Blog #3-Introduction

     When victims of war return home society usually take the steps needed to help them deal with their problems.  This is not the same with “comfort women” who were women survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery during World War II.  Women were used as a reward for the soldier’s effort on the battlefield.  A lot of these “comfort women” were from twelve to thirty years old.  They were raped repeatedly by soldiers and would get beaten for countless reasons.  Many comfort women died or were murdered.  The few that were able to make it out alive were rejected by their families and friends.  Criminal justice treats the survivors as if her clothing, style, behavior provoked the attack.  For that reason they kept silence and they felt a great shame and felt guilty.  The problem has remained unsolved because of Japan’s ignorance and the Japanese Government just covers up the past.  The Japanese Government described the “comfort women” as licensed prostitutes meaning that they had a choice to be there.  However now almost fifty years later survivors are taking the courage and speaking up to prevent these crimes from happening again.    

Annotated Bibliography (Blog #2) [revised]

Annotated Bibliography

I decided to do my paper on "Comfort Women" of World War II.  These are the sources I found.

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.

This article talks about why the comfort system was created and how the comfort women were kidnapped and taken to these facilities were they would serve the Japanese Soldiers or get killed.  It describes the way the military excused these crimes by saying that it encourages the Japanese soldiers and brings up their spirit.

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.

This article examines how comfort women suffered.  The article talks how the Japanese Government doesn’t want to take responsibility because it will bring shame to the government.  Also, the article has several stories of survivors.  The stories include how they were captured and treated, the conditions of the comfort stations and how a lot of comfort women were murdered.  Even the murder of a woman was sexualized like by being raped with a broken glass.

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.

This article analyzes how survivors came forward and told their stories that for so many years kept to themselves.  It talks about the comfort women movement that is trying to get the Japanese State to publicly apologize.  Also, how their own people rejected them and forced them to keep silence.

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.

This article examines the efforts of organizations on comfort women issue.  Also, the article gave a brief background of comfort women issue during and after World War II.    It describes the Japanese Government’s role and how he would react to the issue.  The problem was unsolved for all these years because of Japan’s ignorance.  In addition, assailants and victims kept silence.

Hein, Laura. "Savage Irony: The Imaginative Power of the 'Military Comfort Women' in the 1990s." Gender & History 11.2 (1999): 336. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.

This article analyses how comfort women were abused and human rights.  Also, it examines the comfort system and how it started.  The Japanese Government doesn’t want to take blame because he is scared that if he does it will criminalize Japanese masculinity.  For that reason he states that comfort women were prostitutes who volunteered.

Hirofumi, Hayashi. "Japanese comfort women in Southeast Asia." Japan Forum 10.2 (1998): 211. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.

This article analyzes how the comfort system was introduced to the military.  The system wasn’t unfamiliar to them because they used to use prostitutes.  Also, it has a lot of stories of comfort women.  A lot of them came from poor families who were promised a good job but instead were taken to the comfort stations were they were sexually abused.

Hyunah, Yang. "Finding the "Map of Memory": Testimony of the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery Survivors." positions 16.1 (2008): 79-107. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.

This article examines the reasons why no one talks about the history of the Japanese military sexual system.  It describes how the stories of comfort women were published.  They actually were interviewed and then it was translated to written English.  It describes how many comfort women couldn’t even say the word rape and most of them told a similar story starting how they were captured, how they were mistreated and after the war was over.

Michiko, Nakahara. "'COMFORT WOMEN' IN MALAYSIA." Critical Asian Studies 33.4 (2001): 581. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.

This article examines how Mustapha Yaakub came forward and called them victims to speak out.  He received letters from 3,500 people but was kept from submitting his report.  This article also has several stories of how girls and women were kidnapped and mistreated in comfort stations. 

Nelson, Hank. "The Consolation Unit:." Journal of Pacific History 43.1 (2008): 1-21. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.

This article examines how the Australians knew about the comfort system.  They knew there was several comfort.  There was a person who worked there by the name of Chouka who helped some women escaped.  Also, there were also stories about how the women had to behave to do their job and how some might have gotten infected with diseases.

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.

This article examines the victims of military sexual slavery.  The article gives background information of comfort women in World War II.  Comfort women issue received little attention in South Korea and it seemed to get more public attention in the 1990s.  The issue seems to be unimportant to a lot of people.  They thought that it could damage the nation’s pride.  The few comfort women that survived feel embarrassed and ashamed. Local police, village notables and school teachers took part the “slave hunt” even if they didn’t know.    

