Comfort Women in World War II
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 my 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… (Askin18)
This is the story of a comfort woman who survived World War II. “Comfort women” were women who were subjected to sexual slavery by the Japanese soldiers. Japan is obligated to pay compensation and give a formal apology to the comfort women for their mistreatment during the World War II by the Japanese soldiers. During World War II, the Japanese authorities established a series of brothels, known as “comfort stations”, for its soldiers. There were several reasons why comfort stations were established. Women were captured and forced into the comfort stations to provide “comfort” to Japanese soldiers. While the captured women were in these comfort stations they were mistreated in many awful ways and the living conditions were horrible. Comfort women who survived and returned home were rejected by their communities, including their families and friends. Survivors had to endure a lot of psychological and physical effects due to the rapes. The Japanese Government took many actions to cover up the comfort system and it refused to take responsibility and pay compensation to the comfort women.
The Japanese Military established comfort stations for several reasons. Comfort stations existed from 1932 to 1945, and was planned and designed by the Supreme Commander of the Japanese Army. The comfort stations were located wherever the Japanese army was based. The stations was established after Japanese soldiers raped very young girls, elderly women, pregnant women and even corpses in Nanjing, China. This horrific scene came to be known as the Rape of Nanking. Japanese leaders didn’t want reports of Japanese soldiers committing rape because that would bring shame to Japan. Another reason they were established was to 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. Also, they worried about the diseases the soldiers might get infected with by raping indigenous women and 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 comfort stations were established was to keep comfort women isolated so they won’t be able to expose military secrets and prevent dangerous spies. In short, according to the Japanese military comfort stations were established to stop the soldiers from raping women and many women were tricked into comfort stations.
The Japanese tricked comfort women and their families in several different ways because they needed enough women to provide sexual services to millions of Japanese soldiers. Japanese soldiers forced around 200,000 women into comfort stations. Most of the women were from Korea and other Eastern Asian countries like China, Burma, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor and Thailand islands in the Pacific. For the most part the women were between the ages of twelve and thirty. According to Carmen M. Argibay, author of “Sexual Slavery and the “Comfort Women” of World War II, 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 mentioned the comfort stations, they lied about the nature of them. 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 the ages of seventeen and twenty eight. For their services, women were promised payment of more than $150, which is more than $2,200 in today’s currency. Women were sometimes purchased from their families if they family owed some sort of debt. Some were even sold by their families for between 300 to 1000 yen each, approximately $55 to $182 in today’s dollar, depending on the girls’ appearance and age. Others were kidnapped on their way to school for example. Some comfort women 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, author of “Comfort Women-Shifting shame and stigma from victims to victimizers”, “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” (17). Local leaders were ordered to get girls from ages twelve to twenty-two 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 in many horrible ways. They were treated badly for numerous reasons; if they didn’t satisfy a soldier, caught diseases or got pregnant. Also, some women were beaten just so the Japanese could 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. 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 seventy men a day and were subjected to different forms 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” (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 had a miscarriage because of beatings or they were forced to abort the pregnancy. According to Kelly D. Askin, Japanese soldiers murdered comfort women by inserting a broken glass, bottles or fire crackers in their vaginas. When soldiers considered a woman useless they would insert a gun into her vagina and blow her apart (21). In addition, according to Laura Hein, author of “savage Irony: The Imaginative Power of the ‘Military Comfort Women’ in the 1990s”, the ones that tried to escape and were captured were treated inhumane. 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 (334). Also, since comfort women followed the armed forces into all areas of the battle, a lot of comfort women were killed in the fighting. According to Chea Wui Ling, author of “Walking the Long Road in Solidarity and Hope: A Case Study of the Comfort Women” Movement’s Deployment of Human Rights Discourse”, “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.” (69). A lot of comfort women were abandoned and left on their own even if they were nowhere near their home country. In addition to the mistreated that comfort women had to endured, the living conditions were awful. The conditions of the comfort stations were horrible and inexplicitly inhumane. The enslaved women 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 violence. Although around twenty-five percent of the comfort women survived at the end of war their struggles were not done.
When survivors returned to their village they were rejected by their own people. Some comfort women were saved and sent back home by the Allied forces and others managed to escape. When the survivors returned to their villages, the villagers spat on their faces for being comfort women to the Japanese and were despised as a disgrace to the family. The villages and even the families of the comfort women saw them responsible for their tragedies and forced them to suffer in shame and silence. Aniko Varga who is author of “National Bodies: The ‘Comfort Women’ Discourse and its Controversies in South Korea” explains, “...for nationalist, the very existence of surviving “comfort women”, defying the traditional female virtue of chastity, proves somewhat embarrassing and shameful” (288). Even the criminal justice system treats victims of sex crimes different from victims of other crimes. They treat the comfort women as if their 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” (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 anyone’s support when they returned home. They also 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 comfort women couldn’t move on with their lives and they continued to suffer.
