Historical Background
Hak-Soon Kim (1924 – 1997), the first victim to testify
in public on August 14, 1991, speaking at the Wednesday Demonstration in 1996
The term “comfort women,” “ianfu (慰安婦),” is a euphemism referring to Japanese military sex slaves before and during World War II. The “comfort women” reference disguises the darkness and inhumanity of repeated violence and rape. Indeed, survivor Jan Ruff-O’Herne (a Dutch-Australian born in the Dutch Indies, present-day Indonesia, 1923–2019) refuses to be referred to as a “comfort woman.” She said, “We weren’t ‘comfort women’ … it means something warm and soft and cuddly. We were Japanese war rape victims.”[1] The “comfort” was meant only for the Japanese imperial soldiers, not for the sex slaves themselves.
“Comfort women” were the victims of a military sexual slavery system established, operated, and expanded by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces from the 1930s until the end of WWII.[2] During that timespan, this system forced more than 200,000 women and girls across Asia into sexual slavery.[3] The first known “comfort station” was established in Shanghai in 1932, and after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the number of comfort stations multiplied.[4] In 2017, at the conference “Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’: Remembrance of Post-Colonization and Cultural Re-Actualization,” Chung-Ok Yun, Professor Emeritus at Ewha Woman’s University, stated, “Instead of the term ‘comfort women,’ the term ‘Female Volunteer Labor Corps’ was widely used in the ‘40s. The majority of Koreans rarely heard or used the term ‘comfort women’ in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”[5]
Etsuro Totsuka, an international human rights lawyer, proposed the use of the term “sex slaves” instead of “comfort women” to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for the first time in 1992.[6] Yet still the term “comfort women” stayed in common use for decades. In order to draw the connection, this resource guide uses the terms “comfort women” and Japanese military sex slaves interchangeably. The term “comfort women” is enclosed in quotes to acknowledge its use as a euphemism.
During the 1930s and 40s, among the Japanese soldiers, “comfort women” were considered as a gift from the [Japanese] emperor.[7] In his wartime diary, From Shanghai to Shanghai, Aso Tetsuo (served 1937–1941), the first Japanese medical officer who had been ordered to perform health examination on military “comfort women,” wrote that he noticed that “the women were transported under the clause covering the transport of supplies.”[8] In 1939, Aso recommended that “‘comfort stations’ ... should not be considered amusement facilities, but similar to hygienic, shared toilet.”[9]
Depending on the degree of control that the Imperial Japanese government had on each of its neighboring countries, women and girls were recruited, coerced, conscripted, or forced into military sexual slavery. Various methods, including sex trafficking, were used to establish and operate the military sexual slavery system. By implementing this state-sanctioned military sexual slavery system, Japan violated international conventions, including the following:[10]1) Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907); 2) International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children[11] (1921); 3) slavery Convention (1926); and 4) International Labor Organization Convention Concerning Forced Labor or Compulsory Labor (1930).
The Japanese government’s own study “On the issue of Wartime ‘Comfort Women’” states that “these recruiters resorted in many cases to coaxing and intimidating these women to be recruited against their own will, and there were even cases where administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitment”[12] These “comfort women,” who were forced into Japanese military sexual slavery against their will and international laws, were deprived of four types of freedoms: freedom of residence, freedom of movement, freedom to decline to have sexual intercourse, and freedom to quit.[13]
Surviving victims testified that, at the end of WWII, the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces either mass murdered “comfort women” or abandoned them. The trauma they experienced didn’t liberate them when Japan surrendered in 1945. For decades, the Japanese government has been masking or denying the history of “comfort women.” In response to this injustice, the surviving victims and their supporters in many parts of the world have worked together to bring justice to this sidelined history since the early 1990s.
Activists began calling the victims and survivors of Japan’s WWII military sexual slavery system “grandmothers” rather than referring to them euphemistically as “comfort women.” The girls and young women who were once sex slaves had grown old by the time they broke their silence. The following words mean “grandmother” in different languages in Asian countries mentioned in this guide. The Chinese words for “grandmother” below are terms used by Asian activists in the women’s movement.
