Japan's Mass Rape and Sexual Enslavement of Women and Girls from 1932-1945: The "Comfort Women" System

Photos "Pregnant woman guarded by soldier" source National Archives More photos

Beginning in 1931 or 1932 and continuing throughout the duration of the Asian/Pacific wars, the Japanese Government instituted a system of sexual slavery throughout the territories it occupied.¹ During that time, women were recruited by force, coercion, or deception into sexual slavery for the Japanese military. These women were euphemistically referred to as "comfort women" by the Japanese Imperial Army. Although historians often disagree about the number of "comfort women," the most widely used figure is estimated at 200,000.² The majority (approximately 80%) came from Korea, then a Japanese colony, and another large percentage came from Japanese-occupied China. Others were taken from, among other countries, the Philippines, Burma, and Indonesia. In addition, some women who were Netherlands' subjects were included in the immense roundup. The women were drawn primarily from those the Japanese considered racially inferior and virgins were actively sought. ³

The plight of the "comfort women" remains unresolved despite the fact historians have made public many official documents indicating that the system in question did exist and was maintained by, and for, the Japanese Imperial Army. One key Japanese historian, Yoshimi Yoshiaki, maintains that other key evidence remains locked inside Japanese confidential files and should be made public.⁴ Although members of the Japanese government have recently issued statements acknowledging Japanese involvement, there have been no formal apologies by the Japanese government. In addition there have been many denials by various influential political groups and editorial boards. As recently as May 2001, Japan omitted any mention of the system of sexual slavery in the history textbooks used to teach Japanese students. The government of Japan officially remains silent on this issue and it is time that they acknowledge their responsibility.

By the end of World War II, the use of "comfort women" was a widespread and regular phenomenon throughout Japan-controlled East Asia.⁶ The women held in sexual slavery were raped repeatedly -- by some accounts by 30 or 40 men each day -- day after day. Torture and beatings were common. The women existed under miserable conditions, living in tiny cubicles, and often with inadequate food and medical care. For some, the servitude lasted as long as eight years.

Those who attempted to resist, and some who did not, were beaten, tortured, or mutilated; sometimes they were murdered.⁷ The treatment of "comfort women" was consistent with Japan's view of the racial inferiority of the populations from which the women were drawn. At some "comfort stations," the women were given Japanese names and required to speak Japanese and entertain the men with Japanese songs. Korean comfort women were referred to as chosenppi ("Korean vagina") or other derogatory Japanese terms for Koreans.

At the end of the war, many "comfort women" were killed by retreating troops or simply abandoned. For example, in one case in Micronesia, the Japanese Army killed 70 "comfort women" in one night just before the arrival of American troops.⁸ Others were abandoned, sometimes in dense jungles, when their Japanese captors fled. ⁹ Many of those died of starvation and disease. Others did not know where they were, were hundreds of miles from their homes, had no money, and no means to return.

Survivors who made it home returned to what were often lives of isolation and societal rejection, compounded by deeply instilled feelings of guilt and shame. Many were ostracized, beaten or even killed. Most of those still living are extremely poor and suffer from severe physical and psychological problems. Many could not marry. As a result of violent physical and sexual abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and drug addictions arising from their war time experiences, many women suffer serious health effects, including permanent damage to their reproductive organs and urinary tracts. Many women also found themselves unable to bear children as a result of their mistreatment. Sleep disorders, like insomnia and fearful nightmares, are common. They suffer grievously to this day.¹⁰

Testimony from former "comfort women"

The "comfort woman" program of sexual slavery was a systematic and carefully planned system ordered and executed by the Japanese Government. ¹¹ According to a report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms Radhika Coomaraswamy:

The first comfort stations under direct Japanese control were those in Shanghai in 1932, and there is firsthand evidence of official involvement in their establishment. One of the commanders of the Shanghai campaign, Lieutenant General Okamura Yasuji, confessed in his memoirs to have been the original proponent of comfort stations for the military ... a number of Korean women from a Korean community in Japan were sent to the province by the Governor of Nagasaki Prefecture. The fact that they were sent from Japan implicates not only the military but also the Home Ministry, which controlled the governors and the police who were later to play a significant role in collaborating with the army in forcibly recruiting women.¹²

The government of Japan shipped girls and women like military supplies throughout the vast area of Asia and the Pacific that Japanese troops controlled, from the Siberian border to the equator, including: China (including Guangdong and Manchuria), Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Amoi, French Indochina, the Philippines, Guam, Malaya, Singapore, British Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, Thailand, East New Guinea, New Britain, Trobriand, Okinawa, and Sakhalin, as well as the Japanese islands of Kyushu, Honshu and Hokkaido. The Japanese government built, operated, and controlled hundreds of "comfort houses" in these areas.

