During the 15 Years War, known in Japan as the period from 1931-1945, nearly 200,000 women from throughout the Japanese Empire fell victim to Japan’s state-sponsored brothel system. Mostly Asian virgins, with the exception of the Dutch women in Indonesia, these women were often forced or tricked into becoming the euphemistically called “comfort women.”  Their role included forced sex with 10-20 Japanese solders daily, along with one or two officers at night, from which they were often infected with STDs.  They typically lived near or on battlefields, received little or no pay for their role and were regularly abused.  An estimated third survived.

Those who survived often told no one of their experience for fear of the stigma attached to losing ones virginity prior to marriage.  The women suffered in silence for nearly fifty years, until one elderly former comfort woman from South Korea bravely stepped forward to tell her story in 1991.  Today, the elderly women who still survive fight in domestic, foreign and international courts for justice.  They seek an apology from the Japanese government, recognition of their plight in Japanese schoolbooks and compensation for the hardship endured.  The Japanese government steadfastly refuses, citing post-WWII bilateral treaties between it and the nations from which the women come, and the San Francisco Peace Treaty as a defense.

The former comfort women are old, dieing daily.  It appears as if the Japanese government is waiting until the last of the women die so that it can sweep this issue under the rug. As long as the comfort women are alive, however, they strive for justice, seeking to make their plight known around the world. The future looks bleak, but one can but hope that these women receive solace in their lifetime.

For more on the comfort women please see Dottie Horns’s article written for the University of Northa Carolina’s journal, Endeavor, or my article written for Chronogram.

Further sources on Comfort Women:

Links:

A list of links put together by Jerry D. Boucher and Chunghee Sarah Soh

Books:
Comfort Women by Yoshiaki Yoshimi

Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slaver & Prostitution during World War II & the US Occupation by Yuki Tanaka

Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War by George Hicks

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