Annotated Bibliography (Blog #2)

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. 5 Oct. 2010.

This article examines how women were treated in World War II.  Women in war were used as sexual slaves and also women were forced into the comfort stations.

Acton, Carol. "Dangerous Daughters." War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities 13.1/2 (2001): 87. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2010.

This article examines women’s war writing about the Vietnam War.  Also, it talks about how the nurses were treated and weren’t given credit for what they did.  They thought that because nurses weren’t doing the fighting and killing they didn’t know what war was.

Campbell, D'Ann. "Servicewomen Of World War II." Armed Forces & Society (0095327X) 16.2 (1990): 251-270. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2010.

This article discusses about how women took a part in World War II and the reasons why they joined the army. 

Parreñas, Juno. "Women and War." Lesbian News 29.8 (2004): 29. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2010.

This article examines how women were mistreated during war time. 

Pattinson, Juliette. "‘Playing the daft lassie with them’: Gender, Captivity and the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War." European Review of History 13.2 (2006): 271-292. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2010.

The article examines how women were treated when they were prisoners.  Many experienced punishments because they were women and a lot of them died in concentration camps.  In addition, some of them had to use their bodies to get out of the problem or complete a mission.

Permeswaran, Yashila. "The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps: A Compromise to Overcome the Conflict of Women Serving in the Army." History Teacher 42.1 (2008): 95-111. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2010.

This article talks about how people don’t want women to go to war.  Some women didn’t have her family’s support and another group against women serving in the army was the army itself.

Ryan, Maureen. "The other side of grief: American women writers and the Vietnam War." Critique 36.1 (1994): 41. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2010.

This article is mostly about how women shouldn’t go to war because men are supposed to be in war not women. 

  Silva, Jennifer M. "A New Generation of Women? How Female ROTC Cadets Negotiate the Tension between Masculine Military Culture and Traditional Femininity." Social Forces 87.2 (2008): 937-960. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.

This article is about how women in the military change their persona.  They have feminine traits but also masculine as well.

Vuic, Kara Dixon. "I'm afraid we're going to have to just change our ways": Marriage, Motherhood, and Pregnancy in the Army Nurse Corps during the Vietnam War." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 32.4 (2007): 997-1022. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2010.

This article discusses how pregnant and married women were allowed to go to war.  Legal discrimination against women was being lifted.

Wilcox, Clyde. "Race, Gender, and Support for Women in the Military." Social Science Quarterly (University of Texas Press) 73.2 (1992): 310-323. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.

This article is about how women were given more roles in the military but they fear that women might not do such a good job.

Zenor--Lafond, Holly. "Women and Combat: Why They Serve." Inquiry (University of New Hampshire) (2008): 32-38. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.

This article examines the reasons women enter the military. In addition, it describes all the wars from the American Revolution to the Iraq war. 

Blog 1- War Veterans

For my research paper I decided to revise and expand a research paper I wrote for my ENG 102 class last semester.  The course was based on masculinity so I had to write a paper about whether Kreb who is a character from “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway is a masculine man or not.  Basically the story is about a soldier named Kreb who came back from World War I and he appears not to be able to move on with his life and when he tries to talk about what he experienced his family does not listen to him.  I used three sources to better understand the character.  To summarize my three sources I would say that a man goes to war to relearn what it meant to be masculine.  We are talking about around nineteenth century here so that’s the time when women started doing almost as much as men so they thought men were forgetting their manly traits.  Furthermore a uniform is a sign of bravery, honesty and heroism therefore when war veterans come back home people perceive them differently.  The best part or at least my favorite part of my paper is when I talk about how Kreb perhaps can’t get over the war and what he experienced and that may be the reason why he isolates himself and is a stranger in his own home.  I found it interesting because according to my research men go to war to become masculine but war sometimes may affect them in many awful ways and sometimes it’s really hard for them to get over what they experienced and move on. 

For my research paper I’m going to concentrate on why men go to war and how war has an effect on them and I will not just concentrate on WWI. I will definitely delete all about Kreb even though I truly like the story because I think it may be hard for me to keep comparing the sources I find with the story therefore I am going to end up having an entirely different paper.  I have a few ideas on where my research needs to go.  I recently read about many war veterans that return home with a disorder and some symptoms that they usually experience are nightmares, flashbacks, depression, fear and anger.  Some even want to commit suicide.  Families must suffer as well if they have a family member with this disorder therefore I hope I stumble on information about how war affects the whole family also.  I look forward to writing an interesting paper and hopefully everyone gets something out of it.