Even though the war was over; the pain didn’t leave the survivors who made it out of the comfort stations alive. Many suffered from psychological and physical pain because of 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. As a result of the violence caused upon their bodies a lot of survivors couldn’t make love and didn’t want to be touch by any man or even their husbands. Also, most of them were not able to have babies, and some could never get married. The memories stayed with them, and a lot of comfort women were reluctant to move on with their lives. They had feelings of having sinned, which was the reason why they kept silent. For these reasons, some committed suicide and others became insane. Instead of the Japanese government encouraging and helping the comfort women, it refuses to take responsibility.
The problem remained unsolved because comfort women kept silent, and also because of Japan’s ignorance. After Japan’s surrender, the Japanese Government and the army destroyed all documents relating to the comfort system. Documents that were not destroyed where 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 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 Japanese military’s involvement. In 1992, a Japanese historian named Yoshiaki Yoshimi revealed the documents found. As a result, the Japanese Government was forced 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 its involvement in the issue but said that the comfort women were voluntary prostitutes and that their presence at the stations was not forced. After people protested against the report, the Japanese government made another report in 1993 saying that comfort women were somewhat forced. Chih Chih Chou, author of “An Emerging Transnational Movement in Women’s Human Rights: Campaign of nongovernmental Organization on “Comfort Women” Issue in East Asia” 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” (162). Also, since comfort women were ashamed they kept silent until feminist explained their experience as a violation of their human rights. Many survivors wanted to be left alone, until activist started to explain 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 the 1990s, and Kim Hakson was the first woman. 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). Hakson finally decided to speak up because she had no family telling her that she was the one who sinned and she was the only one to blame for her misery. However, the Japanese Government did one good thing; in 1996 it permitted textbook authors to include brief mention of the military comfort women in middle school social studies textbooks. The reason for this is that in the late 1940s, when comfort women returned home, people thought the comfort women were the ones that sinned and were the ones that did wrong. Later on when people started to find out what happened in the comfort stations, people started to protest. Now there are more people supporting the comfort women and more people want the Japanese Government to take responsibility. 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). The AWF fund was private; it consisted of donations from Japanese civil society so it gave the expression of moral rather than legal responsibility. Therefore, a lot of survivors refused to accept any money from that fund. The Japanese judges then claimed that comfort women did not file their cases within the required time limits. In addition, the Japanese judges also argued 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.” (24). The Japanese Government is trying to say it already took responsibility for the comfort women issue when the war ended. In short, the Japanese government has done absolutely nothing to solve this issue; it has not even offered a formal apology or memorial for the comfort women.
Through these nearly fifty years, a lot of people didn’t even know who the “comfort women” were, and the survivors were ashamed and kept silent. Now a lot of survivors 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 many 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 actions 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 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 killed and ruined the lives of a lot of comfort women. The seems to just want the old ladies to go away quietly. “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it”-Edmund Burke.
Works Cited
Argibay, Carmen M. "Sexual Slavery and the "Comfort Women" of World War II." Berkeley Journal of International Law 21.2 (2003): 375. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
Askin, Kelly D. "Comfort women – Shifting shame and stigma from victims to victimizers." International Criminal Law Review 1.1/2 (2001): 5-32. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
Cheah Wui, Ling. "Walking the Long Road in Solidarity and Hope: A Case Study of the "Comfort Women" Movement's Deployment of Human Rights Discourse." Harvard Human Rights Journal 22.1 (2009): 63-107. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
Chih-Chieh, Chou. "An Emerging Transnational Movement in Women's Human Rights: Campaign of Nongovernmental Organizations on "Comfort Women" Issue in East Asia." Journal of Economic & Social Research 5.1 (2003): 153-181. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
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Hirofumi, Hayashi. "Japanese comfort women in Southeast Asia." Japan Forum 10.2 (1998): 211. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
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Michiko, Nakahara. "'COMFORT WOMEN' IN MALAYSIA." Critical Asian Studies 33.4 (2001): 581. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
Nelson, Hank. "The Consolation Unit:." Journal of Pacific History 43.1 (2008): 1-21. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
Varga, Aniko. "National Bodies: The ‘Comfort Women’ Discourse and its Controversies in South Korea." Studies In Ethnicity & Nationalism 9.2 (2009): 287-303. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.
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