Comfort women

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Comfort women is a euphemism for women used in brothels in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II. Many surviving women have testified to being tricked or otherwise coerced into serving the Japanese army as prostitutes during its occupation of Korea, China and much of South East Asia.

Forced into sexual slavery by Japan and raped dozens of times daily by Japanese soldiers, the "comfort women" have faced lives of enduring shame.

Estimates of the number of women forced into brothels during the war range from 20,000 to 300,000. Most of these brothels were located in Japanese military bases, usually in occupied areas in mainland Asia.

Table of contents

1 Responsibility and Compensation
2 Recreation and Amusement Association
3 Comfort women elsewhere
4 Related articles
5 References
6 Links

Responsibility and Compensation

Japan regards Korea's official compensation claim as having been settled by the Treaty on Basic Relations and Agreement of Economic Cooperation and Property Claims between Japan and the Republic of Korea in 1965. The treaty does not specifically mention comfort women, but in Japan's view closes all wartime issues with Korea.

The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery filed suit, with help from Japanese organizations, in 1990 and independently several comfort women filed suit in the Tokyo District Court demanding apologies. More suits followed in the years to come. Most of these attempts to gain formal compensation and legal redress have been rejected in Japanese courts.

Up until 1992, the Japanese government denied any official connection to the wartime brothels. In June 1990, the Japanese government declared that they were run by private contractors. However, since the historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki discovered incriminating documents in the archives of Japan's National Defense Agency in 1992 indicating that the military was directly involved in running the brothels (by, for example, selecting the agents who recruited or coerced women into service), Japan's official position has been one of admitting "moral but not legal" responsibility.

In 1995, a Japanese semi-governmental "Asia Women's Fund" was set up for atonement in the form of material compensation and providing each surviving comfort woman with an unofficial signed apology from the prime minister. Many comfort women have rejected these payments due to their unofficial nature and continue to seek an official apology and compensation.

Following official admission of a military connection to the brothels in 1992, the debate has shifted to consideration of evidence and testimony of coercive recruitment of comfort women during the war. Surviving women have testified in a number of trials and a UN mock trial without cross-examination to their own stories of being subjected to coercion and rape.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone admitted in his memoirs that he had helped set up a comfort women station during his service in the war.

Recreation and Amusement Association

The brothels under the aegis of the Recreation and Amusement Association, set up by the Japanese Home Ministry after Japan's defeat to serve the Allied Occupation Forces, have been equated to the comfort women system. While the naming is similar (a more literal rendering of the title is Special Comfort Facility Association), most non-Japanese historians generally agree that unlike the sex slaves of the wartime brothels, most RAA employees were ordinary Japanese prostitutes. Some Japanese sources, however, assert that the RAA was set up by the US Army and the women were not volunteers.

Comfort women elsewhere

Joy Division (WWII)

References

Some recent work on the comfort women issue include:

Tanaka, Yuki Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the US Occupation, London, Routledge: 2002. ISBN 0415194016.
Yoshimi, Yoshiaki Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, Columbia University Press, 2001. (mentioned RAA too) ISBN 023112032X
Molasky, Michael S. American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa, Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0415191947 ISBN 0415260442

A review of these books and a history and historiography of the issue, from a view critical of the above books can be found in issue 58:2 of Monumenta Nipponica:

Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashii "Comfort Women: Beyond Litigious Feminism"