Deception and coercion were common in the recruitment of "comfort women" - who were mostly taken from poverty-stricken families - and many were simply abducted by brute force.¹³ Tomasa Salinog of the Philippines was awakened one night in 1942 by Japanese soldiers breaking into her home. After the soldiers decapitated her father, Salinog was dragged from her house by the soldiers and taken to a nearby garrison. Ms. Salinog, who was thirteen years old at the time, was then raped by two soldiers and beaten unconscious. She was thereafter forced to serve as a "comfort woman" in the same garrison.

Young girls were targeted as they were unlikely to be infected with venereal diseases. The girls and women taken were as young as eleven years old and were sometimes taken from their elementary schools.¹⁴ The women were often removed to remote places where they had no linguistic or cultural ties so that they could more easily be isolated from any prospect of sympathy or help.

In Korea, in addition to recruitment by force and deception, "comfort women" were recruited under the official labor draft, instituted to strengthen the Japanese war effort. (It was called kunro ("labor") or Yeoja ("woman") Jungshindae (in Japanese, Teishintai), meaning "Voluntarily Committing Body Corps for Labor." This is a phrase coined by the Japanese that denotes the devoting of one's entire being to the cause of the Emperor.) Many young women recruited or lured to work in the factories, were diverted by Japan into sexual slavery. The same occurred to many women originally drafted to work in factories.

Only Japanese soldiers were allowed to frequent the "comfort stations" and were normally charged a fixed price. The prices varied by the women's nationality.¹⁵ The rank of the soldier determined the length of time allowed for a visit, the price paid, and the hours at which the soldier was entitled to visit the comfort station. ¹⁶ At least a portion of the revenue was taken by the military. According to the testimony of a survivor quoted in the report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur, from 3 to 7 pm each day she had to serve sergeants, whereas the evenings were reserved for lieutenants.¹⁷

The Japanese Army also regulated conditions at the "comfort stations," issuing rules on working hours, hygiene, contraception, and prohibitions on alcohol and weapons.¹⁸ "Comfort women" were recorded on Japanese military supply lists under the heading of "ammunition" as well as under "Amenities."¹⁹ Army doctors carried out health checks on the "comfort women," primarily to prevent the spread of venereal disease.²⁰ The "comfort women" system required the deployment of the vast infrastructure and resources that were at the government's disposal, including soldiers and support personnel, weapons, all forms of land and sea transportation, and engineering and construction crews and matériel.

After the war, the Japanese government was afraid that United States and other Allied troops would commit atrocities in a similar manner as their own troops did when invading China in 1937. In order to prevent rapes, on August 18, 1945, the Japanese government opened the "comfort stations" for use by Allied troops.²¹ According to Japanese documents and testimony from former "comfort women," the women at these stations were forced to serve as sexual slaves to the American soldiers.²² The first "comfort station" opened for the use of United States troops in the Tokyo area on August 27, 1945, with reports that terrified "comfort women" began weeping, clung to posts in the building and refused to move.²³

The United States did not simply make use of Japanese initiated "comfort stations" but also requested others be built on their behalf. In September of 1945, the chief of Tokyo's Public Health Section, Yosano Hikaru met with the Surgeon General of the Army to discuss the availability of women for the United States Army. After this meeting, responsibility for the "comfort stations" was divided between Yosano and Colonel C.F. Sams, Chief of the Public Health and Welfare Department. These stations were only closed because of threat of sexually transmitted diseases.

