evening high-ranking officers came, some whom stayed over night” (Hein 339). If they refused to provide sexual services they were tortured, stabbed with swords or bayonets, beaten into a coma or killed. Victims often became pregnant and they usually miscarriage because of beatings or were forced to abort. The conditions of where they were being held were horrible. They were placed in a small space where there was only a bed, mattress or mat on the floor. There was little food, water, sanitary conditions and medical care. Many died from diseases, infections, abortions, starvation or because of the violence. They were treated badly treated for numerous reasons like if they didn’t satisfy the soldier, caught diseases or got pregnant, tried to escape or to make an example of them when new women arrived. When the women caught a disease or suffered from malnutrition, the soldiers threw them into the sea or soaked them with gasoline and burned them alive. They were murdered sexualized for instance by being rape with a broken glass, bottles or fire crackers inserted in their vaginas. When the soldier considered a woman useless he would insert a gun into her vagina and blow her apart. In addition, the ones that tried to escape and were captured were badly treated. In one case when soldiers captured a woman that tried to escape, they broke all ten of her fingers and then sent her back to work. There was another case when a woman’s breast was sliced off. Also, since comfort women followed the armed forces into all areas of the battle, a lot of comfort women were killed in the fighting. At the end of the war, a lot of comfort women were abandoned and left to on their own even if they nowhere near their home country. According to Chea Wui Ling, “At the end of war, many “comfort women” found themselves abandoned in strange countries, killed by retreating Japanese army; or forced to commit suicide alongside Japanese soldiers.” (Ling 69). In addition, around twenty-five percent of the comfort women survived at the end of war but war was not over for them.
When survivors returned to their village they were rejected by their own people. Some comfort women that escaped or were saved and sent back home by the Allied forces returned to their villages and the villagers spat on their faces for being comfort women to the Japanese and were despised as a disgrace to the family. Their culture and their families saw them responsible for their tragedies and forced them to suffer in shame and silence. Aniko Varga says, “..for nationalist, the very existence of surviving “comfort women”, defying the traditional female virtue of chastity, proves somewhat embarrassing and shameful” (Varga 288). Even criminal justice system treats victims of sex crimes different from victims of other crimes. They treat the victim as if her clothing, behavior or body language provoked the attack. Kelly D. Askin says, “Since time immemorial, survivors of sexual violence have been forced to endure misplaced shame, stigma, ostracism, and other injustices simply because the crime committed against them is of a sexual nature” (Askin 8). In other words, society attaches shame on the victims instead of placing shame on the ones responsible for the crime. Comfort women didn’t have no one’s support when they returned home and found themselves without an education or job experience and many had no choice but to enter prostitution to survive. As a result of the cruel experiences the comfort women went through a lot of them couldn’t move on with their live and continued to suffer.
Even though the war was over the pain didn’t leave the survivors that made it out of the comfort stations alive. Many suffered pain from psychological and physical pain by the rapes. Some suffered from debilitating diseases because of repeated sexual and physical abuse. Others suffered from trauma or were sterile because of the drugs they were forced to take by the Japanese Military. Many survivors couldn’t make love and didn’t want to be touch by any man or even their husbands and most of them were not able to have babies as a result of the violence caused upon their bodies and some could never get marry. The memories stayed with them and a lot of comfort women couldn’t move on with their lives. They had feelings of having sinned which was the reason why they kept silence. For these reasons some committed suicide and others became insane. Kelly D. Askin quoted one of the stories of a survivor which is:
Three soldiers with rifles came to our house while the rest fanned out through the village. They burst in and grabbed me. My parents tried to rescue me but my father was kicked in the head. Blood went everywhere. I struggled as hard as I could, but I got kicked in the head too. I still have that scar…Then my panties were ripped off and one of the soldiers undid the front of his trousers. While the others held me down, he stuck his thing into me. I had no idea what he was trying to do. I knew nothing about the facts of life. I was only fifteen and hadn’t even had my first period.
It was agonizing. Blood came out. They did it on the kitchen floor, right in front of y parents and brother. Three soldiers did it to me in turns, and then they took me out and put me in one of the lorries along with some other girls from village… (Askin 18)
This memory will stay with this survivor for the rest of her life and the experience she had in the comfort station. Instead of the Japanese government encouraging and helping the comfort women he refuses to take responsibility.