China:
Daniang 大娘 (Shanxi Province), Apo or Ahpo (阿婆) (Hainan)
Japan:
Obaasan (formal), Obaachan (intimate), おばあちゃん
Korea:
Halmoni, 할머니, Halmae, 할매 (Southern dialect)
Philippines:
Lola
Taiwan:
Ama (Taiwan’s Hokkien Language, Min-nan yu), 阿嬤
[1] Emily Langer, “Jan Ruff-O’Herne, seeker of dignity for fellow ‘comfort women’ of World War II, dies at 96,” The Washington Post, Aug. 27, 2019.
[2] Note Verbale Dated 26 March 1996 from the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations Office at Geneva Addresses to the Centre for Human Rights, (UN Commission on Human Rights, 52nd session, E/CN.4/1996/137, March 27, 1996), 14–15.
[3] Gay J. McDougall, Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-Like Practices During Armed Conflict: Final Report, (UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, 50th session, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13, June 22, 1998), 3.
[4] Caroline Norma, The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery during the China and Pacific Wars, (Bloomsbury, 2017), 19.
[5] During WWII, Japan established the Female Volunteer Corps, an organization that, in reality, tricked women and girls into forced labor to support Japan’s war effort.
[6] Etsuro Totsuka, “Commentary on a Victory for ‘Comfort Women’: Japan’s Judicial Recognition of Military Sexual Slavery,” 8 Pac. Rim L. & Pol’y J. 47, (1999).
[7] Bentley, J. H., Herbert F. Ziegler, Heather S. Salter. Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspec tive on the Past, 6th ed., vol.2, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2015), 2:874–875.
[8] Tetsuo Aso, From Shanghai to Shanghai: The War Diary of an Imperial Japanese Army Medical Officer, 1937–1941, (Eastbridge, 2017), 6.
[9] Ibid., 172.
[10] Yoshiaki Yoshimi, Comfort Women, (Columbia University Press, 2000), 155–160.
[11] Find a PDF of this text at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1921/09/19210930%2005-59%20AM/Ch_VII_3p.pdf.
[12] Note Verbale Dated 26 March 1996 from the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations Office at Geneva Addresses to the Centre for Human Rights, (UN Commission on Human Rights, 52nd session, E/CN.4/1996/137, March 27, 1996). 17.
[13] Satoko Norimatsu, “Reexamining the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue: An Interview with Yoshimi Yoshiaki, 改めて慰安婦問題の本質を問う,”The Asia Pacific Journal, Jan. 5, 2015.
Photo credit: The Korean Council (from exhibition Truth & Justice: Remembering “Comfort Women”)
“Comfort women” were the victims of a military sexual slavery system established, operated, and expanded by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces from the 1930s until the end of WWII.[2] During that timespan, this system forced more than 200,000 women and girls across Asia into sexual slavery.[3] The first known “comfort station” was established in Shanghai in 1932, and after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the number of comfort stations multiplied.[4] In 2017, at the conference “Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’: Remembrance of Post-Colonization and Cultural Re-Actualization,” Chung-Ok Yun, Professor Emeritus at Ewha Woman’s University, stated, “Instead of the term ‘comfort women,’ the term ‘Female Volunteer Labor Corps’ was widely used in the ‘40s. The majority of Koreans rarely heard or used the term ‘comfort women’ in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”[5]
Etsuro Totsuka, an international human rights lawyer, proposed the use of the term “sex slaves” instead of “comfort women” to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for the first time in 1992.[6] Yet still the term “comfort women” stayed in common use for decades. In order to draw the connection, this resource guide uses the terms “comfort women” and Japanese military sex slaves interchangeably. The term “comfort women” is enclosed in quotes to acknowledge its use as a euphemism.
During the 1930s and 40s, among the Japanese soldiers, “comfort women” were considered as a gift from the [Japanese] emperor.[7] In his wartime diary, From Shanghai to Shanghai, Aso Tetsuo (served 1937–1941), the first Japanese medical officer who had been ordered to perform health examination on military “comfort women,” wrote that he noticed that “the women were transported under the clause covering the transport of supplies.”[8] In 1939, Aso recommended that “‘comfort stations’ ... should not be considered amusement facilities, but similar to hygienic, shared toilet.”[9]
Depending on the degree of control that the Imperial Japanese government had on each of its neighboring countries, women and girls were recruited, coerced, conscripted, or forced into military sexual slavery. Various methods, including sex trafficking, were used to establish and operate the military sexual slavery system. By implementing this state-sanctioned military sexual slavery system, Japan violated international conventions, including the following:[10]1) Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907); 2) International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children[11] (1921); 3) slavery Convention (1926); and 4) International Labor Organization Convention Concerning Forced Labor or Compulsory Labor (1930).
