online.sfsu.edu/~soh/comfortwomen.html -> online.sfsu.edu/%7Esoh/comfortwomen.html
San Francisco State University This ongoing project examines the issue of Comfort Women in the context of violence against women and the patriarchal sexual culture and militarism. Comfort women are the young females of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army before and during the Second World War. Field research for this project has been carried out in Korea, 1 Japan, 2 , New York City and the National Archives in Washington DC.
Parts of the following text have been excerpted from the article in Korea Journal . Some Background on the Comfort Women Issue s Alice said, we should begin at the beginning. However, as Foucault implies, what constitutes the beginning depends upon ones point of view. Rashomon -like, Japanese, Koreans, Americans, and the other parties to the Second World War have very different views of the course of that horrific period. Likewise, feminists, masculinists, nationalists, have very different views of the comfort women issue. The comfort women, which is a translation of the Japanese euphemism, jugun ianfu , military comfort women, categorically refers to women of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who became sexual laborers for the Japanese troops before and during the Second World War. Countless women had to labor as comfort women in the military brothels found throughout the vast Asia Pacific region occupied by the Japanese forces. There is no way to determine precisely how many women were forced to serve as comfort women. The estimate ranges between 80,000 and 200,000, about 80 of whom, it is believed, were Korean. Japanese women and women of other occupied territories such as Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma and the Pacific islands were also used as comfort women. The Japanese rationale for the comfort system was to enhance the morale of the military by providing amenities for recreational sex. The authorities believed such amenities would help prevent soldiers from committing random sexual violence toward women of occupied territories, which became a real concern after the infamous Nanjing Massacre in 1937 6 . Besides its reputation, the military authorities were also concerned with the health of the troops, which prompted their close supervision of the hygienic conditions in the comfort stations in order to help keep sexually transmitted diseases under control. When the war ended, the only military tribunal concerning the sexual abuse of comfort women took place in Batavia todays Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia in 1948. The Batavia trial convicted several Japanese military officers for having forced into comfort stations the 35 Dutch women mentioned in the case. However, the same trial completely ignored similar ordeals suffered by native Indonesians and women of other ethnic backgrounds. The photo at the left shows two of the surviving Dutch ex-comfort women participating in the monthly demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy in Den Haag, The Netherlands, September 18, 1998. The demonstration is organized by the Foundation for Japanese Honorary Debts, a non-govermental organization of the Dutch civilian internees, forced laborers, and POWs in the Dutch East Indies present-day Indonesia during the Japanese occupation 1942-1945. In Korea the comfort women issue began to emerge only in the late 1980s. A major political impact of the lawsuit has been widening the bi-national dispute into the universalistic issue of womens human rights. The Korean Council then sent an open letter to the Japanese Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki, which listed the following six demands: That the Japanese government admit the forced draft of Korean women as comfort women; That these facts be continuously related in historical education so that such misdeeds are not repeated. The Japanese response on the six demands in April 1991 was that there was no evidence of the forced draft of Korean women, and hence no public apology, disclosure, nor memorial were forthcoming. The Japanese reply pointed out that all claims of compensation between Japan and South Korea had been settled by the 1965 treaty, and that textbooks would continue to reflect Japans regret for aggression against the rest of Asia. Angry reaction brought about further action on the part of the Korean Council and the efforts of the womens groups reached a turning point in August 1991 when Kim Hak Sun 7 photo right became the first Korean woman to give public testimony to her life as a comfort woman. The December 1991 lawsuit mentioned above has attracted the attention of the worldwide media about the hitherto hidden chapter on the role of comfort women in the history of the Second World War. Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi expressed his regret and apologies during his state visit to South Korea in January 1992. While still ruling out any compensation for the comfort women, the prime minister indicated that some measure in lieu of compensation would be considered after receiving the report of fact finding committees being set up in South Korea and Japan, respectively. A woman freelance journalist in Japan criticized that Miyazawas apologies were ill-conceived because the comfort system was a necessary evil to be adopted in war zones to avoid harm to local women. She further questioned the political and economic motivation of the sudden prominence of the issue. The Japanese report, Results of Investigation into the Question of Military Comfort Women Originating from the Korean Peninsula , which was published on July 6, 1992, was based on 127 documents, including those first found by Professor Yoshimi. These documents came mostly from the Self-Defence Agency and the Foreign Ministry, and those from the Foreign Ministry demonstrated much wider official involvement in the comfort system than could be attributed to the arbitrary initiative of the Armed Forces alone. The fact that there were no relevant documents released from the Police Agency or the Labor Ministry, the two agencies most implicated in the forced recruitment of women, was a source of much criticism on the shortcomings of the scope of the investigations. The Justice Ministry was not even included in the investigation even though it was known to have the full records of all war crimes trials, including the Dutch cases. The South Korean governments report, Interim Report of the Fact-Finding Investigation on Military Comfort Women under Japanese Imperialism , was published on July 31, 1992. It consisted of a survey of the reports by the Japanese government and the United States Army, respectively, and a summary of representative testimonies given by the survivors who registered at the Victim Report Centers set up in two cities. The report also included criticism of the Japanese report for lacking comprehensive coverage as to the establishment and management of the comfort stations. The North Korean report, An Indictment: The Japanese Government Must Fully Establish the Truth on the Military Comfort Women Question and Sincerely Apologize , was issued on September 1, 1992. It included life stories of North Korean survivors and attacked the Japanese government report for claiming to have no evidence of recruitment by coercion. North Korea, which had become involved in the comfort women issue from the time of Miyazawas visit to South Korea in January 1992, supports for North Korean survivors to be compensated by Japan on the same principle as had applied to the atomic bomb victims. The Korean Council conveyed its reaction to the Japanese report in an open letter to Prime Minister Miyazawa in October 1992. Photo left shows the anthropologist with Lee Hyo-Chae, a co-representative on the Korean Council. The Japanese government admitted deception, coercion and official involvement in the recruitment of comfort women in a supplementary report issued in August 1993. Some observers predicted the Japanese admission of the use of coercion in the recruitment of the comfort women to be the beginning of the end of the comfort women as a live issue. Unfortunately, the comfort women issue is still co...
|
http://csua.com/feed/