The problem remained unsolved because comfort women kept silence and also because of Japan’s ignorance. After Japan surrender, the Japanese Government and the army destroy all documents relating to the comfort system. Documents that were not destroyed were stored away were they were not unreachable. Women were instructed to be disguised as nurses, or were hidden in mental institutions. The only military tribunal concerning the issue of comfort women was in Batavia in 1948. Under the Dutch law, the Batavia trial convicted several Japanese officers for forcing 35 Dutch women into comfort stations but the other women were ignored. . In the late 1980s and 1990s, Korean and Japanese historians offered proof of both the existence of the comfort women system and the military’s involvement. In 1992 a Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi revealed the documents found. As a result, the Japanese Government was faced to pay compensation to the comfort women. Japan argued that the “comfort system” does not fall within the definition of slavery. In July 1992 the Japanese government was forced to admit his involvement in the issue but said that the comfort women were voluntary prostitutes and were there on their own free will. After people protested against the report the Japanese government made another report on 1993 saying that comfort women was somewhat forced. Chih Chih Chou says that, “On April 27 the Yamaguchi District Court in southern Japan ruled that Japanese government should pay compensation 930,000 yen [2,272 dollars]) to the comfort women from South Korea…The Japanese government has refused to pay direct compensation to any woman” (Chou 162). Also, since comfort women were ashamed they kept silent until feminist explained their experience as a violation of their human rights. Many of them wanted to be left alone until activist would explain to them to them that they had the right to claim an apology and compensation from the Japanese State. When they understood this some started to speak up and tell their stories around 1990s, Kim Hakson was the first woman. According to Laura Hein, Kim Hakson explained that “she only felt free to say so because her entire family, including both her children, had died. No one was left who might be hurt by association with her” (Hein 348). However, the Japanese Government did one thing; in 1996 he permitted textbook authors to include brief mention of the military comfort women in middle school social studies textbooks. This is because back in the late 1940s, people thought the women were the ones that sinned and were the ones that did wrong but now people think the government and military did wrong. In 1995 the Japanese Government announced its plan to establish a fund for comfort women, which is named the Asian Peace and Friendship Foundation of Women’s Fund (AWF). But this fund is was private which consisted of donations from Japanese civil society and gives the expression of moral rather than legal responsibility. Therefore, a lot of survivors refused to accept any money from that fund. Japanese judges claimed that comfort women did not file their cases within the required time limits and that survivors can’t claim based on internal law, as internal law does not recognize the right of individuals to bring claims directly against a state. Furthermore, the first World Conference on Japanese Sexual Slavery kicked off on October 2007 where comfort women went to tell the stories. Cheah Wui Ling explains that the Japanese Government responded to the comfort women movement by saying that “it has conclusively met all of its WWII responsibilities as set out in post-WWII treaties, and posits that the movement’s claims are unfounded in international law.” (Ling 24). In short, the Japanese government has done absolutely nothing to solve this issue; he has not even offered a formal apology or memorial for the comfort women.
Through these nearly fifty years one only heard whispers of the issue “comfort women” or it was unknown to many but now they are speaking up and telling their stories to the world to try to prevent these crimes again. A lot of women were raped repeatedly for a lot of years by the Japanese military until the Japanese surrendered. Their freedom was taken once they were forced to be comfort women and were forced to perform against their will. A comfort woman is not the correct name to this issue, this is sexual slavery, and the correct term is military sex slave. Many died because they were physically abused, some were killed, other committed suicide and for others for other reasons. When they returned home they were the ones that sinned and were the disgrace of their families according to their culture and religion. To this day Japan continues to deny any legal responsibility to the comfort women. The Japanese government is required to compensate and give a formal apology because this crime ruined and killed a lot of comfort women. He seems to just want the old ladies to go away quietly. “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it”-Edmund Burke.
Outline
Topic: Comfort Women in WWII
Thesis: Japan is obligated to pay compensation and give a formal apology to the comfort women for the mistreatment during the World War II by the Japanese soldiers.
Paragraph #1: Reasons why comfort stations were established
Paragraph #2: Different ways comfort women were captured
Paragraph #3: How comfort women were mistreated in comfort stations
Paragraph #4: How survivors were rejected when they returned home
Paragraph #5: How comfort women were affected
Paragraph #6: Japan’s ignorance and Japanese government refusing to take responsibility.
Conclusion
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