• In 1990, in response to calls for an investigation from women's organizations in the Republic of Korea and from a member of the Japanese Diet, the Japanese Government responded that the "comfort women" issue was the work of neither the Japanese Government nor the military, but of private entrepreneurs.²⁴ In 1991, in response to a letter from the Korean Women's Association demanding an apology, a memorial and a thorough inquiry, the Japanese Government stated that there was no evidence of the forced drafting of Korean women as "comfort women," and thus no need for an apology, memorial or disclosures by the Government of Japan.²⁵ The response also suggested that the "comfort women" were voluntary prostitutes.²⁶

   

• On August 14, 1991, a South Korean woman named Kim Hak Soon became the first former comfort woman to give public testimony. Since then, some 190 women in Korea alone have come forward. Of these, forty, including Kim Hak Soon herself, have passed away. The Japanese government's initial reaction to the brutal history first disclosed by Kim Hak Soon was to deny that it was involved.

   

• In 1992 Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary expressed "deep remorse" and admitted for their first time that the Japanese Imperial Army was in some way involved in the running of comfort facilities. Later that year, the Government released 127 documents implicating the Japanese military in the use of "comfort stations."²⁷ However, Japan continued to deny an official role in "recruiting" the women.

   

• On April 27, 1998, the Shimonoseki Branch of the Yamaguchi Prefectural Court in Japan ruled in favor of 3 South Korean "comfort women's" complaint against Japan. However, on May 8, 1998, the Japanese government filed an appeal stating that they do not hold legal responsibility for the crimes committed against individuals during the war. Most recently, the Tokyo High Court ruled against two separate cases brought by individuals against Japan, one on behalf of Korean woman, Song Shin-do and one on behalf of 46 Filipino women.

   

• On May 9, 2001, a Japanese daily newspaper ran an editorial denying that the system of sexual slavery had ever existed. The same newspaper also refused to print a rebuttal by the South Korean government stating the historical record regarding the Japanese system of sexual slavery.

   

• As recently as May 2001, Japan omitted any mention of the system of sexual slavery in the history textbooks used to teach Japanese students.

   

• Since the end of the war, Japan has also engaged in ongoing and continuing conduct to wrongfully conceal its involvement in the systematic sexual slavery of the "comfort women" as well as refusing to provide true compensation to the "comfort women. "The Japanese Government destroyed many relevant documents immediately after the war,²⁸ and Japan has been unwilling to release the bulk of whatever documents remain.

   

• Although individual representatives of the Japanese Government have issued a series of apologies, they have not spoken for the government as a whole and Japan continues to deny the full nature and extent of its responsibility for the atrocities. Japan has made no reparations to the victims, no acknowledgment of legal liability, and has undertaken no prosecutions.²⁹

   

1. George L. Hicks, Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, 45 (W.W. Norton & Co., 1995) and Ustinia Dolgopol & Snehal Paranjape, Comfort Women: an Unfinished Ordeal, Report of a Mission, 31 (International Commission of Jurists 1994). Back

2. Gay McDougal, Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-like Practices During Armed Conflict: Update to the Final Report, U.N. Economic and Social Council, 52nd Sess., Agenda Item 6(a), UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/21 (2000) at par. 68; Dolgopol and Paranjape, supra note 1, at 43. For a more detailed description of the way historians have estimated the number of comfort women see Yoshimi Yoshiaki "Comfort Women": Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During WWII (Suzanne O'Brien trans. Columbia University Press 2000).Back

3. Dolgopol and Paranjape, supra note 1, at 42.Back

4. Yoshimi, supra note 2, at 39.Back

5. Statement of Korean Comfort Women, 1944, as quoted in Yoshimi, supra note 2, at 147-148.Back

6. Radhika Coomaraswarmy, Report on the Mission to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery in Wartime U.N. Commission on Human Rights, 52nd Sess., Prov. Agenda Item 9(a), at 2, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.1 (1996) Back

7. Dolgopol and Paranjape, supra note 2, at 49 - 51; Katharine Parker and Jennifer F. Chew, Compensation for Japan's World War II Victims, 17 Hastings Int'l & Comp. L. Rev., WL HSTICLR 497, at 505.Back