The Japanese government’s own study “On the issue of Wartime ‘Comfort Women’” states that “these recruiters resorted in many cases to coaxing and intimidating these women to be recruited against their own will, and there were even cases where administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitment”[12] These “comfort women,” who were forced into Japanese military sexual slavery against their will and international laws, were deprived of four types of freedoms: freedom of residence, freedom of movement, freedom to decline to have sexual intercourse, and freedom to quit.[13]
Surviving victims testified that, at the end of WWII, the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces either mass murdered “comfort women” or abandoned them. The trauma they experienced didn’t liberate them when Japan surrendered in 1945. For decades, the Japanese government has been masking or denying the history of “comfort women.” In response to this injustice, the surviving victims and their supporters in many parts of the world have worked together to bring justice to this sidelined history since the early 1990s.
Activists began calling the victims and survivors of Japan’s WWII military sexual slavery system “grandmothers” rather than referring to them euphemistically as “comfort women.” The girls and young women who were once sex slaves had grown old by the time they broke their silence. The following words mean “grandmother” in different languages in Asian countries mentioned in this guide. The Chinese words for “grandmother” below are terms used by Asian activists in the women’s movement.
China:
Daniang 大娘 (Shanxi Province), Apo or Ahpo (阿婆) (Hainan)
Japan:
Obaasan (formal), Obaachan (intimate), おばあちゃん
Korea:
Halmoni, 할머니, Halmae, 할매 (Southern dialect)
Philippines:
Lola
Taiwan:
Ama (Taiwan’s Hokkien Language, Min-nan yu), 阿嬤
[1] Emily Langer, “Jan Ruff-O’Herne, seeker of dignity for fellow ‘comfort women’ of World War II, dies at 96,” The Washington Post, Aug. 27, 2019.
[2] Note Verbale Dated 26 March 1996 from the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations Office at Geneva Addresses to the Centre for Human Rights, (UN Commission on Human Rights, 52nd session, E/CN.4/1996/137, March 27, 1996), 14–15.
[3] Gay J. McDougall, Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-Like Practices During Armed Conflict: Final Report, (UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, 50th session, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13, June 22, 1998), 3.
[4] Caroline Norma, The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery during the China and Pacific Wars, (Bloomsbury, 2017), 19.
[5] During WWII, Japan established the Female Volunteer Corps, an organization that, in reality, tricked women and girls into forced labor to support Japan’s war effort.
[6] Etsuro Totsuka, “Commentary on a Victory for ‘Comfort Women’: Japan’s Judicial Recognition of Military Sexual Slavery,” 8 Pac. Rim L. & Pol’y J. 47, (1999).
[7] Bentley, J. H., Herbert F. Ziegler, Heather S. Salter. Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspec tive on the Past, 6th ed., vol.2, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2015), 2:874–875.
[8] Tetsuo Aso, From Shanghai to Shanghai: The War Diary of an Imperial Japanese Army Medical Officer, 1937–1941, (Eastbridge, 2017), 6.
[9] Ibid., 172.
[10] Yoshiaki Yoshimi, Comfort Women, (Columbia University Press, 2000), 155–160.
[11] Find a PDF of this text at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1921/09/19210930%2005-59%20AM/Ch_VII_3p.pdf.
[12] Note Verbale Dated 26 March 1996 from the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations Office at Geneva Addresses to the Centre for Human Rights, (UN Commission on Human Rights, 52nd session, E/CN.4/1996/137, March 27, 1996). 17.
[13] Satoko Norimatsu, “Reexamining the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue: An Interview with Yoshimi Yoshiaki, 改めて慰安婦問題の本質を問う,”The Asia Pacific Journal, Jan. 5, 2015.
Photo credit: The Korean Council (from exhibition Truth & Justice: Remembering “Comfort Women”)
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