8. Coomaraswarmy, supra note 6, at 5.Back

9. Dolgopol and Paranjape, supra note 1, at 29.Back

10. Hicks, supra note 1, at 20; Dolgopol and Paranjpae, supra note 1, at 51.Back

11. Hicks, supra note 1, at 197.Back

12. Coomaraswarmy, supra note 6, at 5.Back

13. Hicks, supra note 1, at 195 (Hicks cites as one example the 1983 memoirs of Yoshida Seiji, My War Crimes: The Forced Draft of Koreans, which describe his involvement, as Mobilisation Department Head in Shimonoseki, in the coercive recruitment of "comfort women."); see also David Boling, Mass Rape, Enforced Prostitution, and the Japanese Imperial Army: Japan Eschews International Legal Responsibility?, 32 Colum. J. Transnat'l L., 547 (1995), WL 32 CLMJTL 533. (quoting Seiji as saying "It was just like kidnapping.")Back

14. Recent evidence indicates that Korean primary school girls were conscripted to serve as "comfort women." David Andrew Schmidt, Ianfu - The Comfort Women of the Japanese Imperial Army of the Pacific War: Broken Silence (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellon Press, 2000) at 36.Back

15. See, e.g.. Boling, supra note 13, at 543, citing an example of "one yen for Chinese, one and a half yen for a Korean woman, and two yen for a Japanese woman."Back

16. Parker and Chew, supra note 7, at 502.Back

17. Testimony of Bok Sun Kim, quoted in Coomaraswarmy, supra note 6, at 12.Back

18. See, e.g. Coomaraswarmy, supra note 6, at 4 and 8 (citing, for example, the 10 Day Report of the 21st Army Unit of the Japanese Army stationed at Kwandong, China from 11 to 21 April, 1939).; Parker and Chew, supra note 7, at 502; Boling, supra note 13, at 543; Dolgopol and Paranjape, supra note 1, at 24 - 40.Back

19. Boling, supra note 13, at 543.Back

20. Coomaraswarmy, supra note 6, at 7; McDougal, supra note 2, at 5 (citing Japanese government documents); Dolgopol and Paranjepe, supra note 1, at 31 (citing Japanese Army regulations in the "South Sector" of China providing that a senior medical officer would conduct a venereal examination on Thursday morning of each week.)Back

21. Yoshimi, supra note 2, at 180.Back

22. Yoshimi, supra note 2, at 184. Ctr. for Research and Documentation of Japan's War Responsibility, First Report on the Issue of Japan's Military "Comfort Women" -- Historical and Legal Study on the Issue of "Military Comfort Women" ("War Responsibility Report") 54 (1994).Back

23. Yoshimi, supra note 2 at 180-181.Back

24. Dolgopol and Paranjape, supra note 1, at 12.Back

25. Dolgopol and Paranjape, supra note 1, at 13.Back

26. Schmidt, supra note 14, at 22.Back

27. Dolgopol and Paranjape, supra note 1, at 13 - 14. The documents were released in connection with an official study on "comfort women" by the Japanese Cabinet Councillors' Office on External Affairs. McDougal, supra note 2, at paragraph 2.Back

28. See, e.g., Parker and Chew, supra note 2, at 502; Yvonne Park Hsu, "Comfort Women" from Korea: Japan's World War II Sex Slaves and the Legitimacy of their Claims for Reparations, 2 Pac. Rim L. & Policy J. 97, 100 (1993) (referring to an August 15, 1945, order by the Japanese Minister of War to every Army headquarters to destroy documents prior to Japan's surrender.)Back

29. McDougal, supra note 2, at paragraph 72.Back

For more information, please contact us at lawinfo@cmht.com.

• "Cold Comfort" - The Nation - May 24, 2001
• Comfort Workers' Fight for Compensation to Continue - March 30, 2001
• Former "Comfort Women" Ask Court to Rule that Japan Has No Sovereign Immunity for Systematic Sexual Slavery During World War II - March 5, 2001

• Japan's Mass Rape and Sexual Enslavement of Women and Girls from 1932-1945: The "Comfort Women" System  - July 2, 2001
• Testimony from Former "Comfort Women"  - July 2, 2001

• Agnieszka M